Fountain Example Syntax

I started an example syntax for Fountain, the “plain text markup language for screenwriting”. This builds on the new custom syntax support in v26.

While I can read specs, I’m not a screenwriter, and have never used Fountain, so it’s likely this doesn’t cover aspects of the way this syntax should work, but I wanted to get a good starting point out there to build on. If people try it and have feedback, please comment.

Right now, the Fountain syntax supports:

  • Navigation by scene heading (like INT - OFFICE)
  • Highlighting scene headings.
  • Markup for characters, lyrics, transitions, emphasis, bold, bold-italic.
  • [[notes]]

Please feel free to join the conversation if you plan to use Fountain in Drafts and have ideas/feedback.

I love that you chose Fountain as an example to include. From my initial test, it looks like character names are getting bolded. This wouldn’t be standard screenplay format or something Fountain would render.

Ultimately, the spacing/indentation conversions are what make Fountain what it is. I’ve been writing in Fountain in Drafts for a while but need to send it somewhere else (Highland on the Mac) in order to convert it to screenplay format. Is there a way to preview/export in Fountain? I don’t have the ability to build such an action and I haven’t seen it in the directory.

There’s no facility for export or preview specifically. I believe it could be built with some fo the Javascript tools provided by the Fountain project, but I have not had time to look into them.

I’m screenwriter with a tech background who has written in fountain before. I’m willing to help complete the syntax if someone can direct me to all the resources needed. I have a script from grad school somewhere that used every last fountain.io feature that we could use to test the input syntax. (Highland, Slugline, and Logline all do this off the top of my head for reference)

All Syntax Explained (sidebar navigates page):
https://fountain.io/syntax#section-overview

First and foremost, the output preview window needs to display the script in the right format for film and TV based on the fountain.io draft. Writers will want FDX and PDF conversion based on the template. It seems to me Writer Duet support is a must since Drafts doesn’t allow for direct collaboration. I can reach out to them to see if we could use a webhook or some other API post for export/import and updates once tested. Is there a way to add templates like the syntax modules?

Examples from Fountain:
https://fountain.io/syntax#section-downloads

All the documentation for creating custom syntaxes is available on the Drafts website.

The first post above gives you the existing initial syntax that Greg created.