The Outline Editor is a story-planning tool that allows you to lay out story beats in a linear, horizontal fashion. It's located directly beneath the Toolbar and is comprised of horizontal lanes. It can be used for outlining a script and it works in conjunction with the Beat Board (which you can access via the View tab).
You can toggle the Outline Editor view on and off in the View menu (by choosing Show or Hide). The Outline Editor can be made taller or shorter by hovering over the bottom of the panel beneath the horizontal scroll bar until a cursor appears, which allows you to resize the Outline Editor by dragging it up and down. Located at the bottom right of the Outline Editor is the zoom slider, which you can move right to left. This enables you to focus on a handful of pages or an entire script (the zoom can be as granular as 1/8s of a page, mirroring how scripts are measured during the production process).
There are two outline levels (Lanes) by default but any number of additional lanes can be added. The user can place resizable markers representing story events in any lane (except for the Script Lane) anywhere along its length. These markers can be relocated, resized and colored to help the user visualize the story's structure.
In the second row from the bottom, the numbers and hash marks correspond to page numbers in a script. The bottom row is the Script Lane and the cells (if they are big enough) show the first part of scenes already written. The Script Lane is not editable.
To insert a new Beat marker, right-click in the desired lane, above a desired page number, and choose New Beat. A new Beat marker will be placed in the Outline Editor at that location.
Click on it to add a Beat Title and Body text and a Beat with that text will also be placed on the Beat Board.
A Beat may also be dragged from the Beat Board to the desired location in the Outline Editor:
In the example below, the writer plans for this scene to start on Page 6 and be exactly one page long. The Beat marker has been dragged from the Beat Board to Page 6 and resized so that it spans one script page, from Page 6 to Page 7. The Goal at the upper right corner of the Beat on the Beat Board is updated to reflect this intended scene length:
To change a Beat marker's width (and therefore its span of pages) place the cursor over its right or left border until the double-arrow cursor is displayed (enlarged and colored red below, for purposes of illustration) and then drag the cursor right or left:
When a Beat marker is resized, the Goal of its corresponding Beat on the Beat Board will be updated.
An existing Beat marker may be dragged from one location to another and when it is moved, its Goal will automatically be updated. Beats may be moved from one Lane to another.
When a Beat marker in the Outline Editor is double-clicked, a popup will appear containing the text in the corresponding Beat on the Beat Board:
Click into the popup to edit the content of the Beat. Both the Beat marker in the Outline Editor and the Beat on the Beat Board will be updated when the mouse is clicked away from the Beat popup.
Navigation
Double-click on a Beat marker to move the Beat Board so that the Beat associated with the double-clicked marker is displayed at the center of the screen. The Beat will also be selected (blue border).
When a marker representing a scene in the Script Lane is double-clicked, if the script pages are displayed, the script will be scrolled to the scene in the Outline Editor that was double-clicked.
Script Pages
The bottom lane of the Outline Editor (the Script Lane) displays the first few words of a written scene's scene heading in that scene's assigned color, if a color has been assigned. The number of words shown depends on the size of the cell.
When a cell in the Script Lane is single-clicked, it will display the scene or paragraph as written on the page.
When a cell in the Script Lane is double-clicked and the main program window or one of its panels is displaying script pages, the script will be scrolled to that page.
Lanes
The Outline Editor displays a layered view story units (acts, sequences, scenes and more) in a linear, horizontal way, but when the contents of the Outline Editor are sent to the script pages, the story units are laid out vertically for the writer to continue to edit and expand upon.
Each Lane in the Outline Editor can be set up to represent a story unit, so that (for example) the topmost Lane shows Acts, the next one down shows Sequences, and the next one down shows Scenes. When the Send to Script command is issued, Beat markers in the topmost Lane will be rendered on the page as Outline 1 - Act paragraphs, with their own distinct font, font size, font color and indents. Beat markers in the Sequences Lane will be rendered on the page as Outline 2 - Sequence paragraphs, with their own formatting.
Adding and Managing Lanes
Right-click the first cell of a Lane or click the Lane Options icon (three dots) that appears when the cursor is hovered over the upper right corner...
to display this menu:
Click Add Lane to display a sub-menu with options to add a new Lane of a desired type – the Lane types available are the default Lane types built into the template and any custom Lane types that have been created in this script by the user. A new Lane type may be created by choosing New Outline Element. When a new Lane (Outline Element) type is created, the user can name it and configure its look and behavior in the Elements control panel. When Beat markers are added to this Lane and the Send to Script command is issued, all paragraphs from each Lane will look and behave on the script page as configured.
Indent and Outdent
Lane labels may be indented or outdented for better visual organization. In the example below, Outline 2 (Sequences) is indented and Outline 3 (Scenes) is outdented:
Additionally, when the Send to Script command is issued, all Outline 2 (Sequences) paragraphs on the script page will be indented and all Outline 3 (Scenes) paragraphs will be outdented.
Rename
Any Lane may be renamed at any time. There is no maximum length for a Lane name but shorter is better. When this command is chosen, a new Lane name can be overtyped into the text field:
Change Element
Any Lane may be converted to any other Lane type, The Lane types available are the default Lane types built into the template and any custom Lane types that have been created in this script by the user. Any Beat markers in the Lane being changed will, when the Send to Script command is issued, look and behave on the script page as the element type to which the Lane was changed.
Send to Script
This command copies the contents of all Beat makers in the Outline Editor to the script pages:
After the Send to Script command has been issued and all Outline Editor content has been copied to the script pages, when script pages are shown, the paragraphs from the Lanes will be rendered vertically on the page as the element types named and defined in the Outline Editor. That is, if Lane 1 is named Outline 1 - Acts and is set to be Arial 16 and purple, with a left indent of .875”, all Beats in Lane 1 will, when sent to the script, be shown as Outline 1 - Acts paragraphs on the page, with those font and indent attributes.
Location Indicator
The script page containing the cursor is indicated in the Outline Editor by a blue line.
If the cursor is placed on a different page, the Location Indicator will move to the new page marker. The script cannot be scrolled by dragging the blue line right or left.
Target Script Length
The Outline Editor defaults to 120 pages, considered the average feature film script length. Double-click or right-click anywhere in the Outline Editor to adjust the Target Script Length (the number of pages represented):
The more pages there are, the longer the Outline Editor will be. If a script is longer than the Target Script Length, the page numbers and hash marks will appear in red:
If a locked script has A pages, they will appear as gold hash marks.
If a locked script has dashed / deleted pages (i.e. "page 9-10"), the corresponding area of the Outline Editor will not display a scene content tooltip.
Panning the Outline Editor
If a mouse with a scroll wheel is being used, the Outline Editor can be panned (moved left to right or right to left) by placing the cursor anywhere in the Outline Editor and turning the scroll wheel on the mouse. The operating system’s settings for scroll wheel directionality will apply to scrolling the Outline Editor.
If a trackpad is being used, panning can also be done by clicking anywhere within the Outline Editor and swiping left or right.
Menu
Right-click on a Beat marker to display this context menu:
• New Beat -- places a new Beat marker in the Lane at that page number location and a new Beat in the Beat Board. The Beat will have that page number as its Goal;
• Show -- moves the Beat Board so that the associated Beat is displayed at the center of the screen. The Beat will also be selected (blue border). This command is identical to double-clicking a Beat marker;
• Remove -- removes the Beat marker from the Outline Editor and the associated Beat from the Beat Board;
• Assign a color to both the Beat marker in the Outline Editor and the associated Beat on the Beat Board;
• Change Target Script Length (see above).
• Hide Outline Editor -- removes the Outline Editor from the application display. To show the Outline Editor, go to View > Show Outline Editor.
Right-click on a Scene marker in the Script Lane to display this context menu:
• Show – if script pages are displayed, the script will be scrolled to the scene selected;
• Assign a color to the Scene marker in the Outline Editor; this color will apply to the scene when it is represented in the Scene Navigator, Index Card view and Scene View;
• Change Target Script Length (see above).
• Hide Outline Editor (see above).
Right-click anywhere in the Outline Editor to display the above menu but without the options to Show or Remove a Beat.
Zoom Outline Editor
The Zoom Outline Editor enlarges or reduces the size of the Outline Editor. Each tick between the numbers represents an eighth of a page.
The Outline Editor may also be scaled with the zoom slider on the right:
The Outline Editor may be resized vertically by dragging its bottom border up or down:
To learn more about using the Outline Editor watch the following video:
Also read the following article for more information about the Outline Editor: