What is Fountain? Writing a screenplay in plain text

The format that lets you write a screenplay as plain text you could open in Notepad. The full syntax, its limits, and when not to use it.

Fountain is a markup language that lets you write a screenplay as plain text. The file carries a .fountain extension, but inside it is text you could open in Notepad. Even so, a program that reads it can tell a scene heading from a character cue from dialogue, and render a properly formatted script page.

Why does it exist?

Screenplay files are usually locked to one program. Will you be able to open a Final Draft .fdx in ten years? Will the app still be sold, will your licence still work? Fountain removes the question: because the file is plain text, it opens on any device, in any year, in any program. You can version it with Git, email it, read it on a phone.

The syntax takes ten minutes

The beauty of Fountain is how few rules it has. You write almost everything the way you already would.

• Scene heading — a line starting with INT. or EXT. is recognised automatically. To force one that isn't, prefix it with a period: .DREAM
• Character — an all-caps line standing on its own. Force it with @: @McCLANE
• Dialogue — the line directly under the character cue.
• Parenthetical — in parentheses, on its own line.
• Action — everything else.
• Transition — an uppercase line ending in TO:. Force with >.
• Emphasis — *italics*, **bold**, _underline_.
• Title page — Title:, Author: and friends at the top of the file.

What it does not do

Fountain holds the text, not the look. Margins, typeface, page numbers and revision colours are not in the file — whatever app you open it in draws those to its own standard. That is a design decision, not an oversight: leaving formatting out is what keeps the file portable. Once you are in production and need revision pages and locked scene numbers, that is the moment to move to .fdx.

How to open one

You can open a .fountain file in any text editor and simply read it. To see it as a screenplay page you need an app that understands the format. In Movrito, choose Fountain when creating a new document and upload the file; scenes, characters and dialogue are parsed into place.

Related posts