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The editor

Your writing canvas — where you type your screenplay and it formats itself as you go.

The editor is the page where the script actually gets written. Open a project from your dashboard and this is what you land on: a clean, page-shaped canvas in the classic typewriter look, ready for your first line. You don't set up margins, you don't pick fonts, and you don't fuss with where a character name sits on the page. You type, and Nabu turns what you write into proper screenplay format underneath you.

If you're staring at a blank page, this is the moment Nabu is built for. Click into the page and start typing — the structure takes care of itself.

What you're looking at

The editor shows your script the way it will print: black text on a white page, in Courier Prime — the fixed-width typewriter font the film industry uses. That look isn't decoration. Screenplays are measured in pages, and a page of properly formatted screenplay runs roughly a minute of screen time, so the spacing and the font are part of how your script gets read and timed. Nabu lays your words out to those standards automatically.

Across the top of the page sits the editor toolbar — undo and redo, a row of buttons for the screenplay element types, a zoom control, and a page count that updates as you write. You rarely need the toolbar to write; it's there when you'd rather click than type a shortcut.

Down one side you'll find Nisaba, your AI writing partner, ready while you work — more on her below.

Just start typing

There's no setup step and no "new line" ceremony. Put your cursor on the page and write. As you type, Nabu watches the shape of each line and converts it to the right kind of screenplay element on its own:

  • Begin a line with INT. or EXT. and it becomes a scene heading — the slugline that opens a scene.
  • Type a name in ALL CAPS and it becomes a character cue — the name above a line of dialogue.
  • Press Enter after a character cue and the next line is set up for dialogue.
  • Start a line with ( and it becomes a parenthetical — the little stage direction in brackets under a cue.
  • Write a line like CUT TO: and it becomes a transition.

Everything else is action — the description of what we see and hear. That's the default, and it's where most lines start before Nabu recognizes them as something else.

Tip: You almost never need to choose an element type by hand. Typing the way a screenplay reads — INT. to open a scene, a name in caps before a line of dialogue — is usually all it takes for Nabu to format it for you.

If you'd rather pick an element deliberately, press Enter on an empty line a second time and a small element picker popup appears. Type the first letter of what you want — s for scene heading, c for character, d for dialogue, p for parenthetical, t for transition, or n for a note — and that line becomes that element. This double-Enter popup is how you reach for a type on purpose; there's no slash-command menu in the editor.

Note: The double-Enter popup is the deliberate way to insert an element. You can also use the toolbar buttons or the keyboard shortcuts covered in Keyboard shortcuts.

The building blocks of a script

A screenplay is built from a handful of repeating pieces — scene headings, action, character cues, dialogue, parentheticals, and transitions — plus a few extras like centered text and section dividers. Nabu knows all of them and formats each one correctly: indents for dialogue, caps for sluglines, the works.

You don't have to memorize the rules. But if you want to understand what each element is, when to use it, and how Nabu's auto-formatting decides what you're typing, that's all laid out in Screenplay formatting.

Two ways to view your script

You can work on your script as a whole or one scene at a time:

  • Full Script shows the entire screenplay in one continuous document, so you can read straight through and scroll across scenes.
  • Scene view shows a single scene by itself, which keeps you focused when you're deep in one moment.

Switch between the two from the editor's side panel. Both are the same script — you're only changing how much of it you see at once.

Nisaba is right there while you write

You're never alone on the page. Nisaba — Nabu's AI writing partner — sits alongside the editor, ready to help shape a scene, answer a question about your story, or draft a passage when you're stuck. She can also drop edit suggestions directly into your script: they appear as gently underlined text right where the change would go, and you decide whether to keep each one.

You stay in charge. Nisaba proposes; nothing changes in your script until you accept it. Click one of her underlined suggestions to read why she suggests it, then Accept, Discuss, or Dismiss it.

For the full picture, see Working with Nisaba, and Inline AI suggestions for how to read, accept, and dismiss her edits.

Costs credits: Asking Nisaba to draft or revise uses her AI help, which draws on your credits. The amount varies with what you ask for. Just typing your own words costs nothing.

Your work saves itself

There's no Save button — and you don't need one. Nabu saves automatically as you write, a moment after you stop typing. If you close the tab, navigate away, or lose your connection mid-sentence, your latest words are still kept. You can trust the page to hold onto your work.

Note: Because saving is automatic and continuous, there's nothing to remember and nothing to lose. Write freely. For the full picture, see Saving and autosave.

Good to know

  • The page reformats as you type. When Nabu recognizes a line as a new element, the indentation and caps shift to match. That's the formatting doing its job — let it.
  • Page 1 has no page number. That's a screenplay convention, not a glitch. Numbering starts on page 2.
  • Page breaks are real, not guesses. Nabu paginates your script the same way it will when you export to PDF, so the page count you see reflects the page count you'll get.
  • Your spot is remembered. When the editor refreshes — for instance, after you accept one of Nisaba's suggestions — it returns you to where you were reading, at the zoom you'd set.