Feature release: Private drafts

Rewriting a script you share used to mean doing it in front of everyone. Your co-writers watched the second act come apart before it came back together, or you copied the script somewhere else and pasted the good parts back by hand. Now you can try the rewrite in a private draft and bring over only what works.

A copy only you can see

A private draft starts as a full copy of the script. From then on you write in the draft, everyone else keeps writing in the shared script, called main, and neither changes the other. Nobody else can open your drafts or see that they exist, the script's owner included. Start as many as you like: a darker ending, a shorter second act, a different first scene.

A draft saves as you type, follows you to every device you sign in on and keeps its own version history. Drafts are free on every plan, on any script you can edit.

Starting one

Open a script and look under its name at the top of the left sidebar. The row that says Main opens the drafts menu. Click New draft from main, give it a name, and start it from main as it is now or from an earlier version in Version history, if there is an idea you moved away from and want to pick up again.

Compare scene by scene

A strip across the top of the editor reminds you that you are in a draft. Click Compare with main there to see what your draft changed. Each scene is marked as changed, new or cut, with what you added underlined and what you cut struck through, inline or side by side.

Both versions are read against the point your draft started from. If a co-writer rewrote a scene in main while you were away, the compare shows it as their edit, never as something your draft cut.

Bring back what works

Click Bring into main on a scene, or bring every ready scene at once. It goes into main as an edit, the same way your typing would: anyone who has the script open sees it arrive, and whatever they are writing somewhere else is left alone.

If main changed the same scene, Review both puts the two versions side by side. Choose Use mine to replace main's, or Keep both to put yours right after it and merge them by hand. Everything else, from renaming a draft to what happens when you delete one, is in Private Drafts.