Feature release: Reimagining the Visual Arc

The Visual Arc started as a corkboard. You could drag cards anywhere, and where you put them meant nothing. The board held no information about the shape of your story that you hadn't already put there yourself.

It is now two views, and in both of them position carries meaning.

The Arc

Scenes sit in document order from left to right. The vertical axis is dramatic tension, and you set it by dragging a scene up or down. The curve through those points is the arc.

Underneath the curve are two lanes that you never have to fill in, because they are read straight from the script:

• Length, how long each scene runs, in eighths of a page. Pacing becomes something you can see rather than something you have to remember.
• Cast, one row per speaking character, with a mark in every scene they appear in. This is the one that tends to surprise people: it makes it obvious when a character drops out of the script for thirty pages.

The Board

The board is a timeline now. Scene cards sit in document order beneath a numbered axis, and below them are lanes for anything you want to hang off a point in the story.

Mood cards take images. Drag image files onto the board and each one lands as a card where you dropped it. Click a card to see the image full size. Notes work the same way, for the things that aren't pictures: a reference, a reminder, a line you cut but aren't ready to lose.

Mood and note cards deliberately reference nothing in the script. They don't attach to a scene or a character, which is exactly what lets them survive editing: rename a scene, delete it, add ten more, and your board is still where you left it.

Open it from Visual Arc in the left sidebar. It opens on the Arc, and the Board is one click away.