Private Drafts: Try a Version of Your Script Only You Can See

A private draft is a copy of your screenplay that only you can see. Use one to try a darker ending, a shorter second act or a different first scene without anyone watching it happen, then keep the parts that work. The script everyone shares is called main, and nothing in a draft reaches it until you bring it over.

What Is a Private Draft

A draft starts as a full copy of main. From then on the two are separate: you write in the draft, your co-writers keep writing in main, and neither changes the other. A script can have as many drafts as you like, and drafts are free on every plan.

Drafts are private. Your co-writers, the script's owner included, cannot open your drafts, cannot see a list of them and are not told they exist. A draft cannot be shared with a link or by inviting someone.

Starting a Draft

Open the 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 the draft a name, and choose where it starts:

• Main, as it is now, with everyone's latest edits.
• An earlier version from Version history, to pick up a version you moved away from.

Drafts need an account, and the script has to be one you can edit. A commenter or viewer cannot start one.

Writing in a Draft

A strip across the top of the editor says you are in a private draft, with buttons to compare it with main or go back to main. Everything you type is saved and synced like any script, on every device you sign in to, and the draft keeps its own Version history.

Some things stay with main. Comments, the Shot List and the Beat Board are not in a draft. Character bios and the title page are main's: you can read them in a draft, and you edit them on main. A draft writes under the same page allowance as main.

Comparing with Main

Click Compare with main to see what your draft changed, scene by scene. Each scene is marked as changed, new or cut, and shown with what you added underlined and what you cut struck through. Switch between Inline and Side by side at the top.

The compare reads both versions against the point your draft started from, so edits your co-writers made to main since then are never shown as something you cut. Scenes only main changed are listed separately. A scene that both you and main changed is marked Main changed too.

Bringing Scenes Back

Click Bring into main on a scene, or bring every ready scene at once from the top of the compare. The scene goes into main as an edit, the same way your typing would: co-writers who have the script open see it arrive, and whatever they are typing elsewhere is kept.

For a scene main also changed, click Review both to see the two versions side by side. Choose Use mine to replace main's version with yours, or Keep both to put yours right after main's and merge them by hand.

Renaming and Deleting

Open the drafts menu and click the ⋯ next to a draft to rename it, compare it or delete it. Deleting a draft asks first and says how many of its changed scenes are not in main yet. Scenes you already brought over stay in main.

Drafts go when the script does: deleting a script deletes every draft of it, and someone removed from a script loses their drafts of it.