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Using Fountain Files

Fountain is a plain-text screenplay format: easy to read, easy to edit anywhere, friendly to version control. EpicDraft's native .sp format is built on it.

Importing — EpicDraft opens .fountain (and plain .txt) files directly.

Exporting — saving writes .sp: Fountain-compatible text plus EpicDraft's own sections, so a .sp already opens in any Fountain editor.

File ▸ Save Script As… ▸ Fountain writes a plain .fountain instead: the title page and the script, nothing else. It leaves out the story atlas, the [[@atlas]] digest, chat, [[@data …]] bookkeeping and page-split markers, expands script includes in place, and keeps only the marks Fountain defines (bold, italic, underline) — highlights, colours and links become plain text. Inline notes and the boneyard stay. Use it to hand a draft to another app; keep the .sp as your working copy, because the plain file does not carry the project.

Blank lines and elements

In the file, one blank line separates elements — and the editor works the same way:

  • Pressing Return splits an element, leaving one blank line with the caret on the tail.
  • Pressing Return again opens an empty, spaced writing line.
  • Character, dialogue, and parenthetical are never auto-spaced apart — a speech stays stacked.
  • Backspace and Delete across a blank line sew same-kind elements back together.

Dual dialogue

A trailing ^ on a character cue marks the right-hand speaker of a dual dialogue. BOB ^ is still the same character as BOB — the caret is a layout marker, not part of the name. See Dual Dialogues.

Lyrics

A leading ~ marks a lyric line.

Notes

[[ … ]] notes ride inside the text and never print. See Notes.

EpicDraft also writes machine-readable notes in the same syntax: [[@data …]] notes carry column tags, script includes, and game logic, and an [[@atlas]] digest of your Library pages is written on save — that's how a lone .sp file carries the whole project.

Boneyard

Fountain's boneyard — text wrapped in /* … */ — is preserved when you import it and never prints.

Script includes

An include is an ordinary epicdraft:// link paired with a [[@data {"include":…}]] note. The editor shows the included script inline, read-only; print, statistics, and exports count the expanded content, while the .sp file keeps just the reference. See Game Authoring for details.