Fade in:
Your story deserves a desk, not just a document.
CanonDraft is screenwriting software made by a screenwriter, for every screenwriter. Write in true industry format, then turn around to a desk where your cast are Polaroids, your locations are postcards, your scenes are index cards, and red string ties it all together.
No account needed to start. Just open it and write.
A single bulb. A stack of unopened letters.
the letters
A single bulb. A stack of unopened letters.
she finally goes
What does she want?
What does she need?
How did keepers keep the lamp turning all night?
3 sources ↓
Why it's different
Final Draft perfected the page. We built the room around it.
Final Draft, Fade In, Celtx: wonderful typewriters, all of them. But a screenplay is born on index cards, cork boards, photos taped to the wall and notes scribbled at 3 a.m. That part never had a home. Now it does.
| Department | The usual software | CanonDraft |
|---|---|---|
| The page | Industry-standard formatting. They do this beautifully. | The same standard page: Tab and Enter know what comes next. And a whole desk beside it. |
| Your characters | A list of names. The real notes live in another app. | A bible your script builds for you: want, need, flaw, arc and voice for everyone who speaks. |
| Seeing the film | A folder of screenshots and a Pinterest board. | Polaroids of your cast and postcards of your places, developed in one consistent look. |
| Structure | Plain text cards in a grid. | Index cards that are your actual scenes, pinned to cork boards and tied with red string. |
| Research | Twenty browser tabs, lost by Friday. | Clippings with their sources cited, kept with the project and pinned where you need them. |
| Notes | Wait weeks for a reader, or pay for coverage. | A writers' room that has read every page, and a tension map of every scene. Any hour. |
The page, exactly as the industry expects it.
Scene headings, action, character cues, parentheticals, dialogue, transitions. Tab and Enter already know what comes next, so you never reach for a menu. Focus mode clears everything else away.
Already writing somewhere else? Bring your script in from Fountain or plain text and keep going.
FADE IN:
INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT
A single bulb. MAYA (34) sits with a stack of unopened letters. She turns one over. The handwriting is her own.
Maya
(quietly)
I never sent a single one.
The kettle begins to scream.
Cut to:
keep this!Your script writes its own bible.
Everyone who speaks becomes a cast member. Every scene heading becomes a place. Each gets a sheet with the questions that matter: what they want, what they need, the flaw in the way, the arc, the voice.
Rename a character once and every cue in the script follows. No find-and-replace roulette.
Cast · Protagonist
Maya
- Want
- To finally send the letters.
- Need
- To forgive the one who never wrote back.
- Flaw
- Waits for permission.
- Arc
- From waiting to leaving.
- Voice
- Short sentences. Never says sorry.
Maya → Mira? Change it once. Every cue follows.
Not a grid of text boxes. A real desk.
Step back from the page and your story is laid out the way writers have always laid it out: on paper. Pin scenes to cork boards, one per act. Tie a character to the scenes they haunt with red string. Stick a note on the thing you're not sure about.
Everything is the same story underneath. Double-click a scene card and you're back on the page.
Key to the desk
Polaroid
your cast
Postcard
your places
INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT
A single bulb…
Index card
your scenes
Clipping
your research
she lies here
Sticky note
your 3 a.m. thoughts
Cork & string
your structure
See the film before you shoot a frame.
Describe a shot, @mention your cast, and watch the Polaroid develop on the desk. Your characters keep their faces from photo to photo, so the woman in scene one is the woman in scene forty. Pick one look for the whole project and every print matches.
Cinematic 35mm Neo-noir Pencil storyboard
INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT · one moment, three looks
And more looks
Golden hour drama · Painterly concept art · 3D animated feature · Anime feature · Handheld documentary
One click away
Portrait · Turnaround sheet · Expression sheet · Full-body costume · Establishing shot · Night variant · Mood board
Photos cost real money to develop, so they come with Pro.
Research that remembers where it came from.
Ask about a period, a profession, a place, how people talk. The answer comes back as a clipping with its sources cited, kept with the project and pinned where you need it.
Research
What does a working lighthouse lamp room look and sound like?
The answer is written for a writer: what you'd see, hear and smell in the room, the routine of the people who work there, the details a reader would never think to ask about but would miss if they were gone.
Every claim carries its source, so you can go deeper, and the whole clipping stays with the project. Drag it onto the board beside the scene it serves.
- [1]
- [2]
- [3]
sources cited, every time
A writers' room that has read every page.
Talk it through with a room that knows your cast, your places and every scene. Ask whether the midpoint lands, who disappears in act two, why the ending feels thin.
Then see your script as a line: tension, scene by scene, so you can feel where it sags before a reader does.
Tension, scene by scene
the dropme: does the drop in the last scene earn itself?
the room: it does if scene 9 plants the letters. Right now it doesn't.
Your words stay yours.
CanonDraft never writes on your pages by itself. Select a line, press ⌘K, and ask for what you want. The suggestion waits beside your words until you accept or reject it.
The craft is yours. CanonDraft keeps the room tidy and the coffee on.
I never sent a single one.
From one screenwriter to another
Dear fellow screenwriter,
I write screenplays. And for as long as I have, the real work never happened inside the software. It happened around it: index cards on the floor, a cork board out of pins, faces cut from magazines because they looked like my characters, postcards of places I wanted the story to go.
The software was very good at one thing, putting words on a page in the right format. Everything else lived somewhere else, and the story lived in the gaps between.
So I built the desk I always wanted. A page that formats itself, and right beside it, a room where your cast, your places, your scenes and your research sit together and talk to each other.
It's made by hand, slowly, with a great deal of love. Writing, the bible, the desk, research and the writers' room are free. Consider it a gift, from one screenwriter to every other.
Now go write the one you've been carrying around.
Pricing
The desk is free. The darkroom costs a little.
Photos are made by Google's image models and cost real money to develop. Everything else is yours.
The desk
$0to write
- One script, in true screenplay format
- A bible of your cast and places
- The desk: cards, boards and red string
- Research with cited sources
- The writers' room and tension map
- No account needed to start
The darkroom
$15/ month, or $100 / year
- Everything on the desk
- Unlimited scripts
- Develop Polaroids of your cast and postcards of your places
- Turnarounds, expression sheets, mood boards
- Eight film looks, one consistent world
Quiet on set. Your story's up.
Open the desk and write the first scene. It takes less time than reading this page did.