From blank page to opening night. Learn every theatre element — Acts, Scenes, Stage Directions, Dialogue — the professional way to write a stage play in ScriptAce.
A stage play script structures dialogue, movement, and action for live performance. Every element — Acts, Scenes, Stage Directions — has a precise format actors and directors read at a glance. ScriptAce handles all of it automatically.
Click each element to highlight it in the editor preview. ScriptAce auto-detects and formats each one as you type.
Top-level structural division. Centered, underlined, ALL CAPS. Signals a major shift in time, location, or narrative arc. Most plays have two or three acts.
Describes the location, time of day, and setting within an act. Left-aligned, uppercase. Tells the director exactly where the audience is.
Describes physical action, movement, lighting, set details. Centered in parentheses and italics. Use sparingly — theatre breathes in what's unsaid.
The character's name above their dialogue. Center-right column, ALL CAPS. ScriptAce auto-tracks every character in the Navigator and auto-completes names.
A brief acting direction inside dialogue — used sparingly. Italicized in parentheses, centered below the character cue. Only when delivery cannot be inferred from context.
What the character says. Center column, narrower than action. ScriptAce's Dialogue Coach watches for monologues, clichés, and character voice overlap.
Directs how one scene transitions to the next — FADE OUT, BLACKOUT, CURTAIN. Right-aligned, uppercase. ScriptAce autocompletes all standard theatre transitions.
Private production notes for the director, stage manager, or lighting designer. Shown in the editor but styled distinctly so they're never confused with script content.
The intelligence engine detects what you're writing and applies the correct theatre format automatically — Acts, Scenes, Directions, Dialogue, all in one flow.
Access from the ⋮ menu → Writer Tools. Each tool opens a dedicated panel for deep script analysis.
Automatically extracts every character from the script, tracks their scene appearances, and generates a production cast breakdown. Perfect for budgeting and scheduling.
Builds a voice profile per character — vocabulary richness, average line length, unique word count. Flags clichés, overly long monologues, and characters that sound too similar.
Tracks the word density and dialogue-to-direction ratio per act. Reveals whether your second act drags, or your first act rushes. Visualized as a color-coded heat map.
Calculates approximate running time per scene and total play duration based on dialogue word count and stage direction density. The industry average is ~1 minute per page.
Tracks character entrances and exits, prop introductions, and location consistency. Catches errors like a character speaking from offstage without an exit cue.
WGA-equivalent draft color system for theatrical rewrites. Enable revision mode and every edited line gets a colored asterisk marker in the margin.
Real-time collaboration for dramatists, directors, and dramaturgs — with presence indicators, threaded comments, and role-based access.
See collaborators' cursor positions as colored avatars in real time.
Click any line to add a directorial note or dramaturgical comment. Resolve threads inline.
Suggest dialogue rewrites without changing the original. Accept or reject each suggestion.
Share as Owner, Director, Editor, or Reader. Toggle public access for anyone with the link.
Every collaborator's edits are color-coded. Click a contributor to highlight only their changes.
Tag scenes as Key, Emotional, Comic, or Action. Tags export to the Scene Breakdown table.
Click the Export button in the header to open the format selector.
Industry-standard margins and fonts, title page included. Ready for production packs, submission calls, and festival applications.
Clean text export with element labels — paste into production management apps, send to cast, or import into your theatre company's workflow.
What the best ScriptAce theatre writers do differently.
Add all your Act and Scene containers before writing a single line of dialogue. Structural thinking before prose prevents you from over-writing yourself into a corner.
The best stage plays trust the director. One direction per scene is often enough. If you're adding more than two stage directions per page, your dialogue isn't doing its job.
Type the first two letters of any character name on a Character line. ScriptAce suggests all matching names — prevents MAYA and MAIA being counted as two characters.
Open the Stats panel and check estimated running time after each Act. Most festivals cap at 90 minutes. The time estimate helps you cut ruthlessly before you're in the rehearsal room.
If your dialogue needs a parenthetical to convey the right tone, rewrite the dialogue instead. Parentheticals insult actors — they tell an actor how to act, rather than giving them material to interpret.
Add Production Note blocks after transitions for lighting, sound, and prop notes. They appear in all exports so your stage manager and lighting director work from the same document.
Start free. Every element, every tool, every draft — exactly right.
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