Arc Studio has integrated a digital whiteboard, called the Plot Board, into its screenwriting software. The Plot Board allows you to craft your story structure and then have all your beats visible in the same window as your script when you write your scenes.

TV writers can also outline an entire season of episodes and automatically convert each episode into its own script file with all the beats included. (We’ll get into the details of the season features in another article.)

For this guide we’ll focus on breaking a single story—whether it be a TV episode, pilot or feature film—and turning it into a script.

• Get to know the Plot Board
• Get to know the Outline view
• How the Plot Board and Outline help you write your script
• How to use the Plot Board
• Starting a Plot Board
• Acts and beats
• Story Elements

Get to know the Plot Board

The first port of call in your writing journey is the Plot Board. This is Arc Studio’s native digital whiteboard where you can organize your ideas and build your story.

We’ll start with an overview of what you can accomplish with the Plot Board, and then get into how you can start setting one up for yourself. (Feel free to skip ahead to the nitty-gritty details.)

Above is what the Plot Board looks like while you’re breaking your story. The columns represent the acts of your script, and the boxes (or ‘index cards’ if you’re feeling nostalgic for your cork board) are the individual story beats. Each beat has a title, and if you expand the beat you can add a description of what happens in that beat.

You’ll notice the Plot Board is colorful. It’s pretty to look at, and it gives you a color-coded overview of your story. The vertical color bars on the left of the beats represent the storylines you’ve tagged that beat with, and the circles show which characters you’ve tagged the beat with. You can also tag each beat with their locations.

We call the storylines, characters, and locations in your script Story Elements. You can easily create them in your Story Elements sidebar and add details that you want to keep track of. You’ll have access to all that info when you’re writing your script, and the characters and locations you add will be in the autocompleter.

On the Plot Board you can use the filter tool (as shown in the GIF below) to highlight beats that contain specific story elements. For instance, you could highlight all the beats tagged with your A Story, all the beats tagged with your protagonist, all the beats tagged with their workplace, or any combination of the above. You can also highlight pivotal moments in your script that you’ve marked as key beats.

What about when you decide that none of this is working or you get a Studio note that blows the whole damned thing up? Don’t fret, you can easily add and delete beats, and drag and drop your beats around the Plot Board to rearrange the structure and find a new way forward.

You’re bound to have beats that you want to move around the Plot Board together. Instead of having to move them one by one, you can link them together into a sequence and move them as a group.

Just because you know a beat no longer works in its current location doesn’t mean you’ve figured out where to move it to. Or maybe you just thought of an entirely new beat but don’t know where it’s going to end up. This is where the Beat Inbox comes in handy. It’s a place to temporarily park your beats or create new ones that don’t yet have a home. You can drag beats into it and out of it, or make a new one directly inside.

Before we move on, let’s highlight a few more features. You can add and reply to comments on the beats, add images to the beats, and jump directly from a beat to the corresponding section of the script.

Get to know the Outline view

The Plot Board is great for building your story, but there comes a time in the writing process when you start dreaming about beats chasing you around a bizarro hybrid of the Plot Board and your elementary school and you need to see the story laid out in document form. Maybe you’ve finished building your story structure, or perhaps you just want to see what you’ve come up with so far. This is when you can use the Outline view.

The Outline view lays out all your beats so you can read them left-to-right, top-to-bottom just as your English-language brain likes it. You can revise your story here by editing your beats, adding beats if you think of something new, deleting beats, or rearranging them like in the Plot Board. Since everything is linked, your Plot Board will adjust accordingly.

How the Plot Board and Outline help you write your script

Enough preamble, it’s time to write your script and reap the words of all the groundwork you’ve laid breaking breaking the story. When you return to your Script view, you’ll find all your beats laid out on the page as prompts. There’s no need to switch back-and-forth between the Script and the Plot Board.

Click on the prompt, and the autocompleter will suggest the location(s) you tagged that beat with. Start writing your scene heading and you’re on your way!

But what about all that other information in your beats? The descriptions you wrote, the characters and storylines you tagged them with? It’s all right here in the Contents sidebar. You can see the beat title, the description, and the characters and storylines in that beat. You can also access the information about the characters and storylines you wrote when you created the Story Elements.

Everything you need to write your script is easily at hand!

How to use the Plot Board

Now that we’ve seen what you can do, let’s take a look at how you can do it. We’ll start with a closer look at the Plot Board, and then get into how you can start one yourself.

To recap, the columns are the acts, the boxes are the beats, and written in gray are the beat’s structure roles. (The function of that beat in your story.)

Starting a Plot Board

Navigate to your Plot Board by clicking the ‘Board’ at the top of your screen under the title or with the keyboard shortcut ‘Option + Cmd + B’ (PC: ‘Alt+Ctrl+B’)

When you open the Plot Board in an empty script, you can choose between:

1. Adding your first beat to an empty Plot Board yourself or
2. Prepopulating your board with a beat template, such as “5-act TV” or “Syd Field’s Paradigm.” You can also create a custom template for yourself to match your show’s act structure or story structure.

Acts and beats

But maybe you’re not the “template” type. You’re a rebel. You march to the beat of your own drum. You once thought about getting a motorcycle! (But where would you put the groceries?)

Let’s explore building our own structure. Clicking “Add first beat” well give you a Plot Board with one act (’New act’) containing one beat (’Untitled beat’).

1. Click on the name of the act to change it.
2. Hit ‘Tab’ to title the beat
3. Hit ‘Tab’ again to write the beat’s description. (You can also click directly on the beat title and the description box)
4. Collapse the beat by clicking the down arrow to the right of the beat’s title. (Click on the beat again to expand it.)

Adding and removing beats

1. Add a new beat to the bottom of the act by clicking the ‘+’ next to the act name.
2. Add a new beat directly below the current beat by clicking ‘+ Add beat’, or with the keyboard shortcut ‘Shift + Return/Enter’.
3. Remove a beat by right-clicking on it and selecting ‘Remove script section’ (which removes the beat and the corresponding script section) or ‘Remove beat, keep script section.’’

Adding acts and removing act breaks

1. Add a new act by clicking ‘+ Add act’ in the palette bar at the borrom
2. When you have multiple acts, you can remove the act break by right-clicking on the first beat in the act and selecting ‘Remove act break,’ or by clicking on the ‘…’ next to the act name. All the beats in that act will move to the bottom of the preceding act.

Beat features

Now that you have some beats on the board, let’s explore some advanced beat features. Along the bottom of the beat you’ll find a row of icons:

1. Jump to the section of your script that’s linked to this beat
2. Add comments to the beat
3. Add images to the beat
4. Mark this as a key beat
5. Tag the beat with Story Elements

Right-clicking on the beat or clicking the more options ‘…’ icon lets you:

1. Move the beat to the Beat Inbox
2. Remove the beat
3. Add a structure role to the beat (like the pre-populated structure roles in the templates)
4. Remove the act break, if it’s the first beat in the act
5. Make this beat the beginning of a sequence

Story Elements