How to outline a screenplay with index cards

Why index cards?

A screenplay is a sequence of scenes, and most structural problems are ordering problems: the reveal lands too early, the second act sags, a subplot vanishes for forty pages. A written outline hides those problems inside paragraphs. Cards put every scene in front of you at once, and let you test a new order in seconds instead of rewriting pages.

Cards also keep you honest about size. A card only holds a sentence or two, so each scene has to earn its place with a clear purpose — if you can’t say what a scene does in the space of a card, the scene probably doesn’t know either.

How many index cards does a screenplay need?

A feature film usually runs somewhere between 40 and 60 scenes, so that’s a good target for a first pass. Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! popularised a board of about 40 cards in four rows of ten — which is a useful shape to aim for, not a rule. A one-hour TV episode is closer to 25–35 cards; a short film might be ten.

If you have far more than 60, some cards are probably beats inside a scene rather than scenes. If you have far fewer than 40, the story may be missing a sequence — often the middle of the second act.

The method, step by step

1. Write one scene per card. Start each card with where you are (a short slugline like INT. DINER – NIGHT is enough) and one line on what changes in the scene. Don’t worry about order yet — get every scene you know about onto a card.
2. Lay the cards out in rows, one per act. The classic board is four rows: Act One, the first half of Act Two up to the midpoint, the second half of Act Two, and Act Three. Put each card in the row where you think it belongs.
3. Mark the big turns. Find the cards for the inciting incident, the break into Act Two, the midpoint, the low point and the climax. If one of them is missing, that’s the next card to write.
4. Colour-code your plotlines. Give the A-story, the B-story and each subplot its own colour. Step back and look: a colour that disappears for a whole row is a thread the audience will forget.
5. Rearrange until it clicks. Move cards, cut cards, merge two weak scenes into one strong one. This is the part that’s cheap on cards and expensive in pages — do as much of it here as you can.
6. Write the script from the board. When the order holds, each card is a scene to write. The board becomes your map through the first draft.

Doing it in Scrībō

Paper cards work, but they live on one wall, they can’t be backed up, and there’s no undo when the cat walks across the board. Scrībō is a free online index card app built for exactly this method:

• One card per scene — press n for a new card and start typing; everything saves as you go.
• Acts as bands — group cards into named bands (Act One, Act Two…) that you can collapse, reorder and colour, the rows of the classic board.
• Drag and drop — move any card to any place, across acts, and undo if you change your mind.
• Five card colours — one per plotline, so a missing thread shows at a glance.
• Card numbers — optionally number the cards 1 to n down the board, so you can see where scene 30 falls.
• Export to Fountain — send the finished outline to a screenwriting app like Highland, Slugline or Fade In, with your acts as sections and each card as a synopsis. See Fountain and index cards.
• Share a read-only link — send your board to a writing partner or producer without giving them edit access.

You don’t need an account to start — cards are kept in your browser until you create a free account, which backs them up and syncs them across your devices.