Every screenwriter has their own preferences, not only for what they write, but what processes and tools they use to write it. As a professional screenwriter in the Writers’ Guild who’s written and developed for TV, here are my favorite tools in Arc Studio that I use to write my scripts.

The Stash

My favorite feature in Arc Studio is one of the simplest, but most genius. Once you start using it you wonder why other screenwriting apps didn’t think of it. It’s the Stash!

You know when you’re writing and you’ve come up with a great line or a scene that you love, but then something changes and now that great writing doesn’t really fit anymore? You can’t keep it where it is because it’s distracting, but you also don’t want to delete it because you might want to use it later. What can you do? In Arc Studio, you can just Stash it.

Highlight the text, click Stash on the palette bar, and it will be securely stored in the Stash sidebar on the right. You can give it a title and even edit the text in the Stash. Then when you’re ready for it, you can drag the text out of the Stash and drop it in your script anywhere you want!

Automatic Saving and Syncing

When I used to write in Final Draft I would “Save as” obsessively to make sure I didn’t lose any writing. With Arc Studio you don’t have to do that because your script is automatically saving to the cloud as you write. You can also create a secondary online backup with Google Drive and even do a local back up on your computer. It’s total peace of mind.

And since my script is stored on the cloud, I can access it from my laptop, my iPhone, or another computer.

The Notes

I do a TON of brainstorming and freewriting when I’m working on a script. It’s my main way of figuring out my story, getting to know my characters, and solving problems that pop up along the way. In the past I used a separate notes app for this, but now I can just do all of it in Arc Studio! Arc has a built-in notes, which means my notes stay with my script and I can reference them side by side. I can sort the note in categories and even create links between them. It’s kind of like building a personal Wikipedia for my script.

The Outlining

Everyone has their own outlining style. Some people figure out every single beat of the story in detail, and other writers just like to come up with the general shape and figure out the rest as you go. Arc Studio supports either style. Personally, I’m somewhere in between. The outline is really important in the beginning as I’m figuring out the story. Once I know the story I don’t worry as much about the outline.

In Arc Studio I outline using the Beats on the Plot Board. The Plot Board is kind of like a digital cork board, and the beats are digital index cards. You can arrange them in columns and drag and drop them around to rearrange things. It’s really helpful to see the story visually like this. Each Beat has its own note as well, which makes it easy to do freewriting on specific parts of my script.

The Stars

This one is going to be a little in the weeds if you’re an amateur or aspiring screenwriter, but once you’re working professionally you have to write a lot of drafts for producers and execs. It’s important to keep track of what’s changing between those drafts. That’s where stars come in.

Stars, or “change marks,” are asterisks in the right margin that indicate something in that line has been added, deleted, or otherwise changed.

The problem with other screenwriting apps is you have to remember to turn the change tracking on before you make the changes. If you forget, it’s a hassle to add them after the fact. But Arc Studio tracks every change you make, so you can turn on the changes after you’ve made them. You can also choose which of your earlier drafts you want to track changes from.

The Drafts

Unfortunately, revising something doesn’t always make it better. Sometimes you try something different just to see if it works. If it doesn’t work, you have to try something else or go back to how it was in an earlier draft. In other screenwriting apps that means you have to search through your computer for the right file, open them all up and try and find the passage you want back.

It’s way easier in Arc Studio. All your drafts are listed next to the script and accessible with a click. You can see what’s changed between the drafts and even bring back something you cut with, again, just a click. You can also reset your current draft to an older version and work from there.

Conclusion

There are too many features in Arc Studio to list, but the ones I’ve mentioned above are my favorites. Hopefully, this post helps you get the most out of the software when you’re writing your scripts.

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