Follow these short video tutorials on how to get started populating your board, how to add additional details and use the search functions, as well as taking your idea from conception to production.

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I’ve been slowly integrating requests from users and these are some doozies.

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First up, you can now flirt with the dark side, you’ll find it under the Layout menu.

Another popular request has been the ability to read plot card ‘descriptions’ in default mode. So you can now select ‘Compact Headers’ in the Layout menu, giving you the ability to squeeze more info into a smaller space.

You can also make the Character Cards timeline invisible while you’re not using it. Any Character Cards on other timelines will remain visible for you to reference and be there when you turn the Character Card timeline back on.

And finally our first PRO feature, CSV Exports!

CSV’s load in spreadsheet software and contain every detail and data point laid out in boring rows and columns.

And when I say pro, I mean pro. It’s the ONLY feature you pay for.

I expect CSV’s are best utilised by writers working in professional environments, as turning plot boards into spreadsheets is a standard role for writer’s assistants in writers rooms (and should save them A LOT of time).

I steadfastly believe the online version of this software should be FREE for all creators (I want to see you making cool things), but as the user base grows it’s clear it’s going to start costing me money for servers etc.

Therefore if you’re using Plot Sauce in a professional space, I think you can afford the £20 for a one year subscription to this Substack and help me keep those servers whirring for everyone.

I’ll send you the password to unlock CSV downloads and you can feel good knowing your helping all the students, hobbyists and writers out there developing their craft to maybe work alongside you one day.

And there are actually TWO export options for spreadsheets, a master sheet that suits writers and directors, and a character sheet for actors, directors and the art department.

It’s the little things that bring us closer to going from script to screen.. and sometimes it’s a boring old CSV.

You can always pitch your feature ideas in the comments for me to look in to integrating, but for the new ones above, you can thank Rebecca, Jeff and Casey.

Feel free to share Plot Sauce far and wide and have fun breaking those stories!

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Now with video tutorials!

While Plot Sauce was created with television screenwriters in mind, a lot of feature writers, novelists and video game narrative designers happen to like it too.. but with bigger projects, comes a desire for more real estate.

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So from today, the largest card size will become Jumbo.

The other thing that can now go jumbo is hooking Plot Sauce up to an external screen.

Set the zoom in your browser to 50%, plug in to your giant 4K monitor and now the whole writers room can see and work on the plot board together.

It’s important to remember that when it comes to Plot Boards, there is no one single way to do them and many writers and directors have developed their own technique to suit their creative process and visualise their story.

That’s why it’s important to be flexible..

The Layout menu also includes preferences for the number of Acts and how to name them, and to turn on ‘sequence filter buttons’ for the ‘8 Sequence’ writing structure.

By allocating cards to a ‘sequence’, you can highlight those cards and fade out everything else on the timelines with a single button.

Using the ‘sequence buttons’ in conjunction with the ‘status buttons’ means you can zero-in directly on areas of your story which need work.

The 8 sequence structure is a good tool if you’re struggling with that tricky second Act, as it essentially divides it in to two.

In the 8 Sequence model: you would name your ‘4’ Acts: 1, 2A, 2B and 3.

It divides your story up into 8 manageable pieces which fit within the story structure - you can read about the technique here:

» https://www.emwelsh.com/blog/eight-sequence

Or adapt it for sitcom writing too - perhaps you’re a fan of » Harmon’s Story Circle..

If you’re still unsure about 8 Sequence structure, here’s a handy video..

When you turn on the ‘sequence filter buttons’ in Layout, they appear on the left of your timeline.

But for some writers, there’s another use for sequence filters: Comparison.

Not all plots coalesce equally and if you’re working as part of a team, you may develop more than one option..

In this case, allocate your A, B and C plots to ‘sequence 1’ and your alternative A, B and C plots to ‘sequence 2’. Throw your board up on the big screen and toggle between the two as the tribes of your writers room fight it out.

And one last trick to mention; you can now open plot cards directly from the ‘Characters’ and ‘Locations’ menus under Elements.

Like all writers and directors, how you visualise your story is up to you, but when speed and flexibility are key, Plot Sauce is there to help you do it.

Enjoy the upgrades, remember to save your work, share Plot Sauce with your writing buddies and your projects in the comments.

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Now with more updates!

Good plots are driven by characters and the decisions they make.

I wanted to make sure we not forget that.. myself included!

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I go on about ‘plotting before writing’, but while we all flesh out characters in our own way, some writers like to do it on the board.

Character Cards can be found under your plot timelines and can be placed anywhere on your boards depending on how you like to work.

You can add a card on the timeline or by adding a character in the Character Editor.

Have I told you to SAVE today? Seriously, ‘save your work’, I can’t rescue something you refresh or delete. Your data is your business.

The key thing is you populate the Character Cards.

Take the time to fill in details about your characters, because it will effect the choices they make and improve your story.

There should be a reason why anyone does anything.

You can also keep a record of your character’s arc by beating it out around their scenes. Think of it as their story within the whole story.

It’s another way to catch unresolved plot points or use it to focus on a characters emotions while the plot cards focus on the action.

Character Cards are another way to think about plotting.

• What are your characters doing internally/externally?

• Why would they make that choice?

• What are their goals?

• What is their conflict?

THEN..

• What is the goal of the scene?

• What has changed?

A character’s decisions should drive every ‘BUT’ and ‘THEREFORE’.. and you should never settle for.. ‘AND’.

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Now with more updates!

Or try the new website » www.plotsauce.com

I made this app to help you plot what you intend to write - in that order.

As writers we always want to jump right in and play with our characters, but in doing so create a mess of our own creation.

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I went looking for plotting software that mimicked the tried and true method of physical plot boards..

..and when I didn’t find any, I built my own..

Plotting is my weakest suit and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to rectify that.

My poor housemates had to put up with giant cork boards and endless coloured cards strewn all over the living room.

I like physical mediums, but I needed something that didn’t piss everybody off.

Plotting isn’t always the most fun aspect of writing, but getting it right up-front saves you so much time and heartache later.

It shouldn’t feel imposing either, so I made software that starts small and simple, but allows you to add more information when you’re ready.

A lot of television has three plot threads running over three acts, so that’s the default a project opens on. However you have the option to add more plots and acts as you see fit, or delete them if you want to simplify.

You can move cards around, expand or collapse them, and double click to edit their details.

How you read your timelines is up to you:

• Maybe you’re a ‘left to right’ person and want all your cards on the same timeline - you can do that.

• Or maybe you visualise different plot points in concurrent scenes, so prefer to stack them - you can do that too.

All plot cards and spacers can be made ‘full’, ‘half’ and ‘quarter’ sized depending on how you want your timeline to look.

You can also ‘collapse’ an Act by clicking on ‘Act’, ‘expand’ all the cards to read them all quickly, ‘collapse’ all the timelines to get a visual guide of your story, or view that guide as a single full ‘timeline’.

Clicking any button again returns you to a standard view.

Plot cards have a coloured dot in the top right corner - grey for draft, orange for a key moment, red for rewrite and green for final.

In the search menu you can quickly see which state your cards are in by clicking on the corresponding button - your other cards will fade out giving you a clear view of what you’re looking for and need to work on.

In the bottom left is another dot - blue indicates it’s been assigned as a ‘set up’ or ‘pay off’ to another card, green means you’ve matched them up.

You do this at the very bottom of the card editor (just double click on any card) and helps you connect story threads or see when you have something unresolved.

Remember to SAVE your work!

This will put a tiny .json file on your device you can then reload later or share with anyone.

And that’s it.. let’s go home!

Oh no, WAIT, I built in a bunch of other features.

When you open the ‘advanced details’ in your plot card, you can add a lot of the usual details you’d find in a script, such as creating a scene header.

This will become really handy in just a minute..

Sure you can output a ‘beat sheet’ or ‘rundown’, but you can also output a ‘fountain’ file, which you can load into ANY script writing software and it’ll put the structure of your story right on the page with scene headers and all!

THEN you can start writing!

And finally..

When you’re ready to shoot your script, you can go into ‘Stripboard’ mode.

Stripboarding was all the rage in 60’s Hollywood and can be at your house too.

Stripboarding puts all your script elements in one easy to manage place so you can actually go out and SHOOT IT!

Save time and money knowing which scenes you can shoot on the same day at the same location or with the same actors. You can tell which day it is so you know what clothes your actors have on, or which scenes all need to be shot at night.

And that, in a nutshell, is ‘Plot Sauce’.

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If you like it or get some use of it, please consider subscribing for a single month, it helps me a lot, and of course tell other people about it - cause why not?

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Have fun, make stuff and when you do, come back and tell us all about it in the comments.

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You no longer need to download the app - the ‘Plot Sauce’ virtual plot board is now a fully functioning website!

That means you can use it on any make or model of laptop or tablet to create your own big beautiful plot boards.

Just click here —»

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There have also been some minor tweaks under the hood, but one major one..

Introducing Quick Cards.

Quickly populate the board with plot cards to get your story started.

You can add the cards here - before you add the details there.

You can switch a plot card’s Act, Plot or Status, then click the ‘Move’ box if you also want your plot card to move timelines.

No more fighting with drawing pins or sticky notes that won’t stick.

The ‘green dot’ is the same as the one of the bottom left of the plot cards and indicates whether that plot card is linked to another.

A ‘blue dot’ means you saved your plot card as a ‘set up’ or ‘pay off’, but it hasn’t been linked to a corresponding card yet.

(It seriously took me days of coding to get that dot to turn blue - make it worth it!)

Do remember to SAVE your work.

Even though ‘Plot Sauce’ is web based now, there’s no auto-save as I don’t hold any of your data and can’t see anything you do.

The '.json’ file it saves to your device is tiny and easy to share with colleagues, just get them to save it under another name if they make changes.

Example: NewProjectFinalFinalLatest9CompleteFinal1.json

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But wait there’s more..

A new Character editor.

Likewise in the new Location editor.

You can also add your scenes before you add them to your plot cards.

Adding beats is also faster.

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Please share ‘Plot Sauce’ with your friends and your creations in the comments.

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Now with even more updates!