If you choose “Unlinked”, the view changes and it shows us only unlinked cards, that means, the cards that are shown or created here have no releation to scenes. You can see that because we see the scene heading of the scenes at the top of the cards, but also because the dropdown menu up top says, “Linked”. Now, all the cards that we see here are linked to a certain scene. If you want to link it to a different scene, just click “Link to scene” and a scene list opens up that lets you choose which scene you would like to link the card to instead. We will have a look at unlinked index cards in a second. You can insert another card after the current one, you can delete the card, you can link it to another scene, or you can unlink it. In the hamburger menu right next to the “heading” field you have several options. If you have several colored tags in one index card and you want to change the color that the index card itself is shown in, just click-drag the tag that you want to use the color from, to the first spot in the tag list and the index card color will adapt accordingly. Celtx will then automatically color the whole index card in the color of the first tag. If you click on the little pin icon, or light, or whatever it might be, you can select a color for that tag. You just type in the tag name and then press the comma (“,”) sign to separate tags in case you want to add multiple tags to one card. That could be anything, like a character name for example, or, a story function, like for example, suspense, danger, mystery, reveal, and whatnot. In the tags field, you can just enter a keyword that you want to assign to that card. This might be just a rough idea or maybe even a draft version of that scene, or part of that scene. There’s not a lot to say about the heading and description fields, you just give the card a title in the heading field, and in the description field you put the index card’s content. You might want to add several pieces of information to one scene, there might be a lot going on, and this way you don’t have to cram it all into one card.Īs for the content of the card itself, you have three fields that you can use: Here, you have add multiple cards to one scene, which makes sense, when you think about it. Many writing applications just assign one index card per scene and that’s it. Linked Index Cardsīy default, celtx assigns one index card to every scene, so if you have scenes in your script already, you will see one card for each, with the scene heading being shown at the top of the card.Īt the top right of the card you have a little “plus” icon, and when you click it, this will add another index card to that scene. If you click the “Index Cards” button in the quick access toolbox, the toolbox itself changes to a narrow index cards panel. If you don’t see it go to “View – Tools” and check if the Index Card option is checked. With your script page open, you see the quick access toolbox at the right side of the screen and there should be an “Index Cards” button.
In celtx, there are several ways to display your index cards, so let’s look at the first one. The nice thing about them is that you can move them around freely and play with different structures until you have found a version that you think might be worth writing or exploring further. Index cards are, as the name suggests, a digital representation of paper cards that you would stick on a wall or a cork board, and that hold little pieces of your story. Some form of index cards if found in pretty much every screenwriting application, or at least most of them, but the form they handle them can vary a little.
In this article we’re going to see how you can use celtx index cards feature.