Writing about writing with Inkwell
Long-form posts on craft, product decisions, and what we're learning from beta writers.
More posts
- Craft7 min read
24 character development questions for your story
Move from a character biography to something a person can do under pressure.
Read post - Craft4 min read
D&D NPC ideas: build a character in five minutes
A name is the start. Give the person something to want when the party arrives.
Read post - Craft7 min read
How to write dialogue: 7 exercises you can hear
A scene, seven short exercises, and a listening test for the next draft.
Read post - Craft7 min read
12 short film ideas to make with what you have
Twelve original premises, practical constraints, and a way to turn one into a scene.
Read post - Version control3 min read
Compare screenplay drafts by scene, not by line
A rewrite can change a dozen words and change the story, or replace half a page and change nothing that matters. Red and green text cannot tell those apart.
Read post - AI skills3 min read
AI screenplay edits a word diff will miss
A word diff proves exactly what changed. It cannot tell you whether the rewrite kept the things the screenplay needed to stay true.
Read post - Craft3 min read
A screenplay continuity ledger you can maintain
A character answers a question nobody asked them. A gun left in a car is back in a pocket. Each reads fine in its own scene, and only breaks against everything before it.
Read post - AI skills3 min read
Ask or Agent: when to hand over the pen
Use Ask for the judgment. Use Agent Mode when the judgment and the editing need to develop together.
Read post - Craft3 min read
A floor is not a salary
Guild floors tell you the legal minimum on a covered job. BLS and Guild reports tell you what the market looks like around that floor.
Read post - Craft4 min read
How long is a line of screenplay dialogue?
Across 994 parsed scripts, the median per-script dialogue turn is seven words, while the median per-script 90th-percentile turn is twenty-four. Those are reference points for rhythm, not line-length rules.
Read post - Craft7 min read
The cast is smaller than it looks
Raw cast size counts names. Speaking load shows how many of those names actually carry the conversation — and the gap gets much wider as casts grow.
Read post - Craft5 min read
Two drafts, same page count
Page count is one number. Pacing is where that number goes. Measured across thousands of features, screenplays do not pace evenly — and the middle is not supposed to look like the open.
Read post - Craft3 min read
Page count is a reader signal, not a stopwatch
A 105-page feature is not a 105-minute movie. It is a cold-read estimate. Treat the number as a signal, then check it against practice.
Read post - Switching3 min read
How to choose a Final Draft alternative
Name the job. Stay if versions are not the pain. Import if they are.
Read post - Production2 min read
What a script breakdown actually inventories
Coverage judges the read. A breakdown tags the shoot. The useful first pass is an inventory, not a score.
Read post - Canvas3 min read
Markdown round-trip is not an afterthought
Why Canvas bets on lossless markdown instead of locking prose in a proprietary graph.
Read post - Plot2 min read
Series bibles belong in Plot, not Canvas
Plot for the room’s bible. Canvas for Notion/Docs-shaped knowledge around the show.
Read post - AI skills3 min read
Bring your own key, or let Inkwell carry the bill
Bundled, Anthropic, or OpenAI — who holds the key, who pays the provider.
Read post - AI skills3 min read
Which model should I write with?
Fast, balanced, frontier — what each tier is for, and what a pass draws.
Read post - Products3 min read
Who each Inkwell product is for
Plot for screenplays, Canvas for everything else — and how to tell which one you need.
Read post - Production5 min read
Locked pages, A-pages, and revision colors
A practical guide to taking one structured screenplay from White pages through production handoff.
Read post - Craft2 min read
What a dialogue pass actually changes
Skills edit nodes, not chat transcripts.
Read post - Switching3 min read
Switch from Final Draft without losing reads
Import once, name every read, export when the room asks — not before.
Read post - Roadmap3 min read
From beta feedback to the next release
How we prioritize what ships while Plot is young.
Read post - AI skills7 min read
Skills vs. chat: staying inside the draft
Choose the AI workflow by the writing job—not by which chat box happens to be open.
Read post - Version control3 min read
Why we built save points for writers
The habit of naming a moment matters more than the button that creates it.
Read post