# Script breakdown > The production process of tagging a locked (or near-locked) script for cast, locations, props, vehicles, SFX, and other elements so schedules and budgets can be built. Also known as: breakdown, stripping a script, element breakdown ## In practice Breakdown turns story pages into work orders. Each scene becomes a strip with who appears, where it shoots, and which departments are touched. Writers feel this indirectly: unclear sluglines, inconsistent character names, and buried props create false elements or missed ones. Clean structure is a courtesy to the people who schedule your fiction. Writers are not usually the ones coloring the breakdown board, but writing with breakdown in mind prevents pain. Name locations consistently. Introduce speaking roles clearly. Do not hide a horse inside a witty action joke if the horse must be budgeted. Omitted scenes and locked numbers exist so breakdowns can survive revisions. Inkwell's production-intelligence direction is to extract inventory from structure rather than make you re-enter the script into another tool — still, no software replaces a human coordinator's judgment. Treat breakdown literacy as craft: the clearer the page, the less your story gets accidental rewritten by logistics. ## See it formatted - [Should sound effects be in all caps in a screenplay?](https://www.inkwell.software/resources/screenplay-formatting/sound-effects-and-capitals): Capitalize a sound, prop, or action only when it has to jump off the page, and a speaking character's name at first appearance, so capitals still mean something. [Free script breakdown tool](https://www.inkwell.software/tools/script-breakdown) ## Common questions ### Is a script breakdown the same as coverage? No. Coverage evaluates story and craft for development. Breakdown tags production elements for scheduling and budgeting. One judges the read; the other builds the shoot. ### Do I breakdown a spec before I submit it? Usually not. Specs are for reading. Breakdown belongs to production after a script is headed toward a shoot. Still, write so a future breakdown would not invent chaos. ### What writer habits break breakdowns? Renaming the same location every visit, splitting one character into three cue spellings, and burying costly elements in vague action. Consistency is a production skill. ### How do locked scripts and omitted scenes relate? Once scene numbers lock, omitted markers preserve numbering so breakdowns and schedules do not renumber the world after every cut. That stability is why OMITTED exists. ### Can I run a first-pass breakdown without uploading the draft? Yes. Inkwell's free script breakdown tool parses Fountain or FDX in your browser and inventories scenes, eighths, cast, locations, and day/night without sending the screenplay to a server. ## Related terms - [Sides](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/sides): Excerpt pages of a script prepared for a specific day, audition, or work session -- usually only the scenes and lines the actors or crew need, not the full book. - [Stripboard](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/stripboard): The production schedule laid out as strips — one per scene, carrying its number, set, day or night, length in eighths, and cast — ordered by shoot day rather than by story order. - [Locked script](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/locked-script): A shooting draft whose page and scene numbers are frozen so every department shares one numbering scheme. After lock, changes become marked revisions instead of silently reshuffling the whole script. - [Omitted scene](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/omitted-scene): OMITTED marks a scene removed from a locked shooting script. Its number stays in place so later scenes keep the numbers used by schedules and sides. - [Read the pillar guide](https://www.inkwell.software/learn/script-breakdowns): A longer guide for this workflow --- Canonical page: