What is Screenplay Assistant?

Screenplay Assistant is a web-based AI-assisted screenplay writing tool from PLAYCODE3.ai. Writers type their story scene by scene as natural prose, and the app formats each scene into industry-standard screenplay format (scene headings, action, character cues, dialogue, parentheticals, transitions). It also generates character portraits and storyboard panels, and supports full round-trip Final Draft (.fdx) import and export.

Yes. The Spark plan is free forever. No credit card is required, no new password is needed (Google sign-in only), and PLAYCODE3 covers the AI service costs on the Spark plan. Paid tiers (Writer, Storyteller, Studio) are available for writers who want more capacity and advanced features.

Do I keep the rights to what I write?

Yes. Full copyright in your characters, plot, dialogue, and any creative work you write in Screenplay Assistant stays with you. PLAYCODE3 LLC makes no claim to your creative work.

What AI services does it use?

OpenAI is used for screenplay formatting, story parsing, character inference, and image generation (portraits and storyboard panels). Anthropic is used for the in-app Muse reader, the Atticus help guide, and the storyboard panel planner. AI services do not train on content submitted through their APIs per their published API data-usage policies.

Can I import a Final Draft file?

Yes. Screenplay Assistant imports Final Draft (.fdx) files with acts and episodes, scenes (including subtitles), characters with traits (Age, Ethnicity, Gender, Role), aliases, ScriptNotes, and arc-beat character tagging. Edits made in Screenplay Assistant export back to .fdx with Final Draft's formatting, page settings, and production tagging preserved.

Does it write the story for me?

No. The AI formats the prose you supply into screenplay format and helps with optional tasks like portrait and storyboard generation. It does not invent plot, scenes, or dialogue. The writer is the source of every creative choice.

Writing Your Story with Screenplay Assistant, Scene by Scene

June 4, 2026 · 4 min read · By Chris Stevenson

The core of our app, Screenplay Assistant, is helping you write your story.

If you're like me, you love movies and TV shows, and you can tell right away when a story comes alive on the screen, because someone had it all in their head: the beginning, the middle, and the end. They took their time. As a visual medium of storytelling, you know each scene is built on the story, and the best films are a stream of great scenes stitched together the way the storyteller wanted to tell it.

This is rare, and when it happens it's magical. The story can be re-watched again and again, finding the foreshadowing, the nuances, the dialogue you may have overlooked the first time and appreciated on a second viewing. The reader/watcher enjoys the story on the first run without even knowing they've been guided all along, and when they realize it, they appreciate it even more. All of this is done with the writer's own style, their own feeling, bringing the characters alive in the mind of the watcher. When that comes through clearly in a screenplay, reading it BEFORE the character images, the storyboard, the video clips, and the final product, then you truly have something to share.

Our app is about this first. Everything else is there to inspire you, guide you, and encourage you to write on. This is our goal at PLAYCODE3: we want to help you create your best story every time, one scene at a time, one project at a time. A place where you collect your story, scene by scene.

So with that said, let this first blog post be your guide to getting started.

We've put detailed help in the How It Works section of our app; it's all there for you to read. But we understand that can be overwhelming, and we have Atticus, the Muse, Story Lab, and a pacing guide as well. They're all tools to help, but they aren't necessary to get started. We made this app to guide new writers who have the spark of a story in their mind.

So here's what we encourage you to do first. Start a new project and give it a title, which you don't have to commit to. Then start your first scene, that first introduction to the place and the person who is the heart of the story. Just imagine it in your mind: how the film fades in, what the watcher would see on screen, that first ten minutes. Once you format a scene, our app calculates how long it runs on screen, so you'll know its length. Don't overthink that. Just write to get your story started, to grab the reader/watcher in your mind's eye.

Be as detailed as you can. Take your time. Describe the location. Introduce the character, give them a name (no worries, you can change it at any time). How do they look, their age, their face, who they are, what they’re wearing, indicating their position in life, their status or even lack of status in the world you build. You can start with a long presentation of the world around them, or build from scene to scene, opening that world and developing the character. Write dialogue for them. Introduce each character as you write them into your story. Take your time. The app will auto-save.

When you're done with the scene, format it into a screenplay with the format option you feel works best; you can always reformat. Read the screenplay and see how our app does the heavy work of formatting your story. See it come to life, edit what you like, then continue. Or click Characters at the top, generate them all, and read what the app pulled from your story. Re-edit what you want, generate the character's image, and get to know the style you choose. You can do all of this free in Spark.

Continue to scene 2, then 3. Along the way you can click Muse and see what it has to say; it may help with some ideas and concepts. That's all up to you. We want this to be your own.

These days, in my opinion, real, true storytelling is lacking out there. It needs your spark, your story, to come alive, and that’s the final point. This is NOT about AI writing everything for you. AI will never replace the human creative mind. AI is just a tool that can help ANYONE write and produce something industry-standard, to share and get their story out there for everyone to watch and enjoy.

I wish you the best, and I'll be posting more blogs with details on how our app works, more on brain-dumping scene by scene while keeping the full story arc intact.

Now go create the next blockbuster!

- Chris Stevenson