Overview

Title page

The title page is a contiguous block of Key: Value lines at the top of the document. It ends at the first blank line. Format: sets the reading direction, Manga is right-to-left, Comic is left-to-right.

Title: A Boy Named Dorothy
Author: Pistol Taeja
Format: Manga

Page N

A page begins with a # PAGE header at the start of the line, followed by a positive integer. PAGE is canonical uppercase, lowercase is tolerated but emits a warning. An optional inline scene heading attaches to the page.

# PAGE 1
# PAGE 2 INT. KITCHEN - DAY
# PAGE 17 - final splash

In the Fountain Format, # PAGE 1 is a section header that appears in the outline of the document but the screenplay still renders.

Panel N

A panel begins with Panel at the start of the line, followed by a positive integer. Panels live inside the most recent Page. If you forget to write a page, an implicit Page 1 is synthesised.

Panel 1
Panel 2
Panel 3

Tags

Panel tags go in square brackets after the panel number. Stack a shape tag, a size modifier, and a style tag on the same line.

Shape tags

[H]

A wide panel that fills the whole row.

[V]

A tall panel.

[WIDE]

Hero shot. Bleeds about 15% past the row into the page margins. Use sparingly, it loses punch if used every page.

[SPREAD]

Splash page. The panel fills the entire page.

[GROUP]

Opens a shared row. The plain panels right after it join the row. The group closes when the next layout tag shows up, or the page ends. [G] is the short alias.

[INSET]

A small window inside the panel above it, like a close-up of an eye in the corner of a bigger scene.

[SPLIT]

Draws a dotted line through the middle of one panel, a top half and a bottom half. Same outer size. Good for two quick beats in a single panel.

Size modifiers

[S]

Shrinks the panel to about half size, centered in its space.

[L]

Grows the panel. A large [H] is twice as wide; a large [V] is twice as tall.

Style tags

[BLEED]

The panel's border draws as faded dots instead of a solid line. The panel stays the exact same size and position.

[BORDERLESS]

Removes the panel's border completely, so the artwork reads clean with no frame around it. Separate from [BLEED].

Panel 1 [BLEED] [L]
Panel 2 [H][G]
Panel 3 [V][L] [END]

Action

Action is plain prose, describing what is going on in the Panel. Paragraphs are separated by blank lines.

Panel 1
A cracked highway stretches into the distance.

Rusted automatons litter the roadside.

Panel 2
A WARRIOR walks alone, bag slung over his shoulder

Character & dialogue

Dialogue lines go under the panel they belong to. Put the character name in caps, then the line of dialogue indented underneath. Mangaplay sets dialogue in Courier Prime, the same monospace font screenwriters use, so two short lines read faster than one long one.

Panel 1

    HERO
    The format is plain text. Anyone can read it.

A leading @ forces a character cue regardless of casing, useful for lowercase character names.

@McAvoy
The boys are back in town.

Parenthetical

Parentheticals sit under the character name to mark tone or a small action cue. Mark thought bubbles and voice-over right in the parenthetical.

    HERO
    (whispering)
    Did you hear that?

    HERO
    (thought)
    No more waiting.

Sound effects

Sound effects sit on their own line, in caps, with SFX in front. SFX draws a little larger than dialogue. Keep each one to a short burst.

SFX: BOOM

SFX: CHOMP CHOMP

Title cards

Captions and title cards sit on their own line. The pipe character separates segments.

TITLE Executive Class : Enemy Of The State, | DOROTHY | Age 44

For caption boxes inside a panel, use NARRATION as the speaker.

    NARRATION
    The United Kingdom; 2845 AD.

Scene heading

Scene headings work the same as Fountain. They can sit inline on a page header or stand alone between panels.

# PAGE 17 INT. KITCHEN - DAY

INT. CORRIDOR - NIGHT

Force a scene heading with a leading period if your slug doesn't start with INT. or EXT.:

.kitchen

Transition

Transitions are a Fountain primitive, a line ending in TO: stands alone between panels.

CUT TO:
FADE OUT.
FADE IN:

Note

Author notes use double square brackets. They are kept out of the rendered page but stay in the source file. Notes are a Fountain primitive, they round-trip through any Fountain-compatible tool.

[[ remember to redraw the foreground ]]

Boneyard panel

For Fountain-safe authoring, panels can also be written inside Fountain boneyard markers. A pure Fountain reader will silently strip them; Mangaplay treats them the same as a regular Panel header.

/* PANEL 1 [BLEED] */
/* PANEL 2 [INSET] */

The multi-line form is supported too:

/* PANEL 3
   [WIDE] [ESTABLISHING] */

A boneyard whose first token is not PANEL is a regular Fountain author comment and is stripped from output.

Emphasis

Inline emphasis works the same as Fountain.

*italic*, **bold**, ***bold italic***, and _underline_.

Centered & lyrics

Wrap a line in > < to centre it. Prefix a line with ~ to mark it as a lyric.

> Centered title card <

~ A song line that floats on the page

Forced page break

Three or more equals signs on a line force a page break. Recognised for Fountain compatibility, in a Mangaplay document, prefer # PAGE N as the primary page marker. === placed immediately after a # PAGE line is treated as redundant.

===

Downloads

Three full Mangaplay scripts are published as examples. Each is a working production script you can download as Mangaplay (plain text), screenplay PDF, or Final Draft.

• A Boy Named DorothyA llama, a lady and a lad walk into a bar as an example of how to introduce a character.
  .mangaplay .pdf .fdx
• Our Baby Is StrangeA short four page plot to begin a traditional isekai.
  .mangaplay .pdf .fdx
• Being SalarymanEveryone wants to be a Salaryman, right?
  .mangaplay .pdf .fdx

The example scripts on this page for download are author-owned creative works. They are published as format references, not under an open licence.