Scriptwriting in Obsidian With the Fountain Plugin  🔗 **Source:** [Scriptwriting in Obsidian With the Fountain Plugin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8) > [!note]+ Document Notes > --- > tags: [obsidian, obsidian-plugins, screenwriting, fountain-format, writing-tools] > author: PrattDesign > source: YouTube, PrattDesign channel > reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8 > date created: 2026-09-14 > --- > > [!info] Generated analysis — not the author's words. Sections below are machine-written > > from the captured source. Only text inside `> [!quote]` blocks is verbatim from the author. > > Do not quote or attribute any other line to the named author. > <!-- deep-read: light-touch --> > Light-touch read: a 6:52 single-plugin tutorial (about 1,290 caption words) can't fill 18 sections without padding. > ## Summary > - **What it is:** a 6:52 walkthrough from the PrattDesign YouTube channel of the Obsidian community plugin "Fountain" (plugin id `fountain`, by Benedikt Grundmann). The lead agent logged the upload date as 2025-09-23. At [6:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=393) the narrator introduces themselves as "Mark with Pratt Design" (caption spelling; unverified). > - **What it covers:** installing the plugin, creating a `.fountain` script, typing description, character cues, and dialogue, then using index cards, the table-of-contents sidebar, rehearsal mode, `[[notes]]`, and `=` synopses. > - **Limits the narrator names:** at [5:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=359) they say they couldn't link to the script or edit its properties. > - **Why it matters if you script videos or talks in Obsidian:** Fountain keeps a script as plain text, and this plugin turns that text into one index card per scene plus a rehearsal view that blanks one speaker's lines. > - **Is it still current?** The plugin has shipped 40 releases (0.10.0 through 0.34.3) since the upload date. The linking limit changed: 0.27.0 (2026-05-01) added `[[>target]]` links inside scripts. > - **Bottom line:** the typing steps still match the Fountain spec with 2 corrections: character cues must be uppercase, and a description line isn't a scene heading. The "can't link" limit is now half true: scripts can link out, but those links don't show in the backlinks pane or graph view. > ## Key steps / claims > Timestamps link into the video. I checked syntax claims against [fountain.io/syntax](https://fountain.io/syntax/) and plugin claims against the [plugin README](https://github.com/bgrundmann/obsidian-fountain) at 0.34.3. > 1. **Vault context, [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=0).** The narrator runs the demo inside a "Novel Vault" and calls it a "streamlined" sibling of their "Disgraceland" vault, built for novel and script writing instead of world building (both names caption spelling; unverified). The narrator says the Novel Vault ships with the plugin preinstalled, and the steps apply to any vault. > 2. **Install, [0:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=38) to [1:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=60).** Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search "fountain" returns 2 plugins. The narrator installs "Fountain by Benedict Grindman" and skips "Fountain Editor by Chang Caleb" (caption spellings). The registry lists them as `fountain` by bgrundmann (GitHub display name Benedikt Grundmann) and `fountain-editor` by Chuang Caleb. > 3. **New script, [1:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=88).** The narrator clicks "new fountain document" in the sidebar, then has to look for where the file saved. The README describes this as a ribbon button that creates a file with the `.fountain` extension. > 4. **Index cards to editor, [2:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=121) to [2:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=150).** Per the narration, you open view options (the eye icon), pick index cards, then use the three-dot menu → Edit to reach the script editor. The 0.34.3 README documents Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+I to toggle between cards and editor. I didn't check whether the eye icon and three-dot path still exist in 0.34.3. > 5. **Scene heading, [2:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=150).** The narrator types "a nice hot summer day in the city" into what they call the scene heading and describes it as "your action or your uh scene description". Fountain treats these as 2 elements. A scene heading starts with `INT`, `EXT`, or similar, or you force one with a leading `.`. Action is any paragraph that doesn't match another element. A plain description line parses as action. > 6. **Character and dialogue, [2:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=176).** Leave a blank line, type the character name, press Enter once, then type the dialogue. > > [!quote] ID:rw_01m2g494qtj1w4q75v91ngy8wn > > The description, hitting enter twice, the character name, hitting enter once will create the dialogue and it'll be the same the whole way down. > fountain.io agrees on the line breaks and adds a rule the narration leaves out: a Character line must be entirely UPPERCASE, or forced with `@` (for example `@McCLANE`). Captions don't carry case, so "character one" says nothing about what the narrator typed. Type `CHARACTER ONE`. > 7. **Second scene and outline, [3:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=213).** The narrator presses Enter twice, types "new scene", opens the table-of-contents sidebar, and says the index cards now hold 2 scenes. The narration doesn't say whether "new scene" carried an `INT`/`EXT` or `.` prefix, and I didn't check the video frames. Per the spec, it needs one to parse as a heading. > 8. **Rehearsal mode, [4:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=253).** View options → rehearsal → pick a character. > > [!quote] ID:rw_01m2g49ayvckxfmhzeeamx3nf5 > > You'll notice that the dialogue for character one has been blocked out here. If you need to rehearse lines or things like that > The 0.34.3 README confirms it: "Rehearsal mode that blacks out a character's dialogue". > 9. **Notes, [4:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=288).** Wrap text in double brackets, for example `[[this character should have more lines]]`. This matches the Notes element on fountain.io. > 10. **Synopses, [4:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=288) to [5:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=319).** Start a line with `=`, and repeat the `=` on each extra line. The narrator says synopses appear on the scene's index card and that only the first synopsis shows there. fountain.io defines synopses as single lines prefixed with `=` that formatted output ignores. I didn't test the first-synopsis-only card behavior against 0.34.3. > 11. **Limits, [5:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OfvmyuJwm8&t=359).** > > [!quote] ID:rw_01m2g49jss004keyyans2jbadv > > You can't directly link to this note. It's not um it's not linkable as far as I can tell. > The narrator adds that they don't believe they can edit the page's properties. The next section has the current status of both limits. > ## Current status (verified) > Checked on 2026-09-14. > - **Registry entry:** id `fountain`, name "Fountain", author bgrundmann, repo `bgrundmann/obsidian-fountain`, per [community-plugins.json](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-releases/master/community-plugins.json). > - **Latest release:** [0.34.3](https://github.com/bgrundmann/obsidian-fountain/releases) on 2026-08-29. Its merge fixes sibling panes overwriting the active editor on autosave (issue #36). The release before it, 0.34.2, shipped on 2026-05-14. > - **Repo health:** not archived, MIT license, 29 stars, 8 [open issues](https://github.com/bgrundmann/obsidian-fountain/issues). The oldest open issue dates from 2025-10-17. > - **Maintained?** Yes. 40 releases have shipped since 2025-09-23, and the latest came 16 days before this check. > - **Linking (changed since the video):** > - Release 0.27.0 (2026-05-01) added `[[>target]]` and `[[>target|display text]]` links from a script to any vault file. When you rename a target, the plugin rewrites those links. > - Release 0.32.0 made an unresolved `[[foo.fountain]]` link in a markdown note create `foo.fountain` instead of `foo.fountain.md`. > - Limits still listed in the README: `.fountain` links don't appear in Obsidian's backlinks pane or graph view, [0:00] [Music] Hello and welcome. Um, today I'm going to be setting up the fountain plugin within the new Novel Vault. Um, I've had some questions from some people about how to actually uh set up the fountain plugin and to be able to uh create proper script pages within the fountain format in Obsidian. Uh, so we are just going to walk through that and show you how you can set that up and get that going. And I'm going to do it directly within the novel vault here. And just quickly to the people more familiar with disgraceand, the novel vault is essentially uh very similar to disgraceand. However, it's a bit more [0:38] streamlined. It's not as it's not as set up for world building. Um it is more streamlined for novel writing and script writing and things like that. All right. And the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go to settings and I'm going to go to my community plugins and I'm going to go to browse and search for fountain. And right away there's going to be two that come up when you do the search. [1:00] There's going to be Fountain by Benedict Grindman and Fountain Editor by Chang Caleb. And for our purposes, we are going to download the first one by Benedict Gruntman here. And this is already installed within the novel vault. So if you have uh the novel vault already, you you don't need to follow these steps and redownload it again. Um, it's just if you would like to add script writing or something maybe to the Disgrace Land vault or your own personal vault, uh, this is a great tool to use. [1:28] Okay. And now that we have the Fountain plugin installed, uh, we can come over to our sidebar here. And I'm going to go down to new fountain document. And I'm going to go ahead and click it. And that will open up a new, uh, untitled document right here on our main our main page here. Uh, and where did this save? Maybe in here. Yes. Okay. So, this is our new uh our new fountain document that we just created when we clicked on uh this icon here. And this is going to be our first script page. This is going to be our script right here. So, the [2:01] first thing we're going to do here is we're going to go up to the top right corner and we're going to click on the view options, the little eyeball icon here. Uh we're going to click it and we're going to click on index cards. And what that'll do is that'll open up your first in index card here. And this is where we can uh set up scenes. We can set up individual pages however you want to lay yours out. And you can click directly on the scene heading part here and you can change the title or do whatever you would like to do directly on the index card screen. But uh we are [2:30] going to click on the three little dots and we are going to hit edit. And that will bring up our actual fountain uh layout script page. And the first thing you'll notice at the top here is we have a scene heading. This is where you're typically going to put your action or your uh scene description kind of what's happening. Um, so I'm going to just put a nice hot summer day in the city. Okay, so that's a quick little description. [2:56] And then, uh, to work within fountain, what we're going to do is I'm going to hit enter twice. And then I can start typing a character name. So I'm going to type character one. And I'm going to hit enter once. And then this will be the dialogue. Okay. So, typing it in that specific order. The description, hitting enter twice, the character name, hitting enter once will create the dialogue and it'll be the same the whole way down. If we need to add another character, we go character 2. This will be other talking. [3:33] And then if we need to go back uh to like a description if this little scene wants to end, we're going to hit enter twice and we're going to uh new Whoops. Uh new scene. Okay. And then we can keep typing character three. Hello. Okay. So that's sort of the layout as to how you type within uh the fountain format. And we can go over to our side panel here and we can click on option up here, the table of contents of fountain script. And it'll just give you a layout of your scenes. And we can also uh go back up to our index cards. And [4:13] you'll notice that we now have uh the two scenes that we have created broken down on each individual index cards within our index card screen, which provides a nice breakdown of your individual scenes. The Fountain plugin also has another neat option. If we go um if we go up to our eyeball again and we look at our options and we hit rehearsal and let's pick let's pick character one. You'll notice that the dialogue for character one has been blocked out here. If you need to rehearse lines or things like that, it's just another neat feature uh that's available within the Fountain plugin. [4:48] Uh, another thing of note, if you wanted to take quick little notes, you could double bracket and this character should have more lines. And you can just add some notes directly to your script if needed. The other thing that I'm going to quickly go over are synopsises. Um, if we Well, let's do the new scene. So, I'm going to hit enter twice and I'm going to do an equal sign. This is a synopsis of the scene. [5:19] Uh this can show uh it well it can show on multiple lines. So I will do this on multiple lines. Same equal sign as uh the previous one. But the thing about the synopsises is they will show directly on the index cards. So what I wrote in that synopsis is now showing on the index card for that scene. And of course, your scene can have multiple synopsises as they go down, but um only the first one, only the top one will actually show on uh the index card screen. And within the novel vault, there is um directions and a script notes page walking through this and uh [5:59] directions within the sample script as well in the novel vault. So uh that should help guide you along a little bit more. And this is great for people who prefer to work with scripts, who would enjoy writing more in a script format uh that is in the fountain layout directly within Obsidian. Uh there are of course some uh roadblocks. You can't directly link to this note. It's not um it's not linkable as far as I can tell. Um I don't believe I can also edit the properties to this page or anything. But to write in fountain format, it is fantastic. But if you prefer the old [6:33] triedand-true writing chapter form long form, that is that is what makes Obsidian great anyway. And that is of course always available for you. And that is the fountain plugin. I am Mark with Pratt Design and we'll see you down the road., Scriptwriting in Obsidian With the Fountain Plugin, PrattDesign, 01m2g43as84y5wvrafac3v47yw.