Why it exists
For years every book started the same way. A stack of white index cards, one scene per card, a number in the corner, and the whole story spread across the table. Move a card, and the book changes.
The trouble came when a card said "Wedding" and the scene behind it was 1,500 words on a laptop in the other room. iScenes keeps the cards and puts the scene right behind each one.
A number, a title and a line or two. Or paste in years of notes from your phone, iPad or Word, and each idea becomes a card.
Drag cards into acts, chapters or episodes. Tip cards show where the turning points usually land, worked out from your own word counts.
Every card opens to the full scene, from a short beat to a long chapter. Edit it right there.
Export the outline or the full draft, in your new order. Save it as PDF, Word, Final Draft, Fountain, a Scrivener outline, a spreadsheet or Markdown. Bring your old files in the same way.
What's on the table
White 5x3 cards with a red top line and blue rules, slightly crooked like the ones on your desk. Color them by storyline if you like.
Turn the table into rows: main plot, subplots and character arcs, each in its own color, read left to right in story order.
Characters, place, time, point of view, the goal and the conflict, on every card. Find every scene with one character in a tap.
Characters, places and notes with photos, tags and your own fields. Each entry shows the scenes it appears in.
Story structures, genres, bestseller styles and formats, from a twisty thriller to a TV season or a picture book. Save your own as well.
Clip cards into a pile inside a chapter, spread them out to work, gather them back when you're done.
Light grey to start, or any color you like. Plain and calm, so the cards stand out.
Lay out 300 cards or more and see about 70 at once on a laptop with the card size slider.
Break the book into acts, chapters, episodes or anything you call them, with word counts for each.
"The cards on the table are where the book really gets written. Everything after that is typing."From the iScenes notebook
Pricing
Every paid plan has a 14-day money-back promise. Prices in US dollars.
Your devices
iScenes runs in your web browser, so it's always the newest version and your cards follow you from one device to the next. Add it to your dock or home screen and it opens in its own window, like any other app.
Open iscenes.app/app in Chrome or Edge and click the install icon at the right end of the address bar. In Safari, choose File, then Add to Dock.
Open iscenes.app/app in Chrome or Edge and click the install icon at the right end of the address bar. iScenes shows up in your Start menu.
Open iscenes.app/app in Safari, tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen.
Open iscenes.app/app in Chrome, tap the menu, then Install app or Add to Home screen.
No. iScenes is where you plan the book. When the order feels right, export it as PDF or Word and keep writing in the app you already use.
Yes. iScenes reads Word, RTF, plain text, Final Draft (.fdx), Fountain, OPML outlines and CSV spreadsheets. Scene headings and act breaks turn into cards and acts. It saves back out to the same formats, so a Scrivener, Storyist, LivingWriter or Final Draft user can move work in and out. iScenes is not connected to or endorsed by those companies; it just reads and writes their file formats.
Yes. Paste notes from your phone or iPad, or open text and Word files. Each idea becomes a card you can move.
Yes. iScenes runs in the browser on a laptop, an iPad or a phone. You can also add it to your home screen so it opens like an app.
It works for anything told in scenes: screenplays, TV series, documentaries, memoirs and children's books. Tip cards change with the format.
Nothing is deleted. You can still open everything and save a full backup. You just can't add cards past the free limit of 30 or export to PDF, Word and the other formats.