What's with the *asterisks?*
As you write with Slugline, you may start to see some light-gray “helper” characters appear in your document. Don’t worry about this—there’s nothing complex to learn here, and you can use Slugline like any other screenwriting app.
Slugline uses the Fountain screenplay format, which stores your screenplay as plain text that can be edited anywhere, using any writing software. Fountain even uses text to trigger special formatting.
This is simpler than it sounds, and doesn’t require you to learn anything new — it all happens automatically. For example, any line that starts with INT or EXT is automatically formatted as a Scene Heading.
Text drives everything in Slugline. When you convert a line that doesn’t begin with INT or EXT to a Scene Heading (using Format → Force Scene Heading), Slugline adds a period to the beginning. This period tells Slugline that the element is a Scene Heading. Make some text bold (⌘B), and Slugline wraps it in **double asterisks.** These helper characters are shown in light gray to remind you that they don’t appear in your finished screenplay.
Pretty soon, you might start typing those periods and asterisks yourself. Because everything in Slugline can be done with your hands on the keyboard, you’ll write more and fuss less. We promise.
OK, but make them go away now please.
Just press the Preview button to see what your screenplay will look like when printed, to paper or PDF. All the invisible elements, including your integrated outline, will disappear, leaving a perfectly-formatted screenplay.