Asked and answered
Questions, before you commit to 118 pages.
What is Nabu?
Screenwriting software built around finishing. You bring an idea — a feeling, a scene, a sentence — and Nabu grows it into a treatment, characters, and a scene-by-scene framework, then keeps track of everything while you write the pages. Most tools are built for formatting the page. Nabu is built for the hundred pages after the idea.
Who is it for?
Anyone who means to finish a screenplay — directors writing their own films, first-timers with one story they have to tell, working writers tired of holding the whole draft in their head. If you can describe the film, you can finish the script.
How is Nabu different from every other screenwriting app?
Every screenwriting app competes on the same thing: the page. But formatting was solved decades ago, and it was never the reason scripts go unfinished. Nabu is built around everything that surrounds the page — a treatment that knows your story, a beat board shaped to its structure, character charts that hold each voice, continuity tracked across every scene, and notes while the draft is still warm. Other tools wait for you to write. Nabu works the draft with you.
Is it a full screenplay editor?
Yes. Underneath the development tools is a complete, professional screenplay editor — correct industry format, every element, import and export in the standard formats. The development layer is there when you want it and silent when you don’t.
How do I write in it?
However you work. Type straight into the pages, like any editor. Start from the treatment and let the structure flow downhill into scenes. Work visually on the beat board. Or begin with the guided setup, which takes a single idea through premise, genre, characters, and structure before a page exists. These aren’t separate tools to learn — they’re views of the same story, and you can move between them any time.
Does Nabu write my screenplay?
No. You write; Nabu reads. It holds the structure, tracks continuity, keeps each character’s voice distinct, and tells you what’s missing — the work a good script editor does, at the speed you write. Every word that ends up on the page is a word you chose to put there. You are the author.
I've written scripts before. Is this just for beginners?
It’s for unfinished screenplays, whoever they belong to. If this is your first, Nabu walks you through every decision. If it’s your tenth, it stays out of your way and earns its keep where experience doesn’t help — holding continuity across 120 pages, weighing the structure, reading the whole draft at revision time. The guidance scales to you, not the other way around.
I only have shorts. Can I get to a feature?
Shorts are screenplays — bring them. And a short that won’t leave you alone is often a feature announcing itself. Nabu can take what your short already knows — its people, its world, its question — and grow it into a treatment and a feature-length structure, so the new hundred pages have somewhere to stand.
I have a finished draft. What can Nabu do with it?
Read it — all of it. Import a finished screenplay and Nabu gives you full coverage: structure, pacing, continuity, character voice, what’s working and what’s missing. The notes a script editor sends back after weeks, before your coffee cools — and they point at specific scenes, so the next pass is a plan, not a guess. Finished doesn’t have to mean done with.
Will my script be used to train anything?
Never. Not the scenes, not the treatment, not your notes — not verbatim, not “anonymized,” not in aggregate. Our model providers are contractually barred from training on your content too. What we do collect (and you can turn off): the shape of your work — counts, ratios, positions, choices. Numbers and decisions, never prose. The full promise is on the privacy page.
I have drafts in Final Draft. Am I starting over?
No. Bring them — Nabu imports Final Draft (.fdx) and Fountain files, and exports back out to FDX, Fountain, and PDF, always. Your files stay portable; if you ever leave, you leave with everything.
Do I need to know screenplay format?
No. Every line comes out in correct, industry-standard format — sluglines, action, dialogue, all of it. You think about the story; the page takes care of itself. What comes out the other end is indistinguishable from a script written anywhere else — because it is one.
What does it cost?
The alpha is free for invited writers. Pricing comes later — measured against what writers actually pay for help with a draft, not against another license fee. Whatever happens, your files export freely; you will never pay to get your own script back.
How do I get in?
Nabu is in private alpha. Request early access and we’ll write back as seats open — writers actively working on a draft get priority.