Writer Assignment

Writing with a partner? Each of you works on your own copy of the same .thrl file. Writer Assignment lets you split the scenes: every Beat can belong to one of you, or to nobody. A Beat that belongs to your partner is read-only for you, so you never change a scene they are in the middle of. When you’re both done, bring the two copies together with Merge Projects.

Turning it on

Open Settings → Lab and check Assign beats to writers. Both of you turn it on in your own Throughline.

Below the switch you can enter Your name. It’s the same in every project, and it’s how Throughline knows you: in a project, the person with your name is you, and the Beats assigned to that person are yours. Your partner sees the name on the Beats you take. If you leave it empty, Throughline asks for it the first time you take a Beat.

Names are unique in a project, with capitals and spaces ignored. If your partner already uses the name you type, Throughline keeps your old name in that project and tells you to choose another one.

Assigning a Beat

Open a Beat and use Assign to. It sits in the Beat’s dialog in the Draft Workspace and in the taskbar of the Write Workspace. Pick:

Your own name, at the top, to take the Beat yourself.
A person already on the project.
Add person…, to add your partner by name before they’ve ever opened the file. If someone on the project already has that name, Throughline picks them instead of adding a second one.
Unassign, to give the Beat back to nobody.

Each assignment is one undo step.

You don’t need to wait for your partner to add you. If you add them as Anna, and Anna enters Anna as her name, the Beats you gave her are hers as soon as she opens the project. Throughline asks nothing. If you work on two computers, use the same name on both, and the project treats both as you.

A Beat that belongs to your partner

Beats assigned to someone else are grayed out on the Draft board and in the Write sidebar. Hover one to see who has it. You can still drag it to a new place in the story, stack it, and open it.

Open it and the page is read-only, with a note at the top: Assigned to Anna. Everything except editing still works:

Read, select and copy the text.
Find matches in it.
See which Characters are in it.
Switch to another version to read it, and compare two versions side by side.

Controls that would change the Beat stay visible but don’t respond, and their tooltip says who the Beat is assigned to. To write in it after all, click the button with your name, like Assign to Ben. Agree with your partner first: their copy still says the Beat is theirs until you merge.

In the Write sidebar, the person button (Ben’s beats) shows only the Beats assigned to you.

Changes across the whole story

Some changes touch every scene at once. These still reach your partner’s Beats, because a script with half its names changed is no use to anyone:

Renaming a Character in the script.
Numbering dialogue.
Switching between Screenplay and Rich Text.

Replace All skips your partner’s Beats and tells you how many it skipped. To change them too, check Include beats assigned to others in the find bar first. See Find and replace.

Opening the project with the switch off

Assignments are saved in the .thrl file, whether the switch is on or off. With the switch off, Throughline shows no assignments and locks nothing, and it keeps them in the file for your partner. A project that uses assignments tells you so once each time you open it. Its Open Settings button takes you to Settings → Lab, where you turn the feature on and enter your name.