Fountain+ 
- Recovers scene headings, character cues, dialogue, and parentheticals from PDF layout columns and ALL-CAPS runs
- Outputs a Final Draft .fdx project ready to open and keep editing — characters, scenes, and dialogue all wired up
- Our servers never receive your PDF — the conversion happens inside your browser. The only thing the page downloads is an open-source PDF parser that runs locally on your machine.
- Handles clean exports from Final Draft, Fade In, and WriterDuet best; scanned or OCR'd PDFs need a clean-up pass
A PDF arrives in your inbox and Final Draft refuses to open it. This converter rebuilds the script as a real .fdx file so you can edit it like any other Final Draft project — scene headings, character cues, dialogue, and parentheticals all wired up correctly.
What to expect
PDF is the lossy end of the pipeline. The file ships pixels and positioned glyphs, not screenplay elements, so the converter reads layout — indentation columns, line spacing, ALL-CAPS runs — to recover what each block is. Clean exports from Final Draft, Fade In, or WriterDuet round-trip well. Scanned or OCR'd PDFs come through messier and usually need a clean-up pass.
Title page metadata is rarely embedded in PDFs, so expect to retype that block in Final Draft after opening.
How it works
Your file never leaves your browser — conversion runs entirely client-side. The PDF is parsed into positioned text runs, layout heuristics classify each block as scene heading, action, character, or dialogue, and the resulting Screenplay object is serialised to Final Draft's .fdx XML.
What the PDF looks like
WILL (V.O.)(CONT'D)
After that night, I didn't speak to my
father again for three years.
INT. A.P. NEWSROOM (PARIS) - DAY
A typically busy day. On hold with the phone cradled
under an ear, Will sorts through a bundle of mail
dropped on his desk.
WILL (ON PHONE)
(without pauses)
William Bloom with the Associated Press
if I could just...
He's put back on hold. Returning to the mail, he finds
a hand-addressed envelope. Rips it open.
WILL (V.O.)(CONT'D)
We communicated indirectly I guess.
A scene from Big Fish by John August, rendered as a screenplay PDF would display it — bold scene heading, action flush-left, character cues centred, and a parenthetical nested between cue and dialogue.
Source: Fountain syntax reference.