Thenema Editor
Thenema Editor is Thenema Writer's built-in AI analysis assistant. It reads your writing and recommends improvements — in the Treatment, Beat Sheet, Script Editor, and Pre-Production panels. It never writes your screenplay, treatment, or story for you. That part is always yours.
What is Thenema Editor?
A second opinion that reads what you have written — not a ghostwriter.
Thenema Editor reads your text and provides analysis, feedback, and recommendations. The words in every panel of Thenema Writer — every act of your treatment, every beat card, every scene in your screenplay, every shot in your storyboard — are always yours. Thenema Editor never generates screenplay text, dialogue, scene descriptions, or story content on your behalf.
Thenema Editor is a professional analytical tool. It works like a script editor or story consultant who has read your material and is giving you a structured response. Use it the way you would use any editorial feedback — read it carefully, decide what resonates, and discard what does not apply to your vision.
Where Thenema Editor appears
| Panel | What Thenema Editor does there | Token cost |
|---|---|---|
| Treatment | Analyses character arcs, mood, tone, and narrative structure. Poses world-building questions. | Text analysis — low token cost |
| Beat Sheet | Generates dramatic beat suggestions from scene text within scene documents. | Text analysis — low token cost |
| Script Editor | Analyses structure, pacing, and element patterns. Available via the Revision and Format menus. | Text analysis — low token cost |
| Storyboarder — Shot Generation | Converts scene text into structured shot lists (shot type, angle, lens, move, action). | Text analysis — low token cost |
| Storyboarder — Image Generation | Generates a visual reference image per storyboard panel. | One token per image |
| Storyboarder — Portrait Generation | Generates a character reference portrait for the Character Bible. | One token per portrait |
Text analysis features (Treatment, Beat Sheet, Script Editor, Shot Generation) use your Thenema Editor text analysis allowance, which is included with your subscription. Image and portrait generation (Storyboarder only) consumes your image token balance, which is separate and must be purchased when exhausted.
Thenema Editor in the Treatment
Structural and tonal analysis of your narrative outline.
Accessing Thenema Editor in the Treatment
Click the 🔍 Analyze with AI button at the bottom of the Treatment panel. A menu appears with four analysis modes. Select the one appropriate to your current need.
The four analysis modes
Character Arc Analysis
Thenema Editor reads the content of the currently active act tab and identifies where your protagonist changes — or fails to change. It looks for evidence of the character's wound or flaw in Act I, tests of that flaw in Act II, and the moment of transformation or conscious choice in Act III. It flags any acts where the character's internal journey is absent or unclear, and raises specific questions about the arc's completeness.
Mood & Tone Analysis
Thenema Editor reads the emotional register of each act and notes shifts, inconsistencies, or missed opportunities for tonal contrast. It identifies whether the treatment's prose style (formal/informal, detached/intimate, fast/slow) matches the tone of the story it describes. It flags act-to-act tonal shifts that may be unintentional, and suggests where a tonal contrast might deepen the emotional impact.
Brainstorm World / Storyline
Thenema Editor reads the current treatment and poses questions about elements that are implied but not yet developed — secondary characters mentioned but not described, locations referred to but not established, thematic threads that are set up but not paid off. This mode generates questions, not answers. Use it when you feel the story world needs more texture or when you are stuck on a specific aspect of the narrative.
Other Refinements (Chat)
Opens a free-text session where you can type any question about your treatment. Use this for specific, targeted questions that the other three modes do not address — for example: "Is the midpoint in Act II reversing the stakes effectively?" or "Does the B-story with Detective Osei connect to the theme of trust?"
Analysing a specific passage
Select text in the active act tab before clicking Analyze with AI. Thenema Editor will focus its analysis on the selected passage rather than the full tab. This is useful for targeted feedback on a specific sequence or plot point without receiving feedback on the entire act.
Switch to the specific act tab you want feedback on before clicking Analyze. If you want feedback on Act II specifically, make Act II the active tab. Thenema Editor reads the active tab's content, not the entire treatment at once.
Thenema Editor in the Beat Sheet
Identifying dramatic beats within scene documents.
Beat generation from the board
On the main Beat Sheet board, each beat card has a ✦ Beats button in its top-right corner (visible on the card front face). Clicking it asks Thenema Editor to analyse the scene text in that card's scene document and identify the key dramatic beats within it.
The beats appear as labelled chips below the card's preview text on the board. Each chip is clickable — clicking it navigates the Writers Room script view to the corresponding passage if the Beat Sheet is connected to the Writers Room.
Generate beats for all cards at once
In the Beat Sheet toolbar, click ✦ Generate All Beats. Thenema Editor processes every card on the board simultaneously. Cards that have scene document text receive beat chips; cards without scene text receive a status message instead. Allow a moment for all cards to complete — the board updates each card as its analysis returns.
What Thenema Editor looks for in beat analysis
Thenema Editor reads the scene document text (up to 1,500 characters) and identifies units of dramatic action or emotion — moments where something changes in the scene. It returns between three and six beats per scene, each described in a short active phrase. Examples:
- "Maya enters and immediately senses something is wrong"
- "Detective Osei reveals he already knew about the letter"
- "Maya chooses silence over confrontation"
- "The scene ends on an unresolved question"
Beat generation reads the scene document text, not just the card title or purpose. Cards that only have a title and no scene document text will return a message asking you to write the scene content first. Open each card's scene document and write the scene before running beat generation.
Thenema Editor in the Script Editor
Structural analysis, pacing feedback, and element pattern recognition in the screenplay itself.
Scene Navigator — live structural map
The Scene Navigator (toggle with the Scene Navigator button in the toolbar) is a continuously updated list of every Scene Heading in the script, with its scene number and page number. This is Thenema Editor's primary structural tool in the Script Editor — it gives you a real-time map of your screenplay's structure as you write.
The Navigator updates 600ms after each keystroke, debounced to avoid constant redraws. Click any scene entry to jump directly to it in the script.
Receiving from the Beat Sheet
When you send the Beat Sheet to the Script Editor, Thenema Editor has already informed the structure — beat titles become scene headings, purpose text becomes action lines, and act groupings become Transition markers. The Script Editor receives a pre-structured screenplay outline derived from your AI-assisted Beat Sheet work.
Element auto-detection
As you type in the Script Editor, Thenema Editor's element detection analyses each line and applies the correct screenplay element formatting automatically:
- A line starting with INT., EXT., INT/EXT., or I/E. is immediately formatted as a Scene Heading.
- An all-caps line of 2–35 characters following an Action line is formatted as a Character name.
- A line following a Character or Parenthetical is formatted as Dialogue.
- A line ending with " TO:" or matching common transition phrases is formatted as a Transition.
- A line starting with "(" and ending with ")" under 60 characters is formatted as a Parenthetical.
Autocomplete for character names and scene headings
As you type in a Character or Scene Heading element, Thenema Editor scans the document for existing character names and scene locations and offers completions. After typing two or more characters, a dropdown appears with matching suggestions. This prevents inconsistent character name spellings across the script.
CONT'D and MORE — automatic rendering
Thenema Editor automatically renders industry-standard (CONT'D) markers after character names whose dialogue is interrupted by a page break, and (MORE) at the bottom of dialogue that continues onto the next page. These markers are rendered at print time and are not inserted into the document text — they do not interfere with writing or editing.
Export to Writers Room for collaborative review
Use the Script Editor's Export to Writers Room function to send the completed or draft screenplay to the Writers Room, where Thenema Editor's scene card beat generation can be applied to the full script scene by scene. This is the key handoff from solo writing to team review.
Thenema Editor in Pre-Production
AI-assisted breakdown, scheduling, and storyboarding at the production planning stage.
Rule-of-Eighths AI Scheduling
The Pre-Production scheduling engine includes a Thenema Editor-powered page count estimator that uses the Rule of Eighths — the industry-standard method where one script page equals eight eighths, and a standard shoot day is sixty-four eighths (eight pages). Thenema Editor analyses the script text beyond simple line counts, taking into account action density, dialogue-to-action ratio, scene location complexity, and VFX flags to produce more accurate per-scene page estimates than a naive character-count approach.
Script breakdown element extraction
When you click ▶ Run Breakdown, Thenema Editor analyses the full script text and extracts five element categories across every scene:
| Category | How Thenema Editor finds them |
|---|---|
| Characters | All-uppercase lines of 2–40 characters matching character-cue patterns. |
| Locations | Location portion of scene headings, stripped of INT./EXT. prefixes and time-of-day qualifiers. |
| Props | Keyword matching against a curated list of ~60 common prop words across action lines. |
| Wardrobe | Keyword matching against ~30 clothing and costume terms. |
| Sound | Sound-related conventions (O.S., V.O., specific sound effect descriptions). |
AI Shot Generation in the Storyboarder
See the Storyboarder manual — AI Shot Generation section for the complete explanation of how Thenema Editor converts scene text into structured shot data for the storyboard.
AI Image Generation in the Storyboarder
See the Storyboarder manual — AI Image Generation section for the complete explanation of how Thenema Editor generates panel images from shot metadata and Character Bible references.
Text analysis in Pre-Production (breakdown, shot generation) is included in your subscription. Image generation in the Storyboarder consumes image tokens. Complete your shot list and Character Bible before generating images. See the Storyboarder Token Notice for the full guidance.
Tokens & Subscription
Text analysis allowance
Thenema Editor's text analysis features — Treatment analysis, Beat Sheet beat generation, Script Editor autocomplete and element detection, and Storyboarder shot generation — are included in your Thenema Writer subscription. There is no per-use token cost for these features. They are available as long as your subscription is active.
Image tokens
Storyboarder image generation and Character Bible portrait generation consume image tokens from a separate balance. Your monthly subscription includes a token allocation. Image tokens are replenished on your monthly renewal date.
| Feature | Token cost |
|---|---|
| Treatment analysis (any mode) | Included in subscription — no token cost |
| Beat Sheet beat generation (per card) | Included in subscription — no token cost |
| Script Editor element detection, autocomplete, CONT'D/MORE | Included in subscription — no token cost |
| Storyboarder AI Shot Generation (per scene) | Included in subscription — no token cost |
| Storyboarder AI Image Generation (per panel) | 1 image token per panel |
| Character Bible portrait generation (per character) | 1 image token per portrait |
| Single panel regeneration | 1 image token per regeneration |
When tokens run out
When your image token balance reaches zero, image generation and portrait generation stop working. Existing generated images are not affected — they remain in your project. Text analysis features continue working normally. To resume image generation before your next monthly renewal, purchase additional token packs from your Thenema Writer account page.
Unused image tokens are replaced — not added to — your new monthly allocation at renewal. For example, if you have 20 tokens remaining when your renewal date arrives and your plan includes 100 tokens per month, your new balance will be 100, not 120. Plan your image generation to use tokens before the renewal date if you need them.
Core Principles for Using Thenema Editor
It reads what you have written — it does not fill gaps
Thenema Editor can only analyse text that exists. If your Act II treatment is one paragraph, the analysis will be brief and limited. The more material you write, the more useful and specific the feedback becomes. Write first; analyse second.
Treat analysis as a second opinion, not a verdict
Thenema Editor is an analytical tool operating on text patterns. It does not know your intended genre, your cultural context, your target audience, your budget, or the specific vision you are working toward. Its feedback is a perspective — useful input, not a final judgment. Disagree with it freely when it does not fit your story.
Use it at natural revision points
The most productive use of Thenema Editor is at natural revision moments: after completing a full draft of an act, after populating all beat cards for one act, after finishing a complete scene in the Script Editor. Running it on fragments or half-written material produces less useful feedback.
For images: finalise before generating
For the Storyboarder's image generation specifically — every image you generate that you later decide you do not need is a token spent with no benefit. The shot list review step exists precisely to prevent this. Cut aggressively before generating.
Keep a record of useful feedback
Thenema Editor's analysis appears in the chat panel and is not automatically saved. If a piece of feedback is particularly useful, copy it into the Budget Notes field, the treatment's act tab, or a Beat Sheet card's notes field before closing the panel. Feedback is not stored between sessions.