“Every screenwriter has read something
and known exactly what it needed
— and had nowhere to put it.”
CanonBoard gives you a collaborative environment to help flesh out ideas.
One script. One beat at a time.
CanonBoard is a writers’ group for screenwriters. A script is written in the open, one beat at a time: the Board reads what exists, writes what comes next, and upvotes the drafts it would make canon. The best beat is paid for and joins the script.
Writing rooms work. Getting into one is the problem.
A room full of writers arguing about what happens next is how most good television gets written. It is also the most closed door in the industry: you get in through an agent, a credit, or somebody who owes you a favour, and until you do, the work you would have done in that room stays in a folder on your laptop.
Every attempt to open it up by letting a crowd vote on the story fell apart the same way. Votes decided the plot, the crowd pulled in every direction at once, and the script turned to noise. Open participation with nothing holding the story together does not build a script. It dissolves one.
So the Board stays a Board. One script, one open beat, everybody writing against the same pages. The ranking decides which beat is best, the writer who wrote it is paid and credited, and the script moves on to the next one.
From a draft to canon, in four moves.
Every project has a Board: where the script is read, where the round runs, and where the Board votes on the drafts. Joining is free, there is no application, and every writer whose beat wins is credited by name on the script it joins.
The Board holds the script as it stands, in script format. Read it, then read the round: it names the beat the story needs next.
Upvote the ones that belong. Nobody sees who wrote what while a round is live, so the writing is judged and not the writer.
Submit one draft for the open slot — a scene, an exchange, a turn. Voting a few times earns it, or a Canon Credit buys past the fork.
The Board's ranking decides. The winning beat joins the script, its writer is credited by name, and where a round carries a prize, its writer is paid.
The money moves toward the writer, not away from them. Most rounds are free to enter; where one charges, the fee is a few Canon Credits and it is named before you write. The winning beat is paid the prize announced with that round, and there is no payout minimum — withdraw whatever you have earned. CanonBoard is funded by subscriptions, not by taking a cut of your work. More about the Board.
A writers’ group with the door already open.
A Board is a story world whose creator has invited people in. Read the whole canon as it stands — the characters, the locations, the rules, the timeline — and then write into it. Your draft goes in beside everyone else's, and the Board votes between them two at a time.
One person holds the creative line. Everyone else in the group can genuinely change what happens next.
Drafts sit in the open, judged by the Board. Nothing moves a draft up the order except how the Board voted on it — the creator still decides what becomes canon.
From an idea in your head to canon in someone’s world.
Read the script as it stands, and the beat the round is asking for.
Read them and upvote the ones that belong. That earns an entry.
One scene, one exchange, one turn. The creator still makes the call.
Your beat joins the script as canon, with your name on it for good.
The next beat is open.
Tell us what you write and we'll put you on the Board working on it. Reading the script is free, most rounds are free to enter, and the writer whose beat wins is credited on the script and paid.
- Free to joinFree to join
- No applicationNo application
- Canon creditCredit for what becomes canon
A document cannot check itself.
Prose is the wrong shape for a world that has to stay consistent. Structure is what lets software help you, and it is the only difference between a bible you maintain and a bible that maintains itself.
Every part of the world is a card
Characters, locations, lore, world rules, timeline entries and relationships are typed objects on one infinite canvas — not headings in a document that only you can navigate.
And every card knows the others
Because the cards are typed, the engine can read the world as a graph rather than as prose. That is what makes the map, the timeline and the contradiction scan possible at all.
So the world can be stress-tested
Conflict Detection cross-references the whole canon and surfaces contradictions in plain English — a character dead in one place and alive in another, a rule broken three chapters later.
Secrets stay sealed.
The Locked Vault holds the parts of the world nobody else gets to see — including the engine. A mystery you have already solved is not a contradiction, and it is not training data.
And it is yours to take.
Full Export produces a formatted document of the entire world whenever you want one. You own your canon, entirely and unambiguously; nothing here is a lock-in.
Every tool, in full, on the features page.
A group is only worth walking into if the world holds together.
Open a world to an audience and every soft spot in it becomes public. Most worlds live in five places — Notion, Google Docs, a whiteboard, and two notebooks. A character's age lives in one file, the rule that depends on it in another, and the timeline that breaks them both in a third. Nothing is wrong, exactly. It's just that nothing is checked.
So the contradictions stay silent until somebody finds one. A rule established in season one quietly stops being true in season three. The lighthouse keeper's daughter drowned at nine and came back at nine, and eleven years later somebody writes her a birthday. In a private document that is an embarrassment at the table read. In a public room it is the thing your audience is writing against.
So underneath every group is Canon Canvas. Your canon lives as connected cards on an infinite canvas, and the engine reads the whole thing and flags the contradictions that break stories — including the ones that just arrived as an entry.
From blank canvas to a living world, in four moves.
Drop cards on the canvas — characters, locations, world rules, lore and plot points.
Map every relationship, and lay every event out in in-world time, not episode order.
Run Conflict Detection over the whole world. It flags contradictions in plain English.
Lock spoilers in the Vault, rewind any decision, and export the whole world in one click.
Every part of it exists to keep the canon coherent.
A pannable, zoomable whiteboard where the logic, rules, characters, and threads of your world live as connected cards.
Every connection in your world, drawn. One navigable graph, every edge labeled. Pull one node, see what breaks.
Every event in in-world time, not episode order. Age inconsistencies and continuity breaks surface automatically.
Track every storyline across the world — where each one opens, tangles, and pays off — so nothing gets dropped between seasons.
Cross-references your entire world against your canon and surfaces every contradiction in plain English, with an explanation.
It interviews you one question at a time and shapes your answers into structured canon. It never writes your story.
Drop in a script, treatment, or doc and CanonBoard builds your board automatically — characters, locations, rules, timeline, extracted and connected.
Season-two reveals, hidden motivations, the twist. Lock them in the Vault and the engine never flags them — and the crowd never sees them.
Every decision logged. Rewind the world to any previous state — including the one from three weeks ago that was right.
One click generates a complete, formatted document of every element in your world — ready for a studio, a network, or your own team.
The full breakdown lives on the features page.
- A writers' group with an open seat
Every project has a Board: the script as it stands, the round that is open on it, and the drafts competing for the next beat. Read it, write one, upvote the best. The ranking decides, and the writer whose beat wins is credited and paid.
- A story-logic canvas
An open infinite canvas where the logic, rules, characters, and threads of your world live as connected cards — one navigable map instead of five scattered docs.
- A stress test
Conflict Detection reads your full world and cross-references every entry against your canon — dead-then-alive characters, broken rules, two people in one place at once — and flags each contradiction in plain English with an explanation.
- A single source of truth
Live cursors, role permissions, change history. Your whole team — and, if you open it, your whole audience — work from one world.
- Not a writing app
No screenplay editor, no prose tools, no sentence-level anything. You write where you write.
- Not a ghostwriter
Nothing here generates story content or suggests plot decisions. It asks. You answer. That's the whole deal.
- Not a wiki
Storage is table stakes. A filing cabinet doesn't tell you the file in drawer three contradicts the file in drawer nine.
- Not a note-taking tool
Notion is great at being Notion. CanonBoard is purpose-built for story architecture — cards know they're characters, rules, and threads.
It doesn't write for you. It interviews you — and organizes what you already know.
Your voice is the product. Ours would just be in the way.
Built for the people who open the rooms — and the people who walk in.
The creators are screenwriters and showrunners, TV writers' rooms working from one source of truth, and indie IP developers building original animation, film, and game narrative. Alongside them: feature writers with a world bigger than one script, vertical-drama teams shipping episodes weekly, and short-film writers building toward something longer.
The contributors are everyone else — writers looking for a group to be useful in, and readers who have been arguing about somebody else's world for years and would rather do it somewhere it counts. Joining a room is free, there is no application, and what you get made canon is credited to you by name.
The free plan is a complete structural product — canvas, relationship mapping, geography, timeline, full export, and every part of a round — reading the script, upvoting drafts, writing a beat. Not a trial. The power tools — Conflict Detection, Refine, and Smart Import — start on Core, now just $7/mo. If you develop stories, you can start today and never pay us. We're betting your story outgrows one project.
The writers shaping canon right now.
Ranked by ideas that actually made it into a world, then by ideas drafted. Every name here started by joining one group — and here is what it earned them.
What drafting actually earns you.
Win a round and your beat joins the script, credited to you, in public.
Every round names a cash prize when it opens. The winning writer is paid it.
Drafts and wins move you up the public leaderboard of writers shaping canon.
What writers are saying.
I really like the idea behind this platform, and I’m already enjoying using it. As a filmmaker, I especially love the storyboard feel of it all, and I’ve already begun setting up a book with an entirely new world, alongside characters that users can literally click on to learn more about. It feels very interactive and makes readers genuinely feel like they’re part of the experience.
The team has also been friendly and supportive, and their enthusiasm for what they’re building is infectious. Overall, this is a top-tier platform.
One of my favorite parts of writing is brainstorming ideas with other creative thinkers, and I love that CanonBoard makes it so easy to collaborate on publicly-available stories. It’s like having access to an online writer’s room whenever you want!
The safe space from writer’s block and decreased creativity! Truly, here you will find no shortage of ideas, stories, themes, or plots. You can always receive and view others’ ideas for your project and intertwine them with your own creative writing, and truly give your viewers the best, most interactive creative process for your medium.
What writers ask before they join.
Do I have to pay to join the group?
No. Reading the script, upvoting drafts and writing into a round cost nothing on any plan, including the free one. There is no application, no interview and no waiting list — make an account and you can read the current script straight away. Some rounds charge an entry fee, paid in Canon Credits and named before you write; a Canon Credit can also skip the upvote requirement, on any plan that has credits.
Do I need experience to join a group?
No. Boards are open to anyone with an account, and plenty of the best drafts come from readers rather than working writers. If you have written professionally that will show in your drafts — but nothing here asks for a résumé, and no one is screened before they can contribute.
What is The Board?
The Board is the group of writers and readers who decide what happens next in a script. It is also the page where that happens: the script as it stands, the round currently open, and the drafts competing for the next beat. Everyone on the Board reads the same pages, votes on the drafts other people wrote, and can submit one of their own. What the Board votes for becomes canon.
Do I own the idea I draft?
Read the Board Participation Terms before you draft — they set out exactly what happens to an idea you submit and what rights the creator gets if it becomes canon. Short version: canonized ideas become part of the creator's world, and you keep your credit permanently. Do not draft anything you are not willing to see used on those terms.
What do I actually get out of this?
Three things. A permanent credit on anything of yours that becomes canon. Whatever perks the creator has offered their Board — some offer a credit mention, early pages, or a character named after a contributor. And the part most people come for: writing inside a real world with other people, and having the person building it read what you wrote.
The script is open. Write the next beat.
A room is reading the same pages you are, and the beat they need next is still unwritten. Free to join, and your name stays on the beat that wins.