DramaQueen 4.7 – Update Report

This update contains new features, improvements and bug fixes. Additionally, a bonus trial period until April 30, 2026 has been activated.

NEW FEATURES

• Structure models in the Board panel: Structure elements can now be displayed as cards in the Board panel — in both grid and list view and in series mode. The cards support editing via double-click, drag & drop, selection and multi-selection, and a context menu with options for adding, deleting, and colorizing. Card height adjusts dynamically to the text content. Changes to the structure model are updated live in the Board panel and can be undone/redone. When switching between structure models, the positions of assigned scenes and steps are preserved.
• Turning points in the Board panel: Turning points can now be displayed in the Board panel — with drag & drop, dynamic card height, edit mode via double-click, and a context menu. The display can be restricted to turning points of specific storylines.
• Characters, locations and additional info on Board cards: Board cards can now also display appearing characters, locations, as well as interior/exterior and time of day (for film and audio drama) – in a separate area at the bottom of each card. Display options can be toggled individually via submenus.
• Board panel: single-line list view: The list view now offers a single-line mode that displays only summaries. Selected cards are highlighted with a gray title area. A grip handle for drag & drop appears on the right edge.
• Board panel status bar: The Board panel now shows a status bar with the active story model and the element count.
• Extended toolbar: Frequently used context menu options of the Board and Outline panel — such as Colorize, Highlights, Storyline assignment, Location, and Appearing characters — are now accessible directly from the toolbar. The corresponding column in the Outline panel opens automatically. Bulk actions for locations and characters are also available in the toolbar.
• Storylines in separate Board panels: Storylines can now be opened in separate Board panels.
• Drag & drop between panels: Drag & drop now also works from the Board to the Outline panel.
• New start panel: The start panel has been completely redesigned, with a new tab area and guided options: Self-explanatory start options for creating new documents or importing documents make it easier to get started. Story models can be selected right from the start. Available options adapt to the license version (FREE/PLUS/PRO) and the chosen medium. The “Create” button directly creates a new document with the most recently used settings.
• Recently opened files as tiles: Recently opened documents and user templates are now displayed as visual tiles — with document type icon, document name, date with time, and file size. For series, the document type is labeled with “/ Series”. A tooltip shows the full file name including path.
• Templates: Documents can now be saved as templates, viewed, imported, and deleted. The File menu also offers the options “New from template” and “Save as template“. The plotting templates have been reworked and consolidated into a single template that allows choosing the medium (film, novel, audio drama, stage) after the fact.
• Story model dialog completely redesigned: The “Choose model” dialog has been rebuilt from a vertical accordion layout to a horizontal left/right split layout with a new story model selection widget.
• New structure templates: Three new structure templates (3-act model, 4-act model, 5-act model) are available and usable from the PLUS version onward.
• Apply story models multiple times and colorize: A model can be applied MULTIPLE times (consecutively or alternating). Structure elements can be formatted with text and background color. Each model or copy can be colorized separately.
• Parallel story models: Different story models can be used in parallel.
• Combine story models with AI: In the “Choose model” dialog, multiple story model templates can be selected and merged into a single structure model using AI.
• Story models as AI context: In the AI chat, story models can be added as a context attachment — including multi-select. The new prompt templates “Story model” and “Find a story” are available.
• Turning points in storyline context: When storylines are attached as AI context, their turning points are now automatically included — with name, direction (positive/negative/no change), description, and assigned scene. Turning points with status “non-existent” are omitted.
• Extended AI context for text levels: When a text level (plot, outline, or script) is attached as AI context, the active structure model and the turning points of all storylines (including direction, description, and assigned element) are automatically included. This enables the AI to better analyze and consider the dramatic structure of the story.
• Extended AI context for entire document: When attaching the entire DQ document as AI context, the active structure model and the turning points of all storylines (including direction, description, and assigned element) are now automatically included as well.
• Auto-context for prompt templates: Auto-context for prompt templates automatically detects and updates relevant contexts. Saved prompts retain their context attachments.
• Context selection dialogs: AI context selection dialogs now include a “Select all” link and intelligent attachment bundling based on selection degree.

IMPROVEMENTS

• In the Outline panel, structure elements can now be colorized and deleted — also via multi-selection.
• Switching between grid and list view now automatically adjusts the width of the Board panel.
• Clicking on a structure element or turning point in the Outline or Board panel now scrolls the text panel to the corresponding position.
• The Outline panel no longer automatically switches from storyline to story view when it is the last open Outline panel.
• The Text panel now supports superscript and subscript formatting. New keyboard shortcuts (Cmd/Ctrl++ for subscript, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift++ for superscript) allow quick formatting, e.g. for chemical formulas like H₂O as well as area units like m². Pressing the shortcut again toggles back to normal.
• Light and Dark mode have been fundamentally reworked. Preset colors and colorizations now automatically adapt to the active theme. Dialog buttons use native macOS styling. Dropdown arrows appear more subtle.
• The DramaQueen logo is now always correctly inverted in Dark mode.
• The term “Script” is now also used for novel documents (previously called “Novel”), making the terminology consistent across all media types.
• When using the AI functions, the latest model from Anthropic, Claude Opus 4.7, is now available.
• Colorize – apply custom color directly: In the Colorize menu, the former Custom color… item, which always opened the color picker dialog, has been split into two separate items: Custom color applies the previously chosen custom color with a single click (with color swatch and checkmark). Choose custom color… opens the color picker dialog to select a new custom color. The chosen color is saved persistently and is immediately available for the next colorize action. Applies to background and text color in the Outline, Board, and Text panels.
• The Show structure model option can now be toggled independently in the Outline and Board panels.
• The Board panel now filters — analogous to the Overview panel — to show only the steps and scenes assigned to the selected storyline when a storyline is selected. The filtering automatically follows the global storyline selection in the toolbar. The display of the turning-points is also limited to the selected storyline in storyline mode.
• Moving structure elements: The first structure element can now be moved via drag&drop — in both the Outline and Board panels. Previously, moving was blocked. This restriction has been lifted.
• In the text editors, bullet formatting is now automatically removed when ENTER is pressed on an empty list item (bulleted or numbered). The indentation is reset and the paragraph becomes a normal paragraph — the behavior familiar from Word, Google Docs & others.
• In Audio and Stage documents, the colon after the character name in the ‘Character + Text’ text element is now configurable. In Document Settings under Text additions (with ‘All characters + Text’ selected), the separator between character name and dialog text can be changed or removed. Additionally, a leading and trailing text can be configured.
• A new prompt template ‘Formal consistency’ is now available in the AI Chat.
• AI Chat – context attachments: When an external file is attached as AI context and the file name exceeds the available width of the chat input area, the name now fades out with a gradient at the right edge instead of being cut off or overflowing. The display adapts dynamically when the panel width changes.
• Story arcs panel: For new documents, the Story Arcs panel no longer appears automatically in the panel bar. Instead, a link Open story arcs panel is displayed at the end of the Story Arc section in the Storylines panel. Clicking it adds the Story Arcs panel to the panel bar and opens it directly. For existing documents that already contain story arc data, the panel is added automatically. (PRO)

BUG FIXES

• In the Board panel (list view), it was not possible to drop a content card between two adjacent structure cards when there were no content cards in between. No insertion mark was displayed. Now an insertion mark is shown when hovering over a structure card and the drop inserts the element at the correct position.
• In the Board panel, text could jump when entering edit mode and individual words could wrap to the next line. Additionally, the script font was occasionally displayed instead of the system font. Text position and line wrapping now match exactly between the display and the editor.
• Resetting text and background color for structure elements is now possible.
• On macOS, inserting images could rarely cause the application to crash. This occurred when the document or tab was closed while the file dialog for selecting the image was opening. This crash is now prevented.
• In the Document Settings dialog on Windows, the text element dropdown (e.g. scene heading, dialog, action) could remain empty after an internal error. This occurred when the element list was refreshed, e.g. when switching between text levels. The dropdown is now populated reliably.
• In the Board panel, a rendering error could occur when cards with enabled footer information (location, characters, turning points) were displayed very narrow.
• In rare cases, DramaQueen could become unresponsive and had to be terminated via the Task Manager. This issue occurred mainly during intensive work with Undo and Redo combined with other editing operations. The application now responds reliably in all situations and no longer freezes.
• The ‘Show all non-printable characters (control characters)‘ setting in the Texts panel’s gear menu was not saved when quitting the application and had to be re-enabled after every restart. The setting is now persisted.
• In the Overview and Board panels, removing a storyline assignment could cause a crash when the affected element would no longer be assigned to any storyline.