Frequently asked questions

WrittenBy is a professional network for the film and media industry. It’s where writers, directors, producers, and the rest of the crew build a professional identity, develop projects, and find collaborators — a place for real, in-progress work, not a portfolio site or a script marketplace.

Writers, directors, producers, actors, cinematographers, editors, composers, and other film professionals — whether you’re an established credit or just starting out. You pick your primary role when you join, and it shapes what your profile and dashboard emphasize.

Your profile is your professional identity on WrittenBy: role, bio, credits-in-progress, links (website, IMDb, Instagram), and the projects you’re part of. A public profile at writtenby.com/your-username is visible to anyone, even signed-out visitors.

Verification is a separate, optional step: request it from Settings, and a WrittenBy admin reviews and approves or rejects it against the role you claimed. A verified badge means an admin has actually checked — it isn’t automatic and can’t be set by editing your profile.

A project is a workspace for one piece of work in development — synopsis, script, team, mood board, pitch deck, and activity all live under it. Every project has a visibility setting:

• Public — listed in Discover, visible to anyone.
• Unlisted — viewable with the direct link, not listed in Discover.
• Private — visible only to invited team members.

The script itself has its own, separate visibility setting (private, team-only, request access, or public), so you can share a project’s existence without handing out the screenplay. Project owners and admins manage the team from the project’s Team tab — inviting members, assigning roles, and opening positions for others to apply to.

Discover projects under Projects — search by title or synopsis, filter by genre or production stage, and sort by newly added, recently updated, or most viewed. Find people under Network — search by name, role, or bio.

Yes — when starting a new script version, you can upload a PDF instead of writing from scratch. WrittenBy extracts the actual text from your PDF and uses simple formatting rules (indentation, capitalization, scene-heading conventions) to guess which lines are action, dialogue, character cues, and so on. The words themselves always come directly from your file — nothing is invented or rewritten. If a guess is wrong, you can retag any line by hand after import.

This works for text-based PDFs. A scanned or image-only PDF has no extractable text, and WrittenBy will tell you so honestly rather than guessing at content — start from a blank draft and paste or retype the script instead. Very long PDFs (over 400 pages) import their first 400 pages, with a note so you know to add the rest by hand.

Each project shows how many people have viewed it. A view is counted once per visitor — signed in or not — no matter how many times they refresh the page, so the number reflects distinct interest rather than traffic noise. Viewing your own project doesn’t add to its count.

Project and profile visibility are enforced at the database level, not just hidden in the interface — a private project’s data isn’t reachable by anyone outside its team, even by querying the API directly. Uploaded files (avatars, cover images, scripts, mood boards) are isolated per account, and only you can replace or remove your own. See our Privacy Policy for the full details on what we collect and why.

When email confirmation is required, new accounts verify their address with a one-time code sent to their inbox before the account is fully active. WrittenBy also sends security notifications for sensitive changes — password changes and email address changes — so you know if something on your account changed without you.

Every profile has a report option for spam, harassment, inappropriate content, impersonation, or fake credentials — reports go straight to the WrittenBy admin team for review, not to the person you reported. You can also block another user from Settings, which hides you from each other in Discover and search without either of you being notified.

WrittenBy Pro is planned as our tier for AI-assisted tools — think script coverage, formatting help, and similar — built on top of everything free accounts already have. It hasn’t launched yet; this section will be updated with real details (and pricing) once it does. We won’t claim a feature exists before it’s actually live.

Reach the WrittenBy team through the contact details in our Privacy Policy or Terms of Service. For account security concerns — a change you didn’t make, suspicious activity — reset your password immediately and contact support.