Three columns, one season
The season planner in AI Drama Creator is a board with three columns: Outline, In production, and Finished. That is the entire interface for planning, and the simplicity is deliberate. Cards start on the left as ideas, move to the middle when you begin generating scenes, and arrive on the right once the episode is stitched. At any moment you can read the state of the whole season by looking at which column is crowded.
A board like this does something a document cannot. A script file is linear; you read it top to bottom. A board is spatial. You can see that episode seven is still an outline while episode eight is already in production, which usually means an order problem worth fixing before more credits are spent. Columns make the production state visible without a status meeting.
Cards, numbering, and synopses
Each card is an episode. It has a number, a working title, a synopsis, and a cliffhanger. Numbering is automatic but editable, so inserting a new episode between four and five renumbers everything after it. Titles are working titles; nobody expects them to be final at the outline stage, and they are easy to change later. The synopsis is the heart of the card: three to six sentences describing what happens, who is present, and what shifts by the end.
The synopsis is also what later suggestions read. When you ask for a next-episode draft, the synopses of prior cards are the raw material. That is a strong argument for writing them honestly, including the subplots and the loose threads, because a vague synopsis produces a vague suggestion. A good card is a short memo to your future self about what this episode owes the season.
Moving a card through production
Dragging a card from Outline to In production opens the episode for scenes. This is where the planner meets the generator. You add scenes beneath the card, each with characters and outfits from the series cast library, a background, optional props, a beat description, and a duration of four to fifteen seconds. The card shows how many scenes are finished versus pending, and the total runtime updates as scenes are added.
When every scene is finished, the stitch control appears. Stitching concatenates the scenes in order into one 9:16 MP4 on the server and moves the card to Finished. If you later decide the act break needs a different shot, you regenerate that one scene, stitch again, and the card stays in Finished with the newer cut attached. The columns describe reality rather than a plan you have to remember to update.
Spotting arc problems from the board
A season arc has a shape, and the board lets you see it. Read the cliffhanger fields down the Outline column and you have the spine of the season in a dozen lines. If the first half is all setup and the turn arrives at episode nine, the run will feel slow. If every card in the back half resolves something, there is no tension left for the finale. These are the notes a writers' room gives, and the board surfaces them without anyone having to read a forty-page document.
The planner also makes batch work practical. Outline the whole season in one sitting while the ideas are hot, then produce one episode a day from the top of the column. Because the cast library is shared across every card, there is no setup cost when you pull the next card into production. The board is where an outline becomes a schedule.
Planning against a credit budget
Outlining is free: cards, synopses, and cliffhanger text cost nothing. Credits are spent when scenes render and when episodes stitch. At Standard 720p a scene is 6 credits per second, library images are 3 credits apiece, a next-episode suggestion is 1 credit, and a stitch is 2 credits. Because the card shows total planned seconds, you can estimate an episode before generating a single frame.
A season of ten short episodes at roughly fifty seconds each is about 500 seconds of Standard video, which the Season plan at $29 a month with 1000 credits accommodates with room for retakes. Shorter runs fit the Episode plan at $9 with 250 credits. One-time packs cover a heavier month. New accounts receive 2 free credits to try a couple of suggestions before picking a plan on the billing page.
