AI Table Read: Hear Your Screenplay or Stage Play with a Full Cast

Upload a PDF, DOCX or plain text

Turning a screenplay to audio starts with a file the studio can read: a PDF with a text layer, DOCX, TXT or pasted text. FullCastBook doesn't open Final Draft's .fdx files. Final Draft's own help pages describe saving a script as a PDF, or exporting it to other formats through File > Export Script on Mac or File > Export Document on Windows. Plain text keeps the line layout cleanest. Fountain scripts are already plain text, so rename the .fountain file to .txt.

PDF works, but its lines are re-flowed on import, so a character cue can end up at the start of its own dialogue line. If you have the choice, upload plain text or DOCX, and either way give the speakers a closer look.

Character cues become voices; action lines go to a narrator

The layout that gives the screenplay reader AI its clearest signal is the standard one: the character's name in capitals on its own line, the dialogue directly below. Stage plays follow the same idea, so the advice holds whether you need a screenplay or a play script reader. A short scene, written for this page:

Scene heading: INT. ALL-NIGHT DINER – NIGHT

Action: Rain on the window. Maya slides into the booth across from Leo.

Character cue, on its own line: MAYA. Dialogue on the next line: You said ten minutes.

Character cue: LEO. Parenthetical: (not looking up). Dialogue: I said ten-ish.

After casting, the scene heading and the action belong to the narrator, and each speech to its character. Speaker detection is AI-based and was built for novels, so check every scene: look for a line given to the wrong character, and for a cue name such as “MAYA” left behind as a narrator line. Delete those, or the narrator announces every speaker. Fix any line's speaker in a click.

Parentheticals as direction: (whispering), (beat)

A parenthetical is an acting note, and it works best as one. Take “(whispering)” out of the text and put it in the line's direction, where it becomes [whispering] and the voice performs it instead of reading it aloud. “(beat)” is a pause, not a word: delete it, or start the next line with a direction like [after a pause].

Extensions need the same tidy-up. “(V.O.)” and “(O.S.)” can go, since the voice already belongs to the character; “(CONT'D)” should go everywhere, or you'll hear it every time a speech breaks across action. For more on what directions and sound tags like [sigh] can do, see multiple voices text to speech.

Listening for pacing, runtime and dialogue

The old rule of thumb says a screenplay page is about a minute of screen time, so a 100-page feature reads in roughly 100 minutes. A dialogue-only table read runs shorter, because action that would take screen time takes no time at all. Use the read for relative pacing, not a stopwatch: which scenes drag, which exchanges rush, and where an act lands flat.

Listen for the things a script reader AI catches better than your eyes: lines that are on the nose, two characters who sound alike on the page, speeches nobody could say in one breath. Rewrite in the studio and regenerate just those lines; regenerating uses credits again, so batch your fixes.

Sharing the read: an MP3 per scene or act

Every chapter exports on its own, so if each act or sequence is a chapter, you get one MP3 per act, a ZIP of them all, or an M4B with a marker at every act break. Send them to a co-writer, a producer or your writing group, say it's an AI read, and collect timestamped notes. Standard voices are fine for a notes pass; see the plans for longer scripts.

Table read vs audio drama: when to produce it fully

An AI table read is a listening draft: plain voices, no music, no sound design, made to hear the script and fix it. An audio drama is a finished production, with every scene performed, mixed and released. If the script is meant for the ear, the same project can grow into one: see the AI audio drama generator for how scene headings, sound cues and music are handled, and hear what a directed cast sounds like in the examples on the home page.