RunlinesFree tool
Off-book planner
Tell it the date you need to be off book, how many lines are yours, and how many minutes a day you have. It splits your lines into small groups, spreads them across the days, schedules reviews, and saves the last days for full runs. It runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere or saved.
How the schedule is built
The planner follows a few fixed rules, written out here so you can check them or plan by hand.
- Small groups. Your lines are split into groups of four (two paragraphs for a monologue or speech). A group is small enough to learn in one sitting.
- New groups spread evenly. The groups are shared out across your learning days, so no day gets a pile.
- Reviews on a gap. Each day you review the group you learned the day before and the one from three days before. A group learned near the end comes back in the full runs instead.
- A run from the top every day. Each session ends with a run of everything learned so far, which drills the joins between groups.
- Full runs at the end. With six or more days, the last two days before your date are full runs only; with three to five days, the last day is. With one or two days there is no separate run day; you run from the top at the end of each session.
- The day itself is a warm-up. One slow run early, then leave it alone.
- A load check. If the new lines per day look heavy for the minutes you have, the planner suggests splitting the day into two shorter sessions. This is a rule of thumb, not a measurement.
A schedule is a starting point, not a promise. If a day goes badly, carry its group into the next day and keep the full-run days at the end.
How to use your schedule
- Do each day's new group with cover, say, check: read the cue, say your line out loud from memory, uncover, check it word for word.
- Do the reviews the same way, before the new group if you are short on time.
- End every session with a run from the top, out loud, with someone or something reading the cues. Ways to run lines by yourself.
- Keep a list of every line you peeked at and start the next session with it.
The method behind these steps is in How to memorize lines fast.
Where Runlines fits
The Runlines app has its own, simpler plan: on first launch it asks "When is it?" and sets runs a day from your answer, from three a day for this week to one a day for a month out. The planner above shows which of those answers is closest to your date. In the app, each run reads the other parts aloud, covers your lines, and marks each one off book, learning, or shaky, so the list of lines you missed keeps itself. How the plan and the marks work.
