Final Draft Writer

Final Draft has released an iPad app.

This is a nice little app. It provides all the basic functionality of Final Draft. You can easily edit and format text. Typing works via the iPad keyboard.

If you touch the screen and hold down, you get a little magnifying glass you can move around to make it easier to land the cursor where you want. You also then have the option to add a Script Note.

When you're done, you can email from the app, or use Dropbox. The app autosaves fairly often.

All in all, this does just about everything I would want an iPad app to do. You can't do the fancier stuff, but on the other hand, you don't have to lug your entire computer around to do it.

I don't see myself writing an entire script on an iPad. The touchscreen keyboard is too unwieldy. Anyway, I don't go very far without my laptop. But I could imagine making notes on a script, or trimming some dialog, on the subway or at a cafe or in the park. When I'm at TIFF, I'm not going to want to schlep my laptop with me everywhere, but I will have my iPad at all times.

Right now the app is $30. They say they'll jack that up to $50 at the end of September. For $30, it's a handy little app. You might find it handy, too.

Subtitles on the Page

Suppose you're writing foreign language dialog that the audience won't understand. My usual approach is to say it's in (German), say, and then write the dialog in English but in parentheses. (I got the idea from Doonesbury.) You don't have to write clever German dialog because the script's readership is not likely to be able to appreciate your witty bon mots. (Or whatever the German is for that.)

But what if a significant chunk of the audience may understand the dialog? E.g. you're writing a Canadian script in French and English? Or an American script in Spanish and English?

On BON COP / BAD COP, we had French dialog with English subtitles, and English dialog with French subtitles. Since a huge chunk of the audience would be bilingue, we had to write both the dialog and the subtitles into the script. (In one or two places, I think we might even have written subtitles that really didn't match the dialog. Like politicians do all the time.)

But how do you do that on the page? On BON COP, we were using Final Draft. We created a separate script element called subtitle that was 10 point Times, italics, and red. So it was easy to tell the difference from the dialog, which was 12 point Courier.

Of course, that plays hell with your page count. And it breaks up the read visually. And Screenwriter, should you be using it, won't let you create new screenplay formatting elements, so far as I can tell.

Another way to do it would be to put the translation in the action, in italics, but in regular old Courier 12.

Yet another way to do it would be to format bilingual dialog as dual dialog -- spoken dialog on the left, subtitles on the right. This would do the least damage to the page count. It ought to break up the read the least -- you just read the right column or the left column, depending on your language skillz.

Alors, qu'est-ce que vous en pensez? Also, was meinst du?

Screenwriting Software

Thanks to the 100 people who've filled out the screenwriting software survey.

I was surprised how many people are using Celtx -- 25%! Who knew? I guess that's a real program, then!

Final Draft is by far the most popular program across all screenwriters -- 50% -- and particularly among emerging writers -- 65%. But among screenwriters who identified themselves as professionals, Movie Magic Screenwriter leads by 7 to 5 (Final Draft) to 3 (Celtx). The sample size is small, but I think the results are interesting. You can draw two conclusions: either MMSW is easier to use by people who write for a living, or there are a lot of answers from working TV writers who use MMSW for the sake of the production they're on.

Fascinating, Captain...

Screenwriter, the Review

The makers of Movie Magic Screenwriter were kind enough to give me a review copy of their latest version, so I've been working in Screenwriter on some of my new projects to familiarize myself with it.

When I wrote CRAFTY SCREENWRITING, I did not like Screenwriter at all. It was a clunky port of a Windows program onto the Mac platform. I found that where Final Draft was intuitive -- it worked about the way I thought it should work -- Screenwriter was a classic Windows program. It had good capabilities, but you had to learn an arbitrary series of commands to get them going.

So I've been a Final Draft guy all along. I've bought (or got a review copy) of each version as they came along. (I liked Final Draft 8.)

But I've been hearing a lot about Screenwriter.

Screenwriter has always had one killer app. Movie Magic makes the budgeting software everyone I know uses (Movie Magic Budgeting) and some terrific movie scheduling software (Movie Magic Scheduling). The three programs are built to hook into each other. So you can save your cast list from Screenwriter and upload it into Scheduling, and you automatically know which scenes which characters appear in, and how many pages they are. This saves a lot of work for the production manager. When you're in production on a TV show, that's a big deal. Production managers would much rather you work in Screenwriter.

Somewhere in the intervening years, Screenwriter went through a heavy redesign on the Mac. It was always a fairly powerful program. It is now much more intuitive and much less cranky.

Its Import feature is much, much better than it used to be. It used to be quite a chore to port a Final Draft script over to Screenwriter. Now you can save from Final Draft to RTF, and into Screenwriter, and you will have very, very little cleanup to do. Even a port from properly formatted text goes smoothly -- which means you can effectively import a PDF into Screenwriter just by saving the PDF as text.

One thing I like a lot about Screenwriter is that it keeps your scene outline in a sidebar, so you can easily see how your scenes flow -- and change the scene order -- while looking at the pages. Final Draft has its Scene Navigator mode, but you can't look at the script at the same time. In fact, on Screenwriter, you can look at any level of outline, from Act to Scene to Beat, while also looking at your text.

Screenwriter still isn't 100% intuitive. It has its ways. For example, rather than hitting "tab" to go from a character name to a parenthetical, you hit "return" to go to dialog and then parenthesis to change the dialog to a parenthetical. If you want to actually put a parenthesis in dialog, then you have to go hunting for your manual to discover that you need to type "control-open-paren" to get a parenthesis in dialog. To uppercase something is control-U. (Screenwriter loves to use the "control" key, a sign of a Windows port.) None of this is a big deal, you just have to learn it.

MMSW comes with all sorts of features set to "on" that you have to turn off. For example, if you type a period, it adds two spaces automatically. I don't like two spaces after a period (see my post One Space or Two), but even if I did, I don't want them added automatically, because I automatically add my own spaces.

It has a minor flaw that, in index card form, you can't see more than 12 cards at a time. In Final Draft, you can view as many cards across as you like, so if you're willing to put up with small cards (or have a big screen) you can view half the script at once.

It is annoying that you can't OMIT a scene unless you lock pages. MMSW assumes that I would never want to do that. But sometimes I like to cut a scene but keep it available, because I'm not sure I really want to cut it. Sometimes I want to remind a producer or director that I've cut a scene, even though we're in development and long before the point where I'd be locking pages. In Final Draft, I can just OMIT the scene, and I can even revise the omitted header, so it can read:

OMITTED - JERRY GOES TO THE PARTY

And should I ever want that scene back, I can just "unomit" it.

Another minor flaw is that some of the shortcuts get in the way. For example, I like to open up white space on my screen when I'm working on a scene. However if I type "return" twice, Screenwriter assumes that I want a slugline -- because a screenplay should never have two blank lines in a row. I find that irritating. If I wanted a slugline, I'm fully capable of typing "INT." myself.

If you want to write (V.O.) after a character name, it's super-easy: just type "(v" after the name. But if you want to write (V.O. PRELAP), which is something I sometimes like to type, when I'm pre-lapping dialog from the next scene, it's vastly irritating. I have to type "(" after the name, then click on a dropdown list to allow me to "add as text," then type "V.O. prelap."

And apparently you have to do this every time -- there doesn't seem to be an easy way to add V.O. PRELAP to a list.

You can easily change definitions of the standard screenplay elements -- dialogue, character, transition, etc. But what if you want to define a new one? For example, I sometimes define a "song" element that looks like dialog, but has longer lines, and arbitrary line breaks. Or when I'm working on a bilingual script, and want a "subtitle" element to follow the dialog -- I don't see how I can do that in Screenwriter. But I can in Final Draft.

I can format dual dialog and see it onscreen in Final Draft; in MMSW, dual dialog only views properly once previewed or printed.

All this adds up to a little occasional frustration. I actually got my review copy a couple of months ago. I've been playing with it since then because I wanted to take the time to get up to speed. As a Final Draft veteran, it took me almost no time to learn how to do 95% of what I needed. But after over a month, there are still these little doodads that get in the way. It's possible that I could eventually figure out how to fix some of these issues if I spend enough time with the program. But why should I have to, when I can do them all easily in Final Draft? Production managers aren't the people I have to please, producers and directors are. And they read my scripts in PDF anyway.

My feeling is that Final Draft was built on top of a word processor. It assumes you know what you want to do, and will let you do what you want. If that causes formatting errors, that's your lookout. I feel like Screenwriter is built on something other than a word processor -- perhaps a database program of some kind. So if what you are trying to do does not fit Screenwriter's ideas of what a screenplay has to look like, tough luck.

Screenwriter seems ideal for someone who does not type very fast, for whom saving a few keystrokes is more important than being able to freely compose. Since I type slightly faster than I can think, I don't want to save keystrokes, I want to save brain cycles.

Incidentally, neither Screenwriter nor Final Draft, so far as I can tell, can put two pages up on the screen. That's frustrating. I have a beautiful 22" Dell monitor looming over my 15% Macbook Pro screen, so I have a fair amount of real estate. I'd really like to be able to see two pages at once. With so many nifty features packed into this program, is viewing two pages too much to ask?

All in all, Screenwriter is a good program. I give it a solid B+. It's something you probably want to know how to use. Your production manager will thank you for using it. From the survey I did of my own readers, it seems to be the preferred program among professional screenwriters.

But after a month, I am still trying to iron out issues. I will almost certainly finish the screenplay I'm writing in Screenwriter. But I think I might go back to Final Draft when I start my new one. And that is ultimately the only real recommendation I can give.

UPDATE: Note also DMc's terrible experiences with FD's customer service, linked in his comment below. I should also mention that FD uses a bad system of authentification where anything you do to your computer -- e.g. updating the OS -- can wipe out your authorization, requiring a call to customer service. (However, they cheerfully restore installs once you do call them.) Screenwriter uses a smarter system where if you lose your computer you can simply go to the website, delete the old authorization on the old/dead/lost computer, and transfer the authorization to a new computer.

Because I do prefer Final Draft, here's a link to buy it:

One space or two?

While we're on the subject of formatting: one space after a period, or two?

Back in the day of the typewriter, the standard was two spaces after a period. Then along came computers with proportionally spaced fonts, and the standard is now one.

But Screenwriter defaults to two spaces, and Courier is a monospaced font.

Do you use one space or two?



Free Web Survey

UPDATE: A slight majority use a single space.

Blank Lines: A survey

I like to put one blank line before a slugline. In general, I feel there should never be more than one blank line in a row in a screenplay. Waste of space, y'know.

However, Screenwriter comes with the default set to two blank lines before a slugline. So which is the industry standard.

If you have an opinion, please vote. If you have a strenuous opinion, please vote and comment. Thanks!

Free Online Surveys

UPDATE: So far, the pros overwhelmingly (eight to one) use a single blank line. Everyone else is split almost evenly, with slightly more using single spaces.

Final Draft 8

After my little issue with Final Draft 7 and the Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard installer, the Final Draft people were kind enough to send me a review copy of Final Draft 8.

FD8 isn't a spectacular leap forward over FD7; there just isn't that much more you can do in a script formatting program. Mostly they have made improvements to all the bells and whistles.

For example, they have improved their very useful ScriptCompare tool. If you have two scripts, ScriptCompare will mark the changes between one and the other -- very handy if people have been making changes without using Revision mode. FD8 does a better job of recognizing when you've only changed a word or two, rather than marking the whole sentence as changed.

They've improved FD's ability to work with index cards. You can turn your beat sheet into index cards, move them around, tweak them, and then put them back into script format in the new order. You can also color your index cards to help you track your A, B and C stories.

FD8 stores its scripts in a new file format (.fdx instead of .fdr). The .fdr format was opaque to Mac's Spotlight universal text finder; the .fdx format is transparent, so you can use Spotlight to find the script where you used the phrase "rabbit stewardess" if you so desire.

Script Navigator is now Scene Navigator, and you can keep your scene list open while you write pages, rather than having to go back and forth between your beat sheet and pages.

And, there's a nifty new feature that lets you cheat your page count globally or locally.

Overall, there's no new "killer app." But there are some very nice improvements to a program that I continue to find user-friendly.

I have heard many people say nice things about Movie Magic Screenwriter, and I expect it integrates better with Movie Magic Scheduling and Movie Magic Budgeting. If you're on a production, that might be important. I'll let you know if I ever change over.

In the mean time, you can buy Final Draft here:

Style Sheet?

Q. Your website no longer has available the Word style sheet you mentioned in your book. Is it no longer available?

It's been superseded. There are free screenplay formatting programs around, like MindStar's Script Editor and Celtx and Scripped and Zhura. Check'em out.

Don't CUT TO:

Q. Your book talks about how to use CUT TO:

I've been after Henry Holt to let me do a second edition of CRAFTY SCREENWRITING for just this sort of thing. No one uses CUT TO: any more. The occasional WIPE TO: for comic effect, or a FLASHBACK TO: and then a BACK TO:, because you really need those to stand out. SPLIT SCREEN is crucial if you're using that device. But plain old CUT TO is old hat and wastes real estate.

Sorry 'bout that!

Q. In a recent spec, I didn't include any of these kind of directions, except for a couple of 'close up on XXX' and 'ANGLES'. Is this ok or too minimalistic?

Try to avoid "We are CLOSE ON:" and "ANGLE ON". These are shooting script directions. They don't really belong in a spec or a selling draft. They don't really belong in a shooting draft, either, unless you're the showrunner and you really don't trust your director to shoot the scene the right way, in which case why the heck did you hire him?

Shouting

It's pretty well established by now that ALL CAPS IS SHOUTING.

So if you have a character shouting at someone, you use all caps.

But what about a party scene where everyone is bellowing over the sound of the music. Personally, I find writing all the dialog in ALL CAPS makes it feel more like a party. But I've had execs tell me not to do that.

What's your experience?

Songs Pre Lyrics

Q. I'm not a songwriter, so it's probably a bad idea for me to pretend to be, no?

But then what do I do in the script? Especially when the lyrics are helping move the story forward?

• JOHN
• (song)
• [Verse 1]

But that doesn't tell you what the content of the song is.

Another idea is:

• JOHN
• (song)
• [Verse 1, about how he wishes she would stay]

I'm hoping neither of those is right, because they're awfully clunky. And I'm hoping I don't have to write the lyrics myself, because chances are the lyrics wouldn't be more elegant than what's above. And I can't afford to bring a songwriter aboard before I get funding.

If you're not a lyricist, just describe the song. But I would do it in the action, not in dialog. It confuses the reader when there are things in dialog that aren't dialog.

I would venture to say it is almost impossible to get a movie musical set up that's not based on a Broadway musical that's already a hit. The person writing in, though, is writing a short film, and the financing is apparently not an issue.

You can do the same thing if there's a song on the radio: "There's a song on the tinny radio, a sad song that sort of fills the air without grabbing your attention." You don't need to write the lyrics for that, either.

Sitcom Format or Drama Format?

I'm writing a spec for a TV show called Party Down on Starz. It's like Arrested Development and all those other comedies on the pay networks. No laugh tracks, not your typical sitcom, so should I write the script in sitcom format with those annoying A and B scene headlines, or like an hour long drama, that I'm more comfortable with?

Scripts for single camera comedies like ARRESTED and 30 rock use drama format. Three camera comedies may or may not use sitcom format.

However, there's no real point in speccing a series that no one's heard of. If people don't know the show, they don't know how well you've reproduced its template, characters, voices, etc., in your spec.

Doubling Up Dialog

You'll sometimes see this in a script:

• ALFRED
• Respectfully, Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man you don't fully understand, either.


• ALFRED
• (looks at Wayne)
• I was in Burma. A long time ago. My friends and I were working for the local government...

(From THE DARK KNIGHT.) A reader suggested that this is a good way to break up dialog without putting an extraneous line of action in between the two speeches.

I disagree. What it looks like to me is that there was a line of action that got cut, and the writers (the Nolan brothers) forgot to join the two speeches. It's jarring, and it throws me out of the read. I would suggest joining the speeches:

• ALFRED
• Respectfully, Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man you don't fully understand, either.
• (looks at Wayne)
• I was in Burma. A long time ago. My friends and I were working for the local government...

Or, put in a line of action:

• ALFRED
• Respectfully, Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man you don't fully understand, either.


• He looks directly at Wayne.
  
  
• ALFRED
• I was in Burma. A long time ago. My friends and I were working for the local government...

I don't know whether there was a line of action there or not. The Nolan brothers may well have broken up the speech for rhythm. Or it may just be sloppy. I suspect it was for rhythm. But the Nolan Bros can do whatever the hell they want in their scripts at this point. I would hesitate to learn formatting from either (a) directors who write or (b) anyone who gets paid over a million bucks a pop. Their scripts get read much more carefully than yours or mine do, and with more respect, too.

I Have to Dash

Q. What should I do when a speaking character changes subject without interruption?

ACCOUNTANT

. . . So you can't claim the donation as a write off. Now about distributing the W-2's . . .

I use a double dash.

ACCOUNTANT

. . . So you can't claim the donation as a write off. --Say, are you going to Pride this year?

I also like to use the double dash to indicate an interruption:

ACCOUNTANT

Say, are you going to Pride this--

MAX

-- No! I just like show tunes, okay?

ACCOUNTANT

Be that way.

Widows and Orphans First

Q. When one is trying to get the most out of their page count and there is the occasional widow (single word that takes up an entire line) that won't go away, is it OK to occasionally change the dialogue right indentation to accommodate an extra character or two?

No. Of course not. I don't know what you're talking about. Cheat the margins? How dare you. I am shocked, shocked that you would even consider such a thing!

UPDATE: As some readers have pointed out, the better thing to do is to trim unnecessary words elsewhere. Read the dialog out loud. You'll often find you can trim a lot of it.

A Couple of Formatting Questions

Q. The more screenplays I read, the more I realize that, while there are conventions and trends, there is no single way to make formatting decisions. One thing, I have noticed is that transitions like 'cut to:' are rarely in scripts nowadays. Do you use them regularly or just to emphasize a cut or specify a certain kind of transition? I've used them, but only out of convention--scripts seem much more readable without them.

Also, most of the scripts available are shooting scripts, sometimes even with omitted scene markers in them. Frustrating when you want to see a writer's original intent, obviously. Other than that, what are some other principle differences between a shooting script and a writer's final draft?

Is the process different in movies and television?

CUT TO: seems to have gone out of fashion, because it is, strictly speaking, redundant. Of course you cut from one scene to the next. I used to use CUT TO: to indicate a big jump (in time, or characters), as opposed to following one character continuously from an interior to an exterior. But I don't do that any more because no one else does.

Shooting scripts have scene numbers. Later drafts have changed lines indicated by asterisks on the right hand side of the page. Scenes that have been cut are indicated by OMITTED. I would be too put out about that. The writer's "original intent" isn't as important as his final intent. A good writer is trying to tell his story as effectively and efficiently as possible. That often means cutting scenes when you realize you don't need them any more.

The only way that movie and TV scripts differ are the act breaks. TV has act outs (see my book CRAFTY TV WRITING for an extensive discussion), and each new act goes on a new page.

Script Length Anomaly?

Here's an odd anomaly I'd love y'all to weigh in on.

Broadcast drama scripts are much more than a page a minute. Our CHARLIE JADE scripts were 51+ for a 43 minute show. THE BORDER scripts are up to 60. The very talky WEST WING scripts are in the high sixties. GILMORE GIRLS have been spotted as high as 73.

But look at cable dramas. Thanks to the efforts of my tireless researcher Webs, DEXTER pilot is 66, but other scripts are 54, 54, and 57 pages. DURHAM COUNTY scripts are 55 pages for 52 minutes. The MAD MEN pilot was 52, with most running 51-53 pages, and some 50, 49 and even 46 for a 48 minute show.

On the other hand, RESCUE ME: 64, 64. THE WIRE: 63 (and 89 - as Wilcox points out below, a 90 minuter). CARNIVALE pilot: 64.

The SOPRANOS scripts run a bit longer, but I don't think all the episodes are 52 minutes, either.

What's up with that?

Granted, broadcast scripts have act breaks. But five acts + teaser only gives you an average of 2.5 extra pages. (Slightly less, actually, since if writers are anything like me, they will usually try to reduce the page count, so a loose couple of lines at the end of an act will usually provoke a frenzy of line-trimming.)

Cable shows tend to weigh their dialog more carefully, maybe? Or have more dialogue-less cinematic goodies? Is it that you can afford more longueurs when you know your audience has already paid for its ticket?

What do you think?

Haysoos

I am writing a script with a Hispanic character Jesus. What is the proper way to denote the pronunciation of his name? Here is what i currently have:

• DAVID
• Jesus (pronounced HAY-SOOS) missed the meeting.

My first inclination would be to not name someone Jesus in a screenplay. It will be distracting on the page.

Try to avoid having anything in a screenplay that throws the reader out of the story. For example, don't name male characters "Leslie" or women characters "Joey." Yes, I know they did it in DAWSON'S CREEK. It's annoying in a spec script.

My second inclination would be to skip the explanation, since it in no way affects the story, and this is not a production script. So what if they pronounce it wrong in their head? Anyway, quite a few people in Los Angeles know how "Jesus" is pronounced.

If you absolutely must have an explanation, I'd rather see it in the action rather than in the dialog:

• DAVID
• Jesus missed the meeting.


• He pronounces the name in Spanish, "hay-sooss."

Especially if you can make it look like you're not telling the reader how to pronounce the name:

• He pronounces the name in a horrible Texan accent, "Hay Soooss."

More on Phone Dialog

Q. Do you have to write into phone) after every line of dialogue into a phone?

JOHN
(into phone)
I'm talking into the phone.

A professor of mine absolutely requires that I do that.

Well, I don't like to do that. However a showrunner friend of mine insists that it keeps things clear. So I actually do it even though I don't like to.

However, I put (INTO PHONE) on the character line so it doesn't take up space:

JOHN (INTO PHONE)
I'm talking into the phone.

If we hear the offscreen person's dialog, then her character name would be followed by (ON PHONE) or, old school, (FILTER):

JANE (ON PHONE)
Like, duh, yo.

Telephone Dialog

I could swear I'd written up a whole post about this, or possibly read one, but I can't find it, so...

JDC asks me how to format telephone dialog when you aren't meant to hear the offscreen character's voice.

Really, this is all about making sure the reader feels the amount of time your onscreen character isn't speaking. I'll usually go with something like this (and forgive the HTML):

Joe picks up the phone.

   JOE
 Yo.

He listens.

   JOE
 No, I don't think so.
  (...)
 I SAID I didn't THINK so!

He listens, pacing, getting progressively more nervous.

   JOE
 Can't you for once gimme a break???

He slams the phone down.

You can use a line of action just to delay ("he listens") or to characterize the delay ("getting progressively more nervous").

If you just want a little delay, use a parenthetical -- (beat) or even just an ellipsis (...) works fine.

Note that just embedding an ellipsis in the dialog itself doesn't work well:

JOE
No, I don't think so. (...) I said I
didn't THINK so.

It doesn't really hold the eye long enough to give the effect of someone else talking. One key to writing transparently is not requiring the reader to think too much. He should just be swept along in the read. So often you'll find yourself unpacking moments on the page just so that they take longer to read -- white space is your friend there. When it comes to dialog, don't be afraid to make pauses where you need them. The reader isn't acting the lines out for you in his head, he's just reading like you'd read a book. So you have to make the performance happen for him in the blacks.

UPDATE: Ahhh ... alert reader Jason Sanders points out that John August recently answered this very question. And with much better formatting than I, I must say.