Whats the best screenwriting software?
I have a master’s degree in screenwriting and I have done work as a creative consultant in L.A. You must use Final Draft. I’m sorry to say this, because the company has a stranglehold on the market, but it’s the truth. I went through my own phase of creating Word macros, and I’m pretty good with macros. You can get partway there, but that isn’t good enough. People who work in the entertainment industry pick up a script and they expect it to look exactly as if it was written with Final Draft. As mentioned above, people who receive your scripts via email will expect them in Final Draft format. If they aren’t, the recipients will think that you don’t know what you’re doing. And friends, collaborators, and employers will email you scripts asking for changes, and those scripts will be in Final Draft format. Final Draft, Final Draft, Final Draft. You have no choice.
I’m going to have to offer a partial dissent. I got a Masters’ degree in screenwriting, worked as a TV writer for several years, and just made my first feature film screenplay sale, and I’ve never used anything other than Word templates. Admittedly, the sale was in Europe, and the TV show was a comedy/variety show and therefore didn’t have scripts in the conventional sense. On the other hand, I’ve shown my feature film scripts around a lot of LA companies, and have never been criticized on formatting grounds. So why is my dissent a partial one? Because… 1. It’s entirely possible that my scripts, by being subtly different from Final Draft scripts, have been the victims of some sort of subconscious bias, which has made it harder to sell them in Hollywood (although, as much as I would like to believe this is the case, I think the fact that they haven’t sold actually has had more to do with their content…) 2. Bingo is right that Final Draft, in its role as the industry standard, is the
These are working screenwriters. They write scripts; they sell them to producers; the producers (sometimes) make them into movies. You and I should kid ourselves so effectively! I’ve held off on reposting their comments here because they were made in a private forum, but I’ve mentioned that this discussion has been going on in AskMe, and gotten permission from a few of the forum members to post their thoughts here. So… Here’s Marianne Wibberly (National Treasure, The Sixth Day): You must use Final Draft? So not true. Movie Magic Screenwriter files can be EASILY converted to Final Draft (and vice versa) if a production company wants it. And both Movie Magic Screenwriter and Final Draft can make Movie Magic Scheduler files which is the program most line people use to make breakdowns, schedules, and budgets. We have made production companies switch to Movie Magic Screenwriter, and some companies have made us convert files to Final Draft.
One more thing: John August (screenwriter of Go and Big Fish) has just posted in his blog that, although he uses Final Draft, he is keeping his eye on a promising new open-source screenwriting program called celtx. I just downloaded it and played around with it a little bit. The fact that it’s still in beta shows up in such symptoms as an inability to print–apparently, you have to save your script as a PDF, and then print from there. But writing and formatting with it is a breeze, and it has some fantastic built-in production breakdown features. I’m seriously considering switching over to it instead of buying a commercial program. It is well worth considering if you want a good cheap (or, actually, free) option
