Screenwriting Software

[christianh]

Hi guys,
New to the board, fairly old to GITS. I'm curious as to what screenwriting software everyone uses. There are several out there. I actually USED TO use Final Draft but recently ScriptPIMP (not what that means) mentioned oen I hadn't heard of called Movie Outline.

I went to the site and found that UNK actually recommends it. If you haven't used it, your missing out. The only thing that FD has that I haven't found yet is a Revision Mode, but I figured a way of inserting steps for revisions.

Anyway, this thing has more features than you can shake a stick at. It let's you write your outline in the software by scene, let's you set emotional levels, do bios, arcs, it even lets you isolate the dialog for a particular character.

The best feature is the outline section though because I was piling up 5x8s like crazy. I actually don't write any script lines until my outline is "perfect."

MO 3 even lets you use the outline section or Notes section to do a treatment. It of course has a full featured DEMO that's page count limited.

Do yourself a favor and give it a test run.

[patrickoriley]

Lately I recommend CELTX (pronounced "kell-tix"). It's free for download from celtx.com and I think it gives Final Draft a run for it's money.

I also heard recently about an app for the iPhone called Screenplay, which had some positive reviews. As soon as I can afford an iPhone, that sounds like a pretty useful app for me to grab. I'm constantly coming up with stuff in the car or away from my computer and to be able to jot it down in industry format on my phone and save as a pdf seems incredibly useful.

[patricks]

Neat. I still use Final Draft, which I like a lot because for the most part I can just write and not worry about format.

Patrick Sweeney
I Blame Ninjas

[mscherer]

Ditto -- Final Draft.

Keep Writing!

[Jeff Messerman]

ChristianH, I LOVE Movie Outline! When I stumbled upon it a few month ago, I realized I'd finally found the writing software I'd been looking for all my life.

I mostly just use it in Demo mode because I'm too cheap to pop for the full version but I can certainly see myself doing that soon. It's made a world of difference when it comes to pre-writing and organization.

[trellicktower]

I use Celtx, but haven't written pages in a few weeks since I've become a devoted outliner. I'm not even sure if Celtx has an outline feature. I know it has cue cards, but that feature doesn't seem really useful the way they have it set up.

Sounds like I should check out Movie Outline!

[adamcarter216]

Definitely a Final Draft guy.

[christianh]

Feb 1, 2010 21:30:43 GMT -5 Jeff Messerman said:

ChristianH, I LOVE Movie Outline! When I stumbled upon it a few month ago, I realized I'd finally found the writing software I'd been looking for all my life.

I mostly just use it in Demo mode because I'm too cheap to pop for the full version but I can certainly see myself doing that soon. It's made a world of difference when it comes to pre-writing and organization.

My experience exactly except I got a discount coupon and got it for $99.

[outofcontext]

I use Final Draft because it was given to me so that I could swap drafts with someone with whom I was working and I've since gotten used to it. It stays out of my way and keeps me standard. I actually preferred the software I switched from, a program called Sophocles, which sadly is no longer sold nor supported. Sophocles had a navigator which showed scene headings and was clickable, moving you to the scene you wanted quickly--that was handy. It also had much more robust reports, including one which allowed you to view all the dialogue of a single character; seeing all the dialogue together helped me be consistent in maintaining that character's voice. Actually, it had quite a few nice features I miss--maybe I should go back to it.