You’re at a backyard barbecue in Encino, visiting with some old friends and having some vegan ribs. Then your friends’ OTHER friends show up. And the wife is one of the small handful of people in the film industry who’s able to greenlight films, or buy spec scripts. And you hit it off really well … Read more
A short list of essential screenwriting iPhone apps (and some for iPads as well) – apps which I believe should be a part of any discerning, elitist iPhone screenwriter’s library, if he or she hopes to continues to remain the better of, and more educated than, the peasants using all of those knuckle-dragging non-Apple devices.
At Roger Corman’s Concorde-New Horizons Studios in 1997, I opened a script file using Final Draft for the first time. It was on a “Macintosh” because I didn’t call them “Macs” back then. In short, with all due praise to John Hodgman, I was a “PC.” A different kind of “PC,” Production Coordinator Joey Geiger … Read more
The two most popular screenwriting software packages – Movie Magic Screenwriter and Final Draft – are popular for many reasons: Formatting your script as you go by simply hitting the TAB key… allowing screenwriters to customize the look and feel of their screenplays… built-in index cards and scene navigation and other writing aids… Not to … Read more
Sometimes we screenwriters, we just want to, well, screenwrite. We don’t always enjoy fussing over format or margins or how to make a parenthetical look right or whether or not writing “THE END” should be marked in Final Draft as a slugline/scene heading or an action line or just plain “general.” The idea of Final Draft and … Read more
As a screenwriter who likes to use screenwriting apps, you wanna know what I’m most wary of? Reviews like this (click for picture) Final Draft is a great program. I use it a lot. But the review site I found this comparison graphic on seems to think there’s nothing about Final Draft that could improvement, giving it … Read more
Today I jumped into a new online screenwriting app called Writer Duet. It’s main feature is that two or more screenwriters can log in to Writer Duet, for free, and edit the same exact script on the screen, in real-time, as each single character is typed by each of the writers. But while punching in a … Read more
Last week, I wrote an article titled 3 Great Alternatives to Final Draft that Are Either Free or Cheap, and posted a few free or cheap programs that I feel really give the screenwriting program Final Draft a run for its money. My criticism of the ever-ubiquitous Final Draft could’ve been received with disdain or a … Read more
Final Draft. I love it. And I hate it. What do I love? Its ubiquity: Everybody uses it. (And if you’re running a script coverage service like me, you need to be able to open whatever file the client sends in. And 95% of the time, that’s either a PDF or, you guessed it, a Final … Read more