Craig Mazin of Artful Writer has had enough headaches (and heartaches) with Final Draft. He’s switched over to Movie Magic Screenwriter. You can read about his reasons why here, followed by a lot of opinions from fellow screenwriters.
Me, I’m still using Final Draft, though as often as I complain about it, I should probably give MMS another look.
Screenwriting software survey results are in
Celtx screenwriting application shows promise
This site is run by screenwriter John August. Mostly, he answers reader-submitted questions about the craft, but occasionally he goes on tangents that run far afield of writing and filmmaking. You'll also find info on past, present and future projects.
For photos, blurbs and uncomfortable self-promotion, you can check out his Facebook fan page.
If you have a question about screenwriting or my movies that hasn't been answered, by all means ask. There are a few guidelines to follow.
There are more than 900 articles on the site. You can find category archives at the bottom of every page.
Articles
May 24th, 2005 at 12:09 pm
I made the switch to MMS from FD a couple of years ago, and honestly prefer it. The layout may not be as pretty as FD. But it does the job, and I have yet to find a bug in it.
May 24th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
Running MMS and FD on OS 10.4, I find that there’s no discernable difference between the layouts of the two apps.
May 24th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
I’ve been using Final Draft 5.0 for years and I think it’s so much better. I love it!!!
But if there are any MMS sales reps out there reading this who want to prove me wrong and convert me into a loyal customer by giving me the latest version for free…I guess I’ll try it.
Prove me wrong!
May 24th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
I’d like to know what the difference is between MM and FD? If I run my screenplay off in Sophocles, Final Draft or Moviemagic, they all look the same. All perfect for submission. To me all the comparisons are subjective to the actual usage as in menus, tabs, saving, etc. But to someone looking to buy one of them, they really can’t go wrong with either choice. I am trying out a Final Draft 6 right now and works beautifully for me…oh well, to each his own
May 24th, 2005 at 6:59 pm
Bought and sold FD 7, and reverted back to FD 5. Still my fav.
May 24th, 2005 at 10:17 pm
I’ve always been using Final Draft 7 and, aside from some compatibility issues between files typed on Mac and Windows platforms, haven’t had any problems.
Of course, that was before my application crashed today, eliminating 5 pages of work. Two hours completely down the drain.
This probably isn’t what’s going to make me switch, but if stuff like this keeps occurring, I just might.
May 25th, 2005 at 6:09 am
Hi John and Everyone,
Hopefully we’ll give you reason to kick them both to the curb. We are churning away on Celtx and have been releasing monthly builds with the features our users have been asking for.
We just released a version with text export and Character Auto-complete.
If the Character-Autocomplete works out we’ll implemented elsewhere in the application.
We’re rapidly approaching version 1.0, so keep an eye on us. And you certainly can’t beat the price.
Cheers,
Steve Pick celtx.com
May 25th, 2005 at 9:16 am
Ian,
Didn’t you save your work during the entire 2 hours? I had that sort of thing happen to me years ago (with any application) and now I’m religious about saving. With Auto-Save, you don’t have to worry about remembering, either.
May 25th, 2005 at 9:18 am
I have never used Final Draft, but I’ve been using Movie Magic Screenwriter for a few years now. I have absolutely no complaints at all. It’s an incredibly simple and thorough application. It gets the job done, and well at that.
May 25th, 2005 at 10:52 am
How timely this thread is. I just updated to FD 7.1 after updating to a new PowerBook. I was told I wouldn’t have any problem importing an FD 5 file to FD 7.1.
Wrong.
I spent last night reformatting an entire script, line by line, only to have FD reach an insurmountable hang within 5 pages of being done. I lost all of the fixed format and have to start over now.
May 25th, 2005 at 8:33 pm
Two questions from an unexperienced writer:
1- I’m in film school and use a PC, but everyone else and the school uses Macs. I’m not about to buy a new computer but will I be able to import and export work w/o much hassle from my PC to a Mac?
2- The school uses Final Draft 7 for the most part, is it possible to transfer work from MMS on a PC to FD7 on a Mac? Or would I be saving myself a tremendous amount of trouble if I just use Final Draft?
May 26th, 2005 at 10:49 am
I use a 1988 version of a DOS word processor (Xywrite). It effortlessly toggles between dialogue and description format (two keystrokes), and I can repaginate a script in a few seconds (a custom subroutine performs a series of automated logic tests to determine where breaks should occur, and with a user prompt when the choice isn’t obvious or exceeds the user-specified line tolerance).
This software is much, much faster than any Windows-based graphical word processor. The use of “continueds” at the foot and top of most pages is somewhat more complicated, but most people aren’t using those slugs anyway, it’s no longer deemed necessary.
The march of progress sometimes goes backwards….
June 6th, 2005 at 3:10 pm
I’m a faithful Movie Magic user and only own Final Draft in order to email my stuff, since most people use FD.
I’ve tried to write in it but find it user unfriendly, unlike MMS, which lets you write in script format without feeling like you’re writing in script format.
February 10th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
Final Draft gets worse with each version. Anybody using 7.1.1 on a PC (XP) tried scrolling with the cursor keys lately? This has been broken for months, and they’ve known about it for months, and yet today I get email from Final Draft with a special offer for users to upgrade to version 7.1 by such-and-so date. Plenty of time for marketing, apparently, but no time to fix bugs. I don’t use the program until the day of submission. Before that I write entirely in text editors or MS Word with macros.