I heart WriteRoom
For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on the production notes for The Nines. The document will end up being about 20 pages, detailing the backstory of how the movie got made, from inspiration through editing, along with everyone’s bios. It’s part of the press kit for the film, helping the journalists at Sundance remember who the hell was in the movie they saw three days ago.
Ultimately, we’ll end up formatting the notes in Word or Pages, but for raw text I lean heavily on TextMate, which is what I use for all of the writing for the site. It’s unbelievably powerful, if occasionally maddening.a1a I have TextMate set to automagically generate a lot of the formating markup, and the tag-wrapping feature can’t be beat. But on a lark, I decided to try a new application for writing the production notes: WriteRoom.
It’s deliberately, refreshingly bare-bones and retro. When you open a window, it takes over your entire screen, including the menu bar. All you see is the words, complete with a blinking cursor. Perhaps nostalgic for my years writing on an old Atari, I’ve chosen a dark blue background with almost-white 18 pt. Courier. Give me a kneeling chair and a dot-matrix printer and I’m in junior high again.
Other writing applications are picking up this full-screen meme — honestly, it’s hard to figure out why it took so long. Apple’s Pro apps (Final Cut Pro, Aperture) have had no qualms grabbing every available pixel of real estate, although they don’t completely banish the common interface elements. (Except for Shake, which also requires a blood sacrifice to Ba’al.)
The big-screen treatment is the digital equivalent of closing the kitchen door when company comes over: Never mind the mess in the sink, let’s have a nice dinner.
WriteRoom 2.0 is in beta, but there’s nothing spectacularly different or better than plain old 1.0. Either version is worth checking out.
As for the inevitable question: Could I write a script with it?
Yes, no, maybe.
I’ve actually had conversations with two gurus of web markup about creating a simplified screenplay markup that could be imported into “real� screenwriting applications like Final Draft. WriteRoom and its ilk support tabs and external scripts, so it’s conceivable to build a system like ollieman’s screenwriting with TextMate bundle.
But for now, I have an actual paid rewrite to be doing, and it’s a Final Draft job. Sigh.
- To wit: If you use command-z “Undo� to fix something you shouldn’t have deleted, TextMate will replace it one letter at a time, undoing each backspace rather than the whole chunk. Apparently, the software creator feels strongly that this is the logically correct behavior, and while I disagree, I fully respect his decision to say, “because that’s how I want it!� aaa
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December 14th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
fyi, both Word and Sophocles have nice full-screen views, no menu bar, no nothing. just what you’re working on.
December 14th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
There’s a lengthy discussion on the WriteRoom forums about the implementation of a screenwriting element to the application:
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/node/1426
December 14th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
There’s a lengthy discussion on the WriteRoom forums about the implementation of a screenwriting element to the application:
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/node/1426
December 14th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
One of the main reasons I created the TextMate screenwriting bundle was that I wanted to work in plain-text. There are many reasons to do so, but the main ones are archival and compatibility.
I’ve seen plain-text formats for screenplays before, but they always introduce additional “formating” characters into the document. I think one of the greatest tricks I managed to pull with that bundle was that all the documents import flawlessly into Final Draft.
The format is incredibly simple and could easily be implemented as a plug-in for WriteRoom or any other number of apps.
If anyone wants to test the next version of the bundle before I release it drop me a line.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Looks alot like old DOS-based WordPerfect, which used to tout it’s “clean” interface, back when its chief rival WordStar used half the screen for the command menu.
December 14th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
I’ll probably always be TextMate/BBEdit guy on the Mac for good old text. Also, from a programmers perspective, the symbol jumper in TextMate is awesome
December 15th, 2006 at 2:38 am
I have been following WriteRoom’s evolution with excitement. Check out NinjaKitten’s Menufela - a great little tool that magically hides the menu bar and so let’s you turn other applications into that mode.
Using it with TextEdit lets you move the window around the screen and not having to restrict yourself to a centre column.
December 15th, 2006 at 7:56 am
The 2.0 beta of WriteRoom no longer resitricts you to center column in full screen mode. You can make it float left, center, or right.
December 15th, 2006 at 8:05 am
There are quite a few of these writing programs out there. The first one I ever used was Z Write, back in the OS 9 days. I still used it on X, even though it never really got the work it needed. The author is currently in beta on a new version, but I don’t know if it will ever finish. I have tons of documents in ZWrite format, so I still use it. It is pretty simple, though, but lacks a full screen mode. I do like that it saves everything in one file.
I also use CopyWrite (as I needed something to replace Z Write awhile back) which DOES have a full screen mode, but the only knocks I have against it are the use of folders of files to represent a “document”. It’s fine in the program, but makes it a little hard to pick out the right file to double-click in the Finder.
A program I just started using but really love is Scrivener. This is a great app. It let’s you manage multiple documents in one. It’s got a great note card view you can use, to lay out your pages. It also does screenplay formatting as well (not perfect formatting, but good enough for working drafts).
I don’t know that any of these will ever export to Final Draft. I downloaded Montage when it was beta and used it, liked it, but was put off by the fact that it can’t export to Final Draft. According to the programmer it’s much harder to write FDR than read it. If Montage does add Final Draft export, it would be a great app for screenwriters, but I think I give a slight nod to Scrivener as it is a bit more flexible, so can be used for novels, blogs, manuals, etc.
December 15th, 2006 at 10:28 am
Why are your writing production notes? Or anything in the press-kit?
December 15th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Where was the Geek alert? I´m contemplating leagal action.
December 15th, 2006 at 11:15 am
I’ve been using WriteRoom since I started writing a novel a little over a month ago and I love it. Full-screen mode in Word is not the same thing, as WriteRoom literally looks like an old-school computer terminal screen with nothing more than your text and the cursor. I agree with John that version 1.0 is all I need — the new beta version adds more bells and whistles that I find unnecessary. While some may think it’s simply a retro aesthetic gimmick, I really find that it allows me to focus exclusively on the words. After I paste it into Word, then I can do all my editing and whatnot. But for actually writing, I like the simplicity of it.
December 15th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Einar –
I save the Geek Alert for things that make propeller hats spin. (I’ll grant you, this was close.)
Mercury –
Yes, publicists generally write the production notes. I micromanage; it’s one of my worst habits. But when you see the movie, you’ll understand why I thought it important to frame certain aspects of the movie just-so.
December 15th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
i heart WriteRoom as well, most of all the “smooth-text” format that really mimics a printed page. Does anyone have any idea how to achieve a similar look in Final Draft? I’ve searched but can’t seem to find anything about it.
December 16th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
Presumably TextMate undoes one character at a time because that makes sense when writing code, which is the primary function of the program. Though, I’m still not quite sure how that applies to replacing deleted text one character at a time — and I use TextMate for coding.
December 19th, 2006 at 11:38 am
We’ll get in touch with the folks at WriteRoom to see if there’s any collaborative opportunities for us in the near future. I can’t promise anything but we’ll certainly be willing to meet and discuss options.
Our Product Usability team will have a lot of input into this discussion as well since we already have most of the next release mapped out and they’d have to push for this over numerous other integration ideas/features.
December 19th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Update from Jesse at Hogbaysoftware…He’s not in a place to do much on the Scriptwriting collaboration at the moment. However, he offered to pass along our business rules for text importing to other developers who are gung ho about writing an export plugin for WriteRoom. The goal would be to provide you all with an easier import of your Text or RTF files into Final Draft. If you have a desire to move this forward, you can post on his developer forum.
January 8th, 2007 at 3:01 am
I have a mac and was wondering if anyone could recommend a basic software package instead of microsoft word. It has given me nothing but trouble…I’ve lost so much work in teh past month its not funny anymore
Cheers
Terry
January 9th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
I have to admit I find this “trend” of apps going fullscreen somewhat confusing. My level of concentration doesn’t change whether I’m using a fullscreen app or not. I write for a living (I’m a screenwriter in Denmark) and when I sit in that chair, open my MacBook, launch TextMate, and begin typing I’m focused. Fullscreen doesn’t make me more focused and doesn’t improve my writing.
I’ve tried using (and spend money!) on several “writing” apps with various gimmicks (fullscreen being one of them). Apps that are designed to help organise research and aid with the writing process. I’ve found the only thing that helps my writing process is simplicity. Textmate in combination with Oliver Taylor’s excellent screenwriting bundle is as simple as it gets. I can write and store my work in plain text, and not have my writing trapped in a format that’s unreadable by other apps. Plain text will always be readable by any word processing style app. Oliver’s screenwriting bundle exports my work quickly to PDF with proper screenplay formatting (using Prince). I can also export to Final Draft should that be required by the production company I work with.
Writeroom does offer simplicity, however, fullscreen just does nothing for me. It’s a gimmick that has, in my view, nothing to do with improving the quality of my writing. TextMate is the best writing environment I’ve found… Text only. Easy. Simple. You can use it for blogging too
I also find many of these “organising” apps gimmicky too. Your computer is one huge machine with search capabilities of its own. Why do I need an app to organise my research and files? My Mac can do that already.
November 13th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
What about Scrivener? It’s got a full screen mode and has script support.