Charles Forman, whose company OMGPOP developed Draw Something, is [writing a screenplay in Fountain](http://setpixel.com/writing/writing-a-screenplay-in-fountain/):
> I don’t work at a bank. However, I’m sure that on the first day of orientation, they teach you how to use an application written in 1999 in Visual Basic. It hasn’t been updated since 2001, it doesn’t work very well, everyone hates it, but it’s the way it is, and if you trick it, you might be able to do what you want, or wait until it’s 5 PM. It’s probably exactly what it’s like to use Final Draft.
> The joy of writing shouldn’t feel like working at a bank.
Forman offers a detailed look at writing in Fountain from the perspective of someone who’s written a lot of code. For his screenplay, he used both [Slugline](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slugline/id553754186?mt=12) and [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12), but also built his own tools based on the libraries available on GitHub.
>”How many scenes do I have?” It’s a pretty simple question. Normally, in order to do this, you have to go through the whole script and count the sluglines. I used Javascript to parse my Fountain script. I looped through the sluglines and counted them. Then I was curious about the unique locations. How many times did person A talk vs. person B? I generated some basic stats and spit it out in the console by creating a tool in 20 minutes.
He also built a tool that [generates a word cloud](http://playground.setpixel.com/wordcloud/) based on a screenplay.
Here’s Big Fish:
Forman listens to the podcast, so he’s heard us discussing the possibilities of a new screenplay format. He argues that we already have it in Fountain.
> Because Fountain is pretty flexible, you could add metadata for anything you might want to extend the screenplay with. In my case, I have included storyboards. You could add metadata for the song that is playing. You could add metadata about which characters are in the scene, if its not totally clear. You could add metadata about what the purpose of a scene is. You could add anything. If I could make a small ask to the Fountain team, I would love a specific way to insert metadata. I am using notes. I’m thinking about putting curly bracket objects inside of notes going forward.
This kind of thinking is why I’m so bullish Fountain: not just what it can do today, but what it can be repurposed for in the future.
](http://highland.quoteunquoteapps.com/wr-blog) Weekend Read has an update in the App Store today. Version 1.0.2 greatly improves PDF reading and adds a lot of new content. It’s free, so [go get it.](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8)