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Highland is great for novels

October 28, 2014 Apps, Fountain, Highland, Writing Process

macbook with highland

In addition to being a swell time to grow a mustache, November is [NaNoWriMo](http://nanowrimo.org) — National Novel Writing Month.

Over the next few weeks, aspiring Hemingways and Flynns will attempt to hit their target word counts so that by Thanksgiving they’re finishing a draft. Godspeed to them all.

While novels can be written in just about any word processor, more-sophisticated apps like Scrivener allow for notes and images and virtual corkboards. In my experience, the more bells and whistles an app has, the more time I spend playing with the bells and whistles, and the less time I spend actually writing. That’s partly why I made [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12), a writing app that lets you focus on the words, not the formatting.

Because I’m mostly a screenwriter, Highland is largely tailored towards screenplays. But I also write fiction, and I didn’t want to give up any of my Highland comforts.

Since version 1.4, Highland has included a manuscript mode that strikes a good balance between helpful and distracting. Choosing Format > Document Format > Manuscript adds a single line to your file…

Format: Manuscript

…and with it, makes Highland a surprisingly good choice for writing fiction. When you print or export, you’ll find Highland double-spaces text to common publisher standards, perfect for paper editing.

For an example, compare [an original file](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/snake-people.fountain) to [the pdf](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/snake-people.pdf) Highland creates.

Highland 1.8.2, [new in the Mac App Store today](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12), adds a few extra features novel writers can appreciate, such as on-the-fly word count. (Just click the page icon.)

Want to put a header on every page? Add it below the format line:

Format: Manuscript

Header: MOBY-DICK ORIGINS / Caswell Barthowly

Want to start a new chapter? Use a hashtag, such as

#Chapter Six: The Wailing Whaling

Highland will automatically insert the page break, and center the chapter heading on the next page. ((Fountain purists are likely scratching their heads at this choice. Truth is, this untitled manuscript format is actually more like Markdown than Fountain. It feels correct for section headers to be printed.))

Highland’s notes, synopses and omissions work the same as always. [[Text in double brackets]] won’t print. Same for a single line preceded by the equal sign =. And you can keep your scraps handy; select a range of text and choose Format > Omit. You’ll leave it in the file while hiding it from export.

In Preferences, you can adjust column width and line spacing, and set your favorite colors for Dark Mode.

If you’re tempted to give Highland a shot for writing your November novel, we have it marked **half-off through November 7th.** Give Manuscript mode a spin, and see whether its minimalism can maximize your page count.

As always, you can find Highland on the [Mac App Store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12).

Highland works great with Yosemite

October 20, 2014 Apps, Highland

We had quite a few inquiries from [Highland’s support page](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/support) this weekend, including:

> Is Highland compatible with Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite? Of all the apps I’m running on my Macs, Highland is probably the most important. I won’t upgrade until you give the all clear signal.

Green light. The version of Highland in the [Mac App Store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12) runs fine under Yosemite.

In fact, we’ve been running Highland with the Yosemite betas for months, so the past few builds all run fine. Except for a few small UI changes (such as using the green dot to go full-screen), you won’t notice any significant differences.

We update Highland quite frequently. Version 1.8.2, now in review, addresses bugs that users helped us identify under both old and new OS versions. Highland keeps improving because we have seriously committed users.

If it’s been a while since you’ve looked at Highland, you may have missed out on its new line spacing options. You can now choose Tight, Normal or Loose line spacing in the editor view. This ability to customize the editor for maximum readability is one of the clear advantages to Highland’s just-the-words philosophy.

You can download Highland in the [Mac App Store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12).

Dressing like a screenwriter

September 16, 2014 Highland, Los Angeles, News

Scriptnotes is a proudly money-losing podcast, with no ads or sponsors to defray the cost of editing, hosting and transcripts. So once a year we offer t-shirts to help fill both our coffers and your closets.

In past years, we’ve sold the Scriptnotes t-shirts in various colors. They’re lovely shirts, but three colors is plenty. This year we wanted to do something different.

So we made the [Scriptnotes Tour shirt](http://store.johnaugust.com/products/scriptnotes-tour-shirt).

scriptnotes tour shirt

Illustrated by Simon Estrada, it’s the stadium rock band shirt made for people who listen to weekly podcasts about screenwriting. ((…And things that are interesting to screenwriters.)) For the first time ever, there’s printing on the back: a list of all the live shows, past and near-future.

scriptnotes-tour-back-detail_1024x1024

Although the artwork is hard rock, it’s actually the softest shirt we’ve ever made. Stuart Friedel, our resident t-shirt expert, describes it thusly:

> The softest shirt I ever touched was the American Apparel gray-tag tri-blend from 2007. Nothing has come close until this. It’s like wearing a daydream.

Stuart’s sense of softness led us to an entirely new garment: our [first-ever hoodie](http://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/brad-hoodie). It’s spun from the downy tri-blend threads.

brad hoodie

We were originally going to make it a Scriptnotes hoodie, but the complicated typewriter logo translated poorly to embroidery. A much better choice was this blog’s brad icon: simple, iconic, and specific.

Hoodies are the fundamental outerwear of the modern screenwriter: dressy enough to wear to a water-bottle general meeting, casual enough to wear while walking your dog at Runyon Canyon.

We deliberately picked a lightweight fabric, perfect for an over-air-conditioned coffeeshop when it’s 100 degrees outside.

Our final bit of new schwag came to us from an email by George Gier:

> You may never know how much I appreciate Highland, but it turned reformatting hundreds of pages of garbage into two clicks of perfection. It rules. If you make a Highland T-shirt, I will be the first to buy one and wear it proudly.

George Gier, [this is your shirt](http://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/highland-t-shirt) (but everyone else can get them too):

highland shirt

For the Highland shirt, we went back the same tee we used for the Karateka shirts: strong and simple, 100% cotton. It’s a deep indigo, reminiscent of [Dark Mode](http://johnaugust.com/2014/secrets-of-highlands-dark-mode).

Making the Highland icon work on a t-shirt was an interesting challenge. The “real” icon uses gradients and shadows that wouldn’t translate to screen printing, so Ryan Nelson flattened everything down.

Highland icons

I kind of love it. Mac icons are still supposed to have [depth and shadow](http://martiancraft.com/blog/2014/07/inspecting-yosemite-icons/), but don’t be surprised if future versions of Highland move a bit in this flatter direction.

If you’re wearing the Highland t-shirt, you’re not only promoting a great screenwriting app. You’re literally wearing the future.

### Getting the gear

Both the t-shirts and the hoodie are available for pre-order starting today. **Pre-orders end September 30th.** We only make enough to cover orders, so if you want one, *you have to get your order in*.

Note: Hoodies are a special case. Because the embroidery setup costs are higher, we can only make hoodies if we hit a minimum. If we don’t reach the threshold, we’ll give refunds to anyone who ordered one.

All orders ship beginning October 8th. You should have them in time for the Austin Film Festival.

Luck, sequels and bus money

Episode - 162

Go to Archive

September 16, 2014 Adaptation, Film Industry, Follow Up, Fountain, QandA, Scriptnotes, Transcribed, WGA

This week, Craig and John tackle listener questions.

Why do some giant books get crammed into a single movie, while others get split into multiple films? How do you write a movie if you can’t even get your computer fixed? What should a screenwriter do if, after nine years of trying, he still can’t catch a break?

We don’t always have simple answers, but at least we have t-shirts. The new batch is available for pre-order starting today, so don’t wait.

If you’re in Los Angeles, the only chance to see us live this fall is at the Slate Culture Gabfest on October 8th. Check the link for tickets below.

Links:

* New shirts are [available for pre-order now through September 30th in the John August Store](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* [Applause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applause_(musical)), the All About Eve musical, on Wikipedia
* [Get tickets now](http://www.slate.com/live/la-culturefest.html) for October 8th’s live Slate Culture Gabfest with guests John and Craig
* [Fountain](http://fountain.io/) is a plain text markup language for screenwriting
* [WriterDuet](https://www.writerduet.com/)
* WGA [Low Budget Agreement](http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/writers_resources/LBAhandout.pdf)
* [Every Insanely Mystifying Paradox in Physics: A Complete List](http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/physics-paradoxes.html)
* [Gillette Fusion ProGlide with FlexBall](http://gillette.com/en-us/products/razor-blades/fusion-proglide-flexball-razors/fusion-proglide-manual-razor-with-flexball)
* Styptic pencils on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E5QJC04/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihemorrhagic)
* Leave us a comment [on iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/scriptnotes-podcast/id462495496?mt=2)
* Get premium Scriptnotes access at [scriptnotes.net](http://scriptnotes.net/) and hear our 1,000th subscriber special
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_162.m4a) | [mp3](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_162.mp3).

**UPDATE 9-19-14:** The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/scriptnotes-ep-162-luck-sequels-and-bus-money-transcript).

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