John August

Apps

Highland and other screenwriting apps on sale

Apps, Fountain, Highland, Screenwriting Software

![Highland on MacBook Air](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/highland-macbook-air@2x.jpg)

Apple asked Highland and several other screenwriting apps to be part of their Explore Your Creativity promotion on the Mac App Store. It’s a great time to check out these apps at discounted prices, and perhaps pick a new favorite.

[Highland][highland] is the app we make. It’s half off during the promotion, $14.99 rather than $29.99.

Over the past year, Highland has become the second-bestselling screenwriting app in the Mac App Store, after [Final Draft][finaldraft] (which is also on sale for $124.99). Users choose Highland for its speed and minimalism. You just type; Highland figures out which elements are which.

For the past year, I’ve done all my screenwriting in Highland and love it. You can see more about it, including a video, at our [website][highlandweb].

[Slugline][slugline] is Highland’s longtime pal, also on sale for 50% off ($19.99 versus $39.99).

Slugline’s editor does more on-the-fly formatting, with text moving while you type. If you’re used to traditional screenwriting apps, you may find it comfortingly familiar. If you’re used to plain text editors, you may find it distracting.

The great news is that Slugline and Highland share the same format (Fountain), so you can freely move back and forth between them. In fact, at these prices you can get both Highland and Slugline for the cost of one, so if you’re curious about working in a plain text app, get both.

While it’s not strictly a screenwriting app, [Scrivener][scrivener] has many fans for its extensive feature set, including corkboards, outlines, tables and images. In many ways, it’s the opposite of Highland’s minimalism, but if you need an app that can handle a thousand-page research report, Scrivener may be a good choice. It’s half-off at $29.99.

[Fade In](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fade-in/id488557039?mt=12) isn’t part of the Mac App Store promotion, but if you’re looking for an app that does many of Final Draft’s production features, Craig swears by it. (It’s $49.99.)

I’m excited that there are more choices than ever for screenwriters. I hope this promotion gets more users trying out alternatives, and picking the apps that suit them best.

[slugline]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slugline/id553754186?mt=12 “slugline”
[highland]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12 “highland”
[finaldraft]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/final-draft-9/id454277974?mt=12 “fd9”
[highlandweb]: http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland “highland web”

[scrivener]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scrivener/id418889511?mt=12 “scrivener”

Selling without selling out

Episode - 153

Go to Archive

Apps, Film Industry, Highland, Producers, QandA, Screenwriting Software, Scriptnotes, Transcribed, Words on the page, Writing Process

In their first-ever live streaming episode, John and Craig open the mailbag to answer a bunch of listener questions.

– What research should a writer do before soliciting an agent or manager?
– What should a writer be willing to give up in order to make her first sale?
– Does a Mormon writer face special challenges in drink-and-drugging Hollywood?
– Why doesn’t Highland exist on Android?
– What determines “Story by” credit on a feature?
– How did we like DungeonWorld? (John asked this question.)

All this, plus the Fermi Paradox in this episode of Scriptnotes.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes, 76](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-screenwriters-find-their-voice), with Three Pages by James Topham
* Scriptnotes, 115: [Back to Austin with Rian Johnson and Kelly Marcel](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-back-to-austin-with-rian-johnson-and-kelly-marcel)
* David Lynch [on the iPhone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0)
* Björk, [Human Behavior](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCGveA39VYA)
* [Dungeon World](http://www.dungeon-world.com/)
* Scriptnotes, 142: [The Angeles Crest Fiasco](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-angeles-crest-fiasco)
* [Action Jackson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AvMn2Vh0fQ) trailer
* David Kwong at TED2014: [Two nerdy obsessions meet — and it’s magic](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_kwong_two_nerdy_obsessions_meet_and_it_s_magic)
* The Fermi paradox on [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox), [Wait But Why](http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html) and [Praxtime](http://praxtime.com/2013/11/25/sagan-syndrome-pay-heed-to-biologists-about-et/)
* Neil deGrasse Tyson [on chimps, humans and aliens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ro9aebFZhM)
* John is [hiring a new UI designer](http://johnaugust.com/2014/hiring-a-ui-designer)
* Our USB drives [now have the first 150 episodes](http://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-100-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* Archives are also [available on scriptnotes.net](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* This episode was broadcast live on [Mixlr](http://mixlr.com/scriptnotes/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Jeff Harms ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_153.m4a) | [mp3](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_153.mp3).

**UPDATE 7-18-14:** The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/scriptnotes-ep-153-selling-without-selling-out-transcript).

Internationalizing Bronson

Apps, Bronson, Highland, International, Weekend Read

[Bronson Watermarker PDF](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/bronson/), our app for watermarking and password-protecting screenplays and other documents, has an update in the App Store that adds native support for German, Russian and Chinese.

It looks so cool in Chinese:

screenshot

This was our first effort at internationalizing an app. We chose Bronson because it’s the simplest overall: one window, a few menus. We’ll be taking what we learned and applying it to [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12) and [Weekend Read](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8) down the road.

We hired [Applingua](http://applingua.com) to do our translations, and I’d happily use them again. The process is pretty straightforward: export all the text strings in your app and ship the file. The company translates each string in order, so they’ll fit back into the proper slots when you drop the translated file in the app bundle.

Why these three languages? Based on our download numbers, these were the regions that were already buying our apps the most. ((Because you’ll ask, here are our top 20 countries, in order: US, UK, Canada, Russia, Germany, China, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, India, Turkey, Singapore, France, Spain, Thailand, Hong Kong, Chile, Italy, Columbia, Peru.)) Translating the app into these languages helps the most existing customers, and (hopefully) attracts new ones. We’ll be keeping an eye on download numbers to see if it was worth it.

These were also good test languages for us, because they forced us to reconsider what our interface would look like if some of the text labels became vastly longer or shorter than they were in English. We found that we needed to reposition some elements to make sure strings never got truncated.

Internationalizing Bronson took about a week. The process was fairly smooth, but there were things we hadn’t considered at the start:

* “Watermark” is an odd term that doesn’t necessarily have a matching word in other languages. We relied on the translators to figure out what made sense.
* In English, the button at the bottom might read, “Save 1 Watermarked PDF” or “Save 3 Watermarked PDFs.” We insert the numeral into the string and pluralize as necessary. But in other languages, the word order and pluralization can be very different. We ultimately decided to keep the English usage of PDF(s), with the assumption that these file types are so ubiquitous that users are unlikely to be confused.
* We asked Applingua to translate our Mac App Store product description, but then realized that we also needed them to translate our screenshots, which have text on them.
* Even keywords need to be localized so that when a German user searches for Wasserzeichen in the Mac App Store, Bronson shows up.

If you want to test out what an app looks like in different languages, here’s how to do it:

1. Open System Preferences and choose Language & Region.
2. Click the + below the list box and choose a new language.
3. Drag that language to the top of the list.

The next time you launch the app, it will use the localized language bundle if it exists.

With this new build, we’ve [lowered the price to $19.99](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bronson-watermarker-pdf/id881629098?mt=12). We sold remarkably well when we launched at $14.99, but the full $29.99 price seemed to be higher than the market would bear.

We’re also offering site licenses for companies. One of our favorite animation studios was our first site license, and it was great to be able to provide them a custom version. If you’re interested, drop us a note through the [Bronson support page](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/bronson/support).

If you haven’t checked out Bronson yet, look for it [on the App Store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bronson-watermarker-pdf/id881629098?mt=12). And if you already have Bronson, we could really use some reviews. Each new version pushes old reviews off the landing page.

Why did Weekend Read spike?

Apps, Weekend Read

This past Friday, download numbers for [Weekend Read](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8) shot through the roof for no apparent reason.

chart

To give some sense of scale, those ordinary days on the left range from 50 to 75 downloads per day. The spike is 3,591. ((The graphic comes from the iOS version of App Viz, which I love. The trend line is certainly misleading in this case.))

Weekend Read is a free app, so it’s certainly possible that an online mention convinced a lot of people to download it. ((In-app purchases of Weekend Read Unlocked, which gives users an unlimited library, were not up proportionately to downloads.))

Or perhaps it was featured on a section of the App Store.

Was it related to Rian Johnson and his Star Wars news? The scripts for Rian’s first three movies are available inside the app. Maybe someone linked to that in a Star Wars forum.

Or perhaps it really just was a fluke — a flurry of downloads that pushed it up higher and higher in the charts, creating a virtuous cycle. (We peaked at 162 in Productivity.)

Weekend Read sends our server a ping when it’s first installed, but we can’t track the source of download unless it comes from a specially-crafted URL such as [this one](http://apps.quoteunquoteapps.com/wr-blog).

We may never know exactly what happened. Apple currently gives developers no way of tracking where traffic is coming from. Better analytics are coming in a future version of iTunes Connect, but for now all we get are mysterious numbers. It’s our own little [Wow! signal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal).