John August

Follow Up

Period Space

Episode - 130

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Apps, Film Industry, Follow Up, Rights and Copyright, Scriptnotes, Transcribed, Words on the page, Writing Process

John and Craig tackle the greatest controversy in screenwriting: how many spaces to put after the period. From there, it’s follow-up on the Final Draft episode, including some behind-the-scene details.

Why is it often better to write in public spaces? How do you keep your hero in the driver’s seat? What do you do if you’re dating an emotional vampire? We have some answers.

We also have annoyances: the $1 billion lawsuit against Tom Cruise, similar hijinks with The New Girl, and Time Tailor.

The Big Fish cast album is available on iTunes and Amazon. A few last Scriptnotes t-shirts are available on the John August Store.

Links:

* [Slate](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html) on why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period
* John’s [2005 blog post](http://johnaugust.com/2005/fixing-double-spaces-after-periods) on fixing double-spaces after periods
* [Scriptnotes, Episode 65](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-next-117-pages), in which John and Craig discuss their period-space preferences
* [Courier Prime](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/)
* [Scriptnotes, Episode 129: The One with the Guys from Final Draft](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-one-with-the-guys-from-final-draft)
* Kent Tessman’s [Notes on Scriptnotes](http://www.kenttessman.com/2014/02/notes-on-scriptnotes/) blog post
* [How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/quarkxpress-the-demise-of-a-design-desk-darling/)
* Heather Havrilesky’s [Ask Polly: I Moved To A New City To Be With An Emotional Vampire](http://www.theawl.com/2014/01/ask-polly-i-moved-to-a-new-city-to-be-with-an-emotional-vampire) on The Awl
* The AV Club on [Tom Cruise being sued for one billion dollars](http://www.avclub.com/article/tom-cruise-is-being-sued-for-allegedly-stealing-th-107570)
* THR on [The New Girl lawsuit](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/fox-wme-peter-chernin-sued-671788)
* [Time Tailor](http://www.visualdatainc.com/time_tailor.htm)
* [SuperCook.com](http://supercook.com/) tells you recipes to cook with what you have on hand
* [One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385351836/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by B. J. Novak
* B.J. on the [Nerdist Podcast](https://www.nerdist.com/2014/02/nerdist-podcast-b-j-novak/)
* The Big Fish cast album on [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/big-fish-original-broadway/id816289324?ign-mpt=uo%3D2) and [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H3UKZ6E/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* We have a few shirts left in [The John August Store](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_130.m4a) | [mp3](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_130.mp3).

**UPDATE** 2-17-14: The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/scriptnotes-ep-130-period-space-transcript).

Final Draft and WGA registration

Follow Up, Fountain, Highland, Screenwriting Software

Update: Final Draft has removed the “preferred file format” line from their site.

In prepping for our [Final Draft episode](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-one-with-the-guys-from-final-draft), I came across [this tidbit](http://store.finaldraft.com/final-draft-9.html) on their site:

> The market leader and the preferred file format of the Writers Guild of America West Online Script Registration.

That surprised me. Here is the actual wording on the [WGAw Registry website](http://www.wgawregistry.org/webrss/regdetails.html):

> Preferred file formats are ASCII, XML, PDF (Adobe Acrobat), Word, Final Draft , and Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000; however, all file formats will be accepted.

> In addition, other screenplay software and standard computer file formats are acceptable.

So according to the WGA Registry itself, Final Draft is **a** preferred file format, not **the** preferred file format. Which doesn’t seem to be a claim worth trumpeting that loudly, considering the other options include “all file formats.”

Final Draft does get a small logo on the WGAw Registry site, though. Final Draft put out a [press release](http://www.deadline.com/2013/11/final-draft-wgaw-final-draft-9-2014/) about that. So Final Draft has some special relationship with the WGA. Perhaps it’s the most preferred of all the preferred formats, which include basically anything capable of rendering text.

And speaking of text, ASCII! Younger readers might not even recognize this term. It’s the plainest of plain text, just 128 characters. Do you have a dot-matrix printer? Feed it some ASCII.

Since you can register basically any type of file, can you register scripts written in Fountain? Yes.

Fountain is just text. So if you’re writing a script in Highland or Slugline or Scrivener or Fade In or the growing number of apps that use Fountain, the WGA Registry is happy to take it. PDFs are also a good choice, because they look like a printed screenplay.

While we’re at it, *should* you register your script with the WGA?

I have no strong opinion. For legal purposes, it can be useful to show you wrote something before a certain date. It’s [no substitute for copyright registration](http://zernerlaw.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/it’s-time-for-the-writer’s-guild-to-shut-down-the-wga-registry/), but then again, in many cases the screenwriter and the studio will be engaging in the mutually-beneficial practice of claiming something was a work-for-hire. So I don’t have an all-purpose answer.

All I know is that if you choose to register your script with the WGA, it doesn’t have to be Final Draft.

The Scriptnotes Holiday Live Show

Follow Up, Los Angeles, WGA

As we discussed on the last podcast, Craig and I are doing a live episode benefiting the Writers Guild Foundation.

Thursday, December 19th
8pm
The Los Angeles Film School (new venue!)
6363 Sunset Blvd
Hollywood, CA 90028

In the spirit of A Christmas Carol, we will be visited by previous Scriptnotes guests, including Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wear Prada), Derek Haas (Chicago Fire, 3:10 to Yuma), Kelly Marcel (Saving Mr. Banks), Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko), Rawson Thurber (We’re the Millers), Blacklist creator Franklin Leonard, and producer Lindsay Doran. Plus we’ll have brand-new guests on hand to discuss features, television, and the business of slinging words.

There will also be surprise give-aways and way too much eggnog. Will Craig play Scrooge to my Cratchit? Join us and find out.

Tickets are normally $25 — but only $10 if you use the special promo code UMBRAGE at checkout.

Note that we’ve moved to a bigger venue. We’re now going to be using the main auditorium of the LA Film School, across from the ArcLight in Hollywood. We’ll likely sell out, and likely quickly, so don’t dally.

Tickets should be available at exactly 10am today (Wednesday) at the [WGF website](https://www.wgfoundation.org/writing-seminars/).

PDF to FDX

Follow Up, Screenwriting Software

In an [earlier post](http://johnaugust.com/2013/how-to-convert-a-pdf-to-final-draft), I listed three ways to import a PDF into Final Draft:

1. Retype it.
2. Copy and Paste and Reformat every line.
3. Use Highland.

On a Mac, Highland was by far the best choice. It was much faster and much more accurate.

Joel Levin at Final Draft emailed me to recommend an alternate workflow that’s listed on the [Final Draft site](http://kb.finaldraft.com/article.aspx?cid=1001&aid=519):

> If you have a recent version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader you can go to File > Save As > Text and save the document as a text file.

> Import this text file into Final Draft (File > Open) as a script but you may need to do some reformatting.

I just tried it, and will update my earlier post. Here’s a screencast:

The short version is that for the file I tested, this method was better than copy-and-paste — but only slightly. Elements were more likely to be recognized correctly, but line breaks and spacing glitches were daunting. The script also swelled from 114 to 343 pages.

I wondered if it was just something strange about that one file, so I tried the same method on a bunch of the PDFs in the [Library](http://johnaugust.com/library). Some of them turned out better than others, but all of them were significantly messed up.

So while it’s generally an improvement over copy-and-paste, you’d still need to spend quite a bit of time getting a useful script out of this workflow.

This actually isn’t Final Draft’s fault — their app is doing a commendable job on the fairly janky text file Adobe Reader is creating.

Nor is it Adobe’s fault — they built a general-purpose PDF app that doesn’t know anything about screenplays. It’s like complaining that a hammer is a terrible screwdriver.

Highland is a specialized tool for doing exactly this kind of conversion, which is why it works so much better. My previous recommendation still stands: if you need to convert a PDF to Final Draft, your best bet is to use [Highland](http://highland.quoteunquoteapps.com/screencast-pdf-fdx) on a Mac.

If you can’t use Highland (e.g. you’re on a PC, and can’t bribe someone with a Mac), this Final Draft workflow is better than copy-and-paste. My thanks to Joel for pointing this out.