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Screenwriting Software

Sexy But Doesn’t Know It

Episode - 237

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February 16, 2016 Follow Up, Producers, Screenwriting Software, Scriptnotes, Transcribed, Words on the page, Writing Process

John and Craig look at how to introduce characters in a screenplay — and how to avoid being mocked by a Twitter feed for it. We go back through previous Three Page Challenges and several of the screenplays nominated for awards this year to examine trends and techniques.

We also discuss writing two projects at once, and offer follow-up on previous topics including screenwriting software, top-100 lists and our favorite Australians we’ve never met.

Links:

  • The Katering Show is fantastic
  • Notes for last week’s release of Movie Magic Screenwriter 6.2.1
  • Ross Putman’s @femscriptintros Twitter feed
  • mberry Miracle Fruit Tablets on Amazon
  • Christians Against Dinosaurs
  • Poe’s Law on Wikipedia
  • Outro by Adam Lastname (send us yours!)

You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3.

UPDATE 2-19-16: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

Formatting a montage in Highland using Forced Action

October 24, 2015 Apps, Formatting, Fountain, Highland, Screenwriting Software

A friend was writing a montage today and couldn’t figure out how to get quite the formatting he wanted in Highland:

If I’m moving quickly in a sequence I’ll frequently write IN THE GARAGE or BACK OUTSIDE or instead of a whole slug line. I want action to go on the next line, with no blank line in between.

The problem is, it’s interpreting this as a character name, and formats it as such, and the action beneath it as dialogue.

He wrote something like this: forced action screenshot In Fountain syntax, that looks like three blocks of dialogue, so Highland was giving him this:

IN THE GARAGE

B.A. works on the van.

OUT BACK

Hannibal and Murdock rig the gatling gun.

IN THE BATHROOM

Face works on his old man makeup.

Fortunately, Fountain has ways to override defaults. In this case, the easiest way to get his desired format would be to force those intermediary sluglines (“IN THE GARAGE,” “OUT BACK,” etc.) to be treated as action.

To do that, start each of them with an exclamation point. forced action screenshot 2 That keeps Highland from interpreting the uppercase lines as character names, leaving the lines neatly stacked up, just like my friend wanted.

In most cases, you’ll never need to do this, because you’ll generally want the blank line after the “IN THE GARAGE” or “OUT BACK.” Leaving a little more white space on the page helps the reader understand that you’re moving between multiple locations.

Here’s an example from Ted Griffin’s Ocean 11 screenplay:

And during the above rant by Benedict, we view...

MIRADOR SUITE

now empty, Livingston’s monitors still displaying the masked men in the vault.

WHITE VAN

navigating the streets of Las Vegas.

FIVE SEDANS

tailing the van, security goons piled into each, and maybe we NOTICE (or maybe not) the Rolls-Royce tailing them.

TESS

pacing in Benedict’s suite, biting her nails, debating whether to blow the whistle on Danny. ON TV: a newscast of the contentious aftermath of the prize fight.

UZI GUARDS,

bound and unarmed, unconscious to the activity within the vault.

RUSTY’S CELL PHONE

opened and unmanned.

BENEDICT

listens -- the line has gone dead. He hangs up.

The forced action trick can be useful in other cases where you want to override default behavior.

Perhaps you have a time bomb, and you’re using ellipses to indicate the countdown. You write:

screenshot

Highland reads that third tick as a forced scene header, because it starts with a single period. But you can force it back to action with an exclamation point:

illustration-

Both Highland and Fountain are sophisticated enough to catch most edge cases, but we’re always finding new situations in which writers are trying to do something that doesn’t quite match expected behavior. And that’s okay! The screenplay format is a set of shared assumptions, not a straightjacket. If you really need to include something unusual, do it.1

You can find all of the possible forced elements in the Syntax section of Fountain.io, most of which are supported by the popular apps. (Forced Action wasn’t part of the original spec, so some early apps haven’t included it yet.)

As always, you can find Highland on the Mac App Store.

  1. Both Fountain and Highland support extended character sets, including emoji. Final Draft doesn’t. ↩

Switching from Final Draft to Highland

October 8, 2015 Apps, Fountain, Highland, Screenwriting Software

The Other Sam Cooke writes about switching from Final Draft to Highland:

After about 10 months of using the application, I can honestly say that Highland is not merely an affordable screenwriting application; it’s actually my favorite screenwriting application.

Cooke likes that he can write on the go using any plain-text editor (he prefers Editorial). When he’s back on his Mac, Highland stays out of his way and lets him focus on the words:

Most screenwriting apps, like Final Draft, have you build a document that looks like [the finished version] as you go along. So I constantly have to hit Tab a certain number of times, or Enter a certain number of times, or type in a little shortcut throughout the writing process to get my script to look like that, and because it requires such constant attention, I find myself devoting too much thought to the formatting of my document.

It’s not particularly difficult to learn Final Draft, and I imagine plenty of people don’t find it as distracting as I do, but I feel like formatting should be an after-the-fact concern. I don’t want to have to think about it while I’m creating.

One other advantage Cooke cites: Final Draft is $250, while Highland is $30 on the Mac App Store.

The Deal with Scripped.com

April 4, 2015 Apps, News, Screenwriting Software, Scriptnotes, Transcribed

Craig and John talk with the owner of Scripped.com to investigate what happened when the online screenwriting site suddenly went down this week, erasing four years of screenwriters’ work. When things went south, why did he try to distance himself from the debacle, and what comes next? It’s a candid discussion — but far less uncomfortable than the Final Draft episode.

We’re also joined by the creator/owner of WriterDuet to discuss his role in all of this, and the precautions one takes when using online software.

Huge thanks to our guests and to Matthew and Stuart for their quick turnaround on this episode. We’ll also have a normal episode this Tuesday.

Links:

  • Scripped
  • ScreenCraft
  • WriterDuet
  • John Rhodes’s letter to the Scripped community
  • Fade In
  • Highland
  • Outro by Scriptnotes listener Rajesh Naroth (send us yours!)

You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3.

UPDATE 4-8-15: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

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