This tabbed panel is not new - it’s been part of Final Draft for the past 3-4 versions at least, but its utility has been improved. I’ll confine myself to the meta-script aspects and the new and improved pre-scripting tools. In this review I’ll assume that the script formatting aspect of Final Draft needs no explanation or comment. (Declaration of interest: I’ve been a voluntary beta tester on Final Draft 10 for the past 18 months, but I have no financial interest in the software.) Pre-scripting is by definition a messy job with lots of redundancy.įinal Draft 10 aims to pull the whole process together into a single software package.

There are a few computer applications that can help you with this early stage. You will have laid out the main beats and arcs and possibly covered your wall with scrawled library cards before you type EXT. You will have refined your logline, described the inciting incident, and developed a 3-act structure. If you follow The Story Department’s advice, and have visited Logline It, you know the drill. If you believe the hype, it is “used by 95% of film and television productions.”īut for most of us, writing a screenplay begins long before we sit down at the keyboard with that real or virtual clean sheet in front of us. They’ll check your spelling, allow you to classify and rearrange scenes, and produce shooting scripts and script reports for your production team.įinal Draft™ has fought its way to the top in the screenplay formatting wars. They also remember the names of your characters and scene locations. These take the hassle out of capitalising, indenting and laying out a script in the format demanded by the Hollywood movie moguls. If you are one of this talented few, script formatting applications like Celtx, Movie Magic and Final Draft are great productivity tools.

How do you go about writing a screenplay? There are a few of us who sit down at the computer, like some modern day Dalton Trumbo at his trusty Remington, type FADE IN: and keep going until the cigarette packet is empty.

Write dialogue with final draft 8