Radio Comedy Software

Hello Each

I am a brand new member to this site looking for advise.

I am working on a romantic comedy which will, come hell or the most minor of life's distractions, be ready for the next Comedy Window at BBC Writer's Room. However, so far as I can see the most well known software packages do not have a format that resembles the Matt Carless sample radio comedy script on the Writer's Room site.

My question is, do any of you guys have a software package/format you can recommend ?

At the moment I have an American sample script in Word that I have amended but I am copy and pasting all the time when I move from one character dialogue to the next i.e. I have no short cut to insert character names etc. I can manage at the moment but it is a bugger when you feel you have a flow going then have to mess about with layout only to find what ever you had in your head has evaporated before being captured on the page.

Any guidance much appreciated!!

To be honest, that script you mention just looks like the margins have been brought right in, and the action is tabbed in one place in a normal Word/Google document, so should be easy enough to replicate.

I tend to use Google Docs to do any writing and create a doc the first time I use a particular template, then make a copy each subsequent time I want to use it. Then, export as either .docx or .pdf, depending on who wants it!

Dan

Hi Dan

Thanks very much for the info

I assume you still have to re type the character names as you go along ? - that's the bit that I find tedious. Is there a way to create short cuts for each character name?

Tom

Scrivener has a BBC Radio format.
It's about £30 and is, all round, a brilliant piece of software for writers in all genres.
Don't get too uing up on exact margins etc
As long as it looks like a radio script, you're fine.

Quote: Watch Maker @ 26th November 2015, 10:55 AM GMT

Hi Dan

Thanks very much for the info

I assume you still have to re type the character names as you go along ? - that's the bit that I find tedious. Is there a way to create short cuts for each character name?

Tom

View original

Yeah, you will, but then I've always done that anyway, so it doesn't bug me as much!

I've always found it easier to use Notepad first anyway, as the idea progresses from three-line 'pitch' to ten-line episode idea, each of which then become a scene, expanded to three lines, then work on each scene in there, eventually building it up to the actual dialogue. At that point, it's easier for me to copy into Google Docs, at which point I can 'bulk' apply the margins/desired formatting to the whole thing at once, rather than line-by-line.

I've never just sat down and written dialogue from the off, as that approach has never got me anywhere!

Dan

Hi Dan

Thanks again. I see that there is a trial version of Scrivener, which I have just downloaded and for this Black Friday weekend the full version is £16.There is a tutorial, long and short version to get you started.

Interesting that you compose in Notepad then move over to Scrivener. I'm not that tech savy, so do you have it set out as scene, character dialogue, character dialogue, direction, character dialogue etc that just converts to the format in Scrivener when you move it over?

Tom

You're missing me and Lazzard up! I don't use Scrivener; he doesn't use Notepad (I don't think!)

Dan

Hi Dan, Lazzard, Ant and Dec and any other interested parties

First of all apologies for getting muxt up over my addressee, but may be an update will help others.

The trial download of Scrivener is impressive if you are working with loads of research material. Great for novelists and academics but less tutorial for script writers. I did the "short" tutorial and then tried to get stuck into doing a radio comedy script. They have the exact Matt Carless template I was looking for and there is an Auto-Complete short cut for Character Names, which I added, but I can not make it work. Neither the Scrivener site or You Tube seem to help. I need an idiot guide video to show me which keys to press for the results I want to make it worth the effort.

At this point I will stick with copying over a template in Word!

Tom

I've been trying the demo version of Fade In, over the holidays and I do like how straight-forward it is to use.

You can buy it for $49.94 (about £34).

I've only ever written radio comedy scripts in Word.

I've only ever used Word for radio scripts as well, and I don't think I've ever even used a template (it's been a while since I've written any radio scripts). Radio format is a lot easier to just tab and enter than TV/film scripts.

Writersroom aren't going to throw it out for the margin being 2cm off or whatever. As Lazzard says, as long as it looks roughly like a radio script and is readable, don't worry. Lots of scripts they have put through aren't "properly" formatted.