British Comedy Guide

Writing Software

Morning,
More advice. Currently using Celtx as it's free and it formats stuff...but it's starting to annoy now, it's buggy, you have to be online to make it a PDF, American spellcheck.

Obvs, I'd love to use Final Draft, but it's a bit £250.

What do you folk use as your software?

All I really want is decent formatting, spellcheck and ability to export to standard filetypes.

Some are using my Scriptwriter's Toolkit.

https://www.comedy.co.uk/forums/thread/14314/

http://www.datahighways.net/dhl/toolkit.htm

You've got your prices wrong there - I think you were looking at dollars.
FD8 is available from Amazon for £133.
The other comparable software is MovieMagic Screenwriter - about a fiver more.
I've used both and, frankly, really like MMSW, but got sick of being asked for things in FD8 format - which really is the industry standard.
If you can scrabble the dough together I would go for FD8.

Does it need a decent PC? I work off a netbook on the train.

This is what they say it needs -

Microsoft® Windows 7, Windows Vista™, or Windows XP (32 and 64 bit versions)
Intel® Pentium® III processor or later
Minimum 512 MB of RAM
50 MB available hard drive space
CD-ROM drive or Internet connection

Nice one. Christmas present for self then

I used to own Final Draft, I personally found it very buggy.

Quote: Lee @ December 7 2012, 3:31 PM GMT

I used to own Final Draft, I personally found it very buggy.

I think FD7 was particularly buggy, which is why I held out with MMSW for so long (and I still prefer it, TBH) but, as I say, I work in screenplays and it's the only format people seem to want to see.*
FD8 has given me zero problems.

* note that if your presenting scripts to be read, as long as format is good, the software doesn't matter - most people will accept, nay prefer PDF. It's just when you get further along the line ( ie when they start changing your f***ing scripts) that the software choice becomes critical.

PS Love that festive snow, Lee.

Quote: Lazzard @ December 7 2012, 3:44 PM GMT

I think FD7 was particularly buggy
PS Love that festive snow, Lee.

That's the one I had. Never heard of MMSW, will check it out.

PS Thanks

Quote: Trinder @ December 7 2012, 12:12 PM GMT

Morning

All I really want is decent formatting, spellcheck and ability to export to standard filetypes.

... and a better clock.

Quote: Trinder @ December 7 2012, 12:12 PM GMT

Morning,
More advice. Currently using Celtx as it's free and it formats stuff...but it's starting to annoy now, it's buggy, you have to be online to make it a PDF, American spellcheck.

Obvs, I'd love to use Final Draft, but it's a bit £250.

What do you folk use as your software?

All I really want is decent formatting, spellcheck and ability to export to standard filetypes.

Seriously, don't waste your money. If you've got a word processing program find out how to set up styles and use those. You only need three - Dialogue, Action and Scene Heading.

Moviedraft is £17.99 and it's pretty decent. There's a demo so you can try out.

http://www.moviedraft.com/uk/

Quote: Godot Taxis @ December 8 2012, 1:18 AM GMT

Seriously, don't waste your money. If you've got a word processing program find out how to set up styles and use those. You only need three - Dialogue, Action and Scene Heading.

That.

There's actually a free demo, so you could try it and see if you like it.

http://demo.finaldraft.com/download/

Good luck

Just been working with some software called 'Scrivener'.
It's actually a very flexible tool for all kinds of writing/research projects - you can pretty well tailor it to suit anything you're working on- and it allows you to keep everything, research, photos, music, webpages, index cards etc all inside the one project file and always to hand.

BUT within it is a pretty good script template package.

I normally work on FD8, but for my latest thing I had a ton of research in my Scrivener file and wanted to work 'within' it, so to speak, so tried out the screenplay formatting function.
It's not half bad - and , for my purposes will export to FD8 if I need to get it to someone in that format.
It doesn't have all the production tools that you get in FD8 & MMSW, but for writing, it's brilliant.

And it's less than £30.

I'd heartily recommend it

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