Adobe Story - Game Changer?

I'm new to script writing and I'm working on a website for people to use as tool. What would you say are the must haves of a script writing software?

sufcboy said:

I'm new to script writing and I'm working on a website for people to use as tool. What would you say are the must haves of a script writing software?

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If your tool's gonna be free and you'll get revenue from ads, you'll have a chance against Adobe Story and Final Draft. Disclaimer: I'm a Word guru and I've never used either of these. I'd suggest you download a trial copy of Final Draft and note its marketing page and see which features they brag about.

But here are a few must-haves for screenwriters:

E-Z FORMATTING. All the weird indenting, capitalization, spacing, page-break etiquette, font requirements, underlining, indicating foreign language, off-camera conversation, phone conversation, etc. is sacred code among those who write and more importantly READ scripts, so the easier and more automated and foolproof it is for the writer, the better.

CHARACTER LISTS. The character's name must appear over every line of dialogue they utter. It would be nice to be able to insert them at a mouse click.

REVISION TRACKING. Writers like to keep track of their revisions, never throwing anything away.

VERSION CONTROL. If your tool is designed for writing teams, some sort of version control will also be necessary so people can't overwrite each other's stuff or accidentally work on the same file at the same time.

Those are just a few I can think of as a writer in general (I'm also a hack in the fields of journalism and technology). For screenwriting, you'll probably find all kinds of other goodies in the Final Draft demo -- graphics, voice simulation to listen to the dialogue, god knows what else.

Thanks for the input guys. I think I may be changing my demographic to a younger less experienced audience. The only one I can tick on this list is ther Character Lists.

Next step for me I think is to check out Final Draft

I downloaded and I like it. It imported a script I typed in Celtx very well.

I'm still more comfortable with Celtx, but perhaps I'll migrate over to Adobe Story.

I'm a died in the wool Wordperfect user and although I've tried Celtex and Adobe Story I prefer Page2Stage another freebee. What I like about P2S is that it is totally configurable. I write stage plays and the format is very different than screenplays. P2S is the only one that handles stage plays in a native format.

Doug

sufcboy said:

Thanks for the input guys. I think I may be changing my demographic to a younger less experienced audience. The only one I can tick on this list is ther Character Lists.

Next step for me I think is to check out Final Draft

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The most important one is the formatting. No other genre is as anal about how the manuscript looks and is formatted than screenwriting.

Next to that, I want a good storyboarding software. Take my beats as graphical units, and let me rearrange them until I can find the best storyline.

Five Sprockets

Online collaboration with lots of bells and whistles has been done. More will undoubtedly be coming. I'm surprised Google hasn't fielded a contender. And personally, Adobe sends chills down my spine thanks to Premiere. I know people who start booting their machines on Sunday in order to have them ready to go on Monday.

Doug B said:

I'm a died in the wool Wordperfect user and although I've tried Celtex and Adobe Story I prefer Page2Stage another freebee. What I like about P2S is that it is totally configurable. I write stage plays and the format is very different than screenplays. P2S is the only one that handles stage plays in a native format.

Doug

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Celtx does stage plays natively. It even does novels now.

Somehow I've failed to come across this before, so this is new to me! From using other Adobe programs, I like the layout and aesthetic to this, which certainly helps. It looks like it contains all the standard features that you'd want... but that's just from playing around with it for a minute or two.

My real concern with it though is that you have to be signed in to use it, even if you've downloaded it to your desktop. You can work offline, but only after you've already signed in... which seems a little counter-intuitive. I like the look of it, but that one factor certainly turns me off.