Introduction to script formatting software for computers.

In the Good Old Days we used to write scripts using typewriters. These took quite a lot of pounding on the keys to make the the type show up on the page (especially if your ribbon was getting old); if you made a mistake, you had to use a special typewriter eraser to correct it; a couple of extra copies (but no more) could be made by using carbon paper and flimsy copy paper; and if you rewrote anything, the whole page had to be retyped. And we were happy with that.

We’d write the rough drafts by hand, so we could scribble changes over them and cross speeches out; and then type it all up into a neat script. Successful writers sometimes had a secretary to type up their scripts for them.

The two great innovations that had scriptwriters praising the God of Technology were the invention of the photocopier (no more carbon copies needed), and the invention of Tipp-Ex (no more eraser pencils).

Then we got typewriters with a small display, so we could backspace and correct errors before the machine typed them. Soon afterwards we got desktop computers with word-processing software, and with them came those great blessings: cut-and-paste, and floppy disks. (The disks really were floppy in those early days.) These enabled us to save scripts in a file, cut and move speeches, and then print out a whole new copy.

The graphical user interface allowed us to see layout and typefaces on the screen, and style templates allowed us to create paragraph styles like ‘Title’, ‘Dialogue’ and ‘Action’ so we could quickly modify the layout of an entire script.

A more recent software innovation has been the development of script formatting software. These are specialised word processors, and most script formatting products work in roughly the same way. You type in your script and assign a style to each paragraph — so a script fragment similar to the following:
Scene 10. The Laboratory.
Professor Watkins is pacing anxiously when Sergeant Reid arrives.
              WATKINS
          (angrily)
      Quickly, man! Where've you been?
may use the following styles for each paragraph: Scene Title, Action, Character Name, Parenthetical, and Dialogue. Just like a word processor, you can adjust each style and change its margins, spacing, capitalisation, underlining, and so forth.

These style templates can usually be saved, so you can easily change the entire layout of a script — which is useful if you’re working for a production company who use a non-standard layout. Script formatting software often comes with a few templates for standard US script layouts, such as screenplay, stage play, television drama and television sitcom.

(It’s worth mentioning that you don’t normally need to be obsessive about layout. Most production companies are usually quite happy with scripts in some kind of ‘standard’ format — and sometimes you can get away with almost any format you like, as long as it’s easy to understand.)

The clever bit — and the advantage over an ordinary word processor — is that story formatting software can make a pretty good job of guessing what style to use for each paragraph, so you can forget about formatting and concentrate on the creative writing. Different products work slightly differently, but usually they will guess that, for example, immediately after a Scene Title the next paragraph will probably be Action, and immediately after a Character Name the next paragraph will probably be Dialogue, and after that the next paragraph will probably be another Character Name.

Page formatting is also usually done automatically, so if a speech gets broken over two pages, the Character Name is repeated at the top of the next page and ‘Continued’ is inserted. And if you delete an entire scene or insert a new one, the scene numbering will usually be adjusted throughout the entire script.

Script formatters usually allow you to customise some of the defaults, so after a paragraph of Action you may normally want to return to a Character Name followed by Dialogue, rather than a second paragraph of Action. If you want something different from the default, you simply click on the paragraph style you want — but with some careful configuration to your own style of writing, the defaults can get it right most of the time.

Script formatters often include other useful short cuts so you don’t have to think too much about formatting. Most of them recognise that if you type a Tab in the middle of Action, you’ve started inserting a Character Name; and if you type a Tab in Dialogue, you’re inserting a Parenthetical, so they’ll add the parentheses and position it correctly.

They may also recognise that if you start a paragraph with ‘int.’ or ‘ext.’, you’re typing a Scene Heading. And they may further simplify this with a pop-up list of all the locations you’ve already used in scene headings, so you can scroll down and use exactly the same wording. They may also offer you a pop-up list of times-of-day like ‘Day’, ‘Night’, ‘Morning’, ‘Dusk’ and so on.

Similarly when you start typing a Character Name, they may give you a pop-up list of every character you’ve already used starting with the same letter, so you’re sure of using the same spelling as before.

These all make the process of writing the script so much simpler and easier, so you can concentrate on the flow of character and action while the software takes care of the nuts and bolts of layout. The differences between the products are the small features to make them easier in use. Ideally they would make the formatting process completely invisible to the user, yet the script would end up perfectly laid out.

Products also differentiate themselves by incorporating additional script writing and development tools, to design cover pages, read your script back to you, and so on.

Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000

Sophocles