What is Reddit's opinion of Final Draft?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

If you bought Final Draft, get your customer number and contact support via chat for free here..

Generally, if you keep your OS current and Final Draft current, you'll have very few problems.

I heard back from Final Draft support:

Please reinstall FD from the following link: http://www.finaldraft.com/support/install-final-draft/install-final-draft-11-macintosh/.
If this doesn't fix your problem, you may need to do a thorough uninstall and then reinstall of FD.

I tried it and so far it's working!

Sometimes they do. Phillip Iscove for example. But this wasn't the first pilot to get him noticed as he points out. And he basically became a staff writer on the show he thought up, since they brought in an established showrunner.

Still good for him, and good for his pocketbooks. I wonder what he'll bring to the table in the next 10/20 years.

Look for Final Draft. It's a good screen writing program, but not free. If you're a student, look for student pricing.

http://www.finaldraft.com/

You don't actually need to buy a program, but formatting can be a pain in the ass.

>Is there anything I should know, for instance how much screen direction.

Put in as little as needed. You want to give a clear idea of what's going on, but not so much that you take over the director's interpretation…at least that’s what my screen writing professor always said.

Good luck

>any programs

You mean like Final Draft? I have some friends who write for stage and they seem to like it. It even comes with templates that match the intended medium.

Well, they already have a Writer app for iPad and a Reader app for iPhone/iPad, but I'm glad they chose Windows 8 over Android.

Apparently, it's more difficult for them to create an Android app due to pagination. This leads me to think that Final Draft Writer might only be available for the Surface Pro 3 with its 2160 x 1440 resolution, but maybe they'll include 1920x1080 resolution for Surface 2, SP1, and SP2... and whatever other tablets/PCs that stick with those resolutions.

Certainly.

I've received some decent feedback from Script Xpert, and I also have a degree of faith in them, considering they operate under the Script Magazine / Final Draft banner.

Consider something like Script Xpert. It's not cheap, but then it is a professional service. And frankly, it's likely going to be more constructive than family, friends, and strangers on Reddit.

Edit: I don't know why people disagreed with this. Because it wasn't free? Because I suggested the help would be better than what we could provide?

I was only trying to provide another option for a new writer.

That's wicked cool.

I've did a brief read up on screenplay writing and all the technicalities really boggles my mind. I even got hold of a free screenplay writing software, here if you want it but I fee like I'm in over my head.

Sigh; technology.

Anyway; I hope you get your stories done. I'm sure you know that the satisfaction you gain after completing something is worth all the hours of hard work and frustration of writer's block. Keep at it!

Final Draft uses a pretty simple approach to setting the type for a block of text. Something like your ghost character could be a blank line that is labeled as type character rather than type action. I believe FD's underlying structure is just XML, so you could potentially open the file in a plain text editor and root out the issues.

As for all the extra character names, there is a way (though off the top of my head I recall where it is) to delete excess character names in a properly working copy of FD. Besides, the only time you should be using tab is to initiate a new dialogue cue and if you goof up and hit tab on an action block, all you need to do is change its type in the dropdown box on the menu bar -- you can see it in this image capture it clearly says "Dialogue."

Comparing it to Windows really isn't valid given how much more complex Windows is and how many more people are working to develop it. The likely hood of issues is always going to be high on something like that.

Unfortunately, without having witnessed it myself, I'm leaning towards operator error at the moment.

off-topic, but you mention both Final Draft and Celtx as if you use both more or less alternately. How would you compare them, which do you prefer for what?

For those unfamiliar, Final Draft is like the MS Word of screenwriting software, while Celtx is a web-based screenwriting system that aims to support the whole production process with e.g. storyboards, prop and character databases, etc.