“Competition arrives for screenwriting software titans”
Surprising article in Variety today about — of all things — screenwriting software. Sounds like a subject for a end-of-year filler piece, but they go into the subject at some depth. An excerpt:
Once upon a time, screenwriting was a labor-intensive vocation. And that labor was hardly confined to the age-old challenges of storytelling.
“Just the sheer physical pain-in-the-ass quality of typing out a script in script format, with all the tabs, indents, caps and all that, probably kept 90% of people from writing a screenplay because the whole thing was so hard,” said writer and former “Cheers” showrunner Rob Long.
Screenwriting programs like Final Draft and Write Brothers’ Movie Magic helped change all that. Write Brothers veep Chris Huntley, who co-developed and sold the first scripting software nearly 30 years ago, said laughingly of the woes of script formatting, “We’re in business because of page breaks.”
Over the past few decades, Write Brothers’ Movie Magic Screenwriter has been the Pepsi to Final Draft’s Coke in the screenwriting software aisle. With the exception of the niche occupied by Celtx, an open-source, all-in-one screenwriting and production package, the two companies have all but dominated the field.
Recently, however, Scripts Pro, ScriptWrite, Million Dollar Screenwriting and Scripped.com have popped up. And while none appear ready to overturn the big boys anytime soon, they could develop into significant competition down the road.
I’ve had a few posts over the past 3 years on screenwriting software: here, here, and here.
Apart from brand loyalty, the question is really about new writers or people who want to test out screenwriting: Do they plunk down $150 or is there something they can use for little or no money until they see if screenwriting is something to which they want to devote more time and energy?
There are two free apps. Celtx and Scripped. The latter offers screenwriting software as part of their online community. For more background, here is an interview I did with Scripped COO Ryan Buckley.
Here are links to the various screenwriting software systems featured in the Variety article:
Final Draft
Movie Magic
Celtx
Scripped
For the iPhone and iPad:
Scripts Pro
ScriptWrite
For more of the article, go here.
What are your thoughts on screenwriting software? What do you use? Any others we should know about? Any features you wish they had other than the ability to knock out a killer spec script while you sleep?
For the record, I have both Final Draft and Movie Magic, although I basically use the latter for my writing because I started with the original company (Scriptor) back around 1990.
UPDATE: A lot of stellar comments about the Scripped community. As it happens, today has been proclaimed to be “Scripped.com Day” in San Francisco by Mayor Gavin Newsome. Here is some info about Scripped:
Founded in 2008, Scripped’s goal is to make screenwriting accessible to writers of all levels and provide the tools and community writers need to bring their ideas from inception to completion. Scripped aims to encourage and support the needs of all scripted content writers.
Scripped Inc. promotes the art of screenwriting by providing Scripped Writer, the first completely free web-based screenwriting software for writers. Scripped Writer is an innovative text editor that functions like a standard word processor but automatically formats and catalogs each screenplay element according to industry standards.
Since its launch in January 2008, Scripped Writer has amassed a user-base of nearly 100,000 writers from all 50 states and more than 50 countries and adds a new screenwriter to its userbase every 20 minutes. In March of 2010, Scripped merged with Zhura.com doubling its userbase. To try Scripped Writer, http://www.scripped.com. For additional corporate info and biographical information on the management team, please email us directly at contact@scripped.com.
I think I discovered Scripped within a few weeks of its launch and have promoted them here. Good people who are doing their innovative best to get writers work.
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