As you may know, I'm taking part in the script frenzy this month and as you might guess, with me being some one who loves to play around with software, I've been trying out a few of the tools that are around to help with the arcane formating of the things.
I did start out just using word and some templates provided on the script frenzy site, but that didn't last to long (about half a page). Changing styles for virtually every paragraph was just to much of a pain.
So my first stop was Montage from Mariner Software, I downloaded the demo and started to play with it, the formating was soooo much easier than using a word processor. And Montage has a lot of the note taking and idea handling tools that I was use to in Scriviner, my other writing app. So was just about to reach for my credit card (I did say I collect software), when...
On the script frenzy forums I noticed mention of Celtx, which sounded very cool, so I took a look and yes it was available for Mac OS X and what's more it's free! So I downloaded this and ran it side by side with Montage.
I would write a bit in one, copy and paste it in to the other and continue with that and then switch back. Obviously this took a bit longer than normal writing (and it seems writing a screenplay takes longer than writing a novel as well), which is one of the reason's my word count is currently...a bit low.
One of the problems I had was that Montage is fine when you type directly in to it, but copy and paste stuff in and it gets a little confused. It tends to run scenes together and generally gets to feel a little sluggish and unstable, although to be fair it hasn't crashed on me at all so far.
However Celtx handles pasted text much, better. Okay yes I makes one or two mistakes confusing shots with actions, but unlike the problems with Montage a little manual editing sorted these out.
So I've settled on Celtx then? Well maybe, but maybe not. I now also discover that Scriviner has a screenwriting template and FinalDraft is offering money off to script frenzy participants. Oh no what should I do?
Well in the end sense, I think, prevailed. Celtx is free and works the way I'd expect it to. Add this to the fact that I'm behind on my word count and you'll see that I can only make one choice here. So Celtx it is.
Well maybe I could just....no.