![]() ![]() Screenplays themselves have a certain accepted organization, formatting, and order so that they are universal among those reading and working on them. ![]() ![]() If you look up the standards regarding spacing, alignment, and even capitalization for screenplays, just writing two pages can seem daunting. With Final Draft, all of that is forgotten. Final Draft takes care of all of the formatting for you. Once you open a file, you get an open page that can seem quite directionless. However, a blank page is all a writer needs, and every element required for the vast majority of screenplays is selectable in the lower left corner of your screen, as shown in the following picture:Īs you can see, there are several elements within a screenplay, and each has their own formatting. These elements include General, Scene Heading, Action, Character, Parenthetical, Dialogue, Transition, Shot, and Cast List. Other than the cover page, these are the basic elements of a screenplay, and in order to have the proper formatting for each element, Final Draft has put them into a selectable area in the left lower portion of the screen. For example, if you are starting a scene, you must first place a Scene Heading, which is why this is the default for when you open a new page in Final Draft. In the image below, I have made up the title of the scene, and Final Draft automatically put what I wrote into the correct formatting:Īlso worth noting in this pic is that in the Side Bar, my scene has automatically been saved for choosing later on, should the story return to "In A Dark Forest." As is apparent in the same photo above, "Scene Heading" is already selected. Once I hit "enter," Final Draft moves automatically to the next logical element of a screenplay after the Scene Heading, the "Action." This is where the non-dialogue portion of the story is written. I did not have to select "Action" in order for this portion to be formatted correctly. In the picture below, I have written some action for my story: By simply pressing "Enter" on my keyboard, the program switched it over for me. The action is formatted correctly, automatically. Then, by pressing "Enter" again, I can either continue to describe my action, or if you look in the lower left corner, the program tells me that I can select "Tab" on my keyboard in order to designate a character that will be speaking. After writing a little bit of dialogue, I can then choose which element to add next, and I have a picture of my dialogue and an open box of all the elements to choose from pictured below: In this next picture, I have done just that:Īnd then, if you look in the left lower corner, once I've named my character, hitting "Enter" again automatically changes the formatting for writing dialogue. If you hit "Enter" one too many times, this box will open up, asking you which element you are trying to insert, and you can choose one just by typing the letter corresponding to each element (as pictured: "G, S, A, C, P, D, T"). With these typing shortcuts automatically in place, the author of the screenplay never has to stop using the keyboard in order to get a perfectly formatted screenplay ready for submission. I went ahead and finished one page of my marvelous screenplay (not at all) so you can see what a final page looks like. I never had to stop typing, and I never used a mouse for any of the work. ![]()
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