THE DREAM WEAVING MACHINE
Screenwriting software helps aspiring and professional screenwriters write faster, clearer, and with more ease. But read the small print: it won’t make them better writers.

So you want to write a screenplay? Take a number. In a single year, some 10,000 feature film scripts are registered with the Writers Guild of America, West, a stunning figure when you consider that fewer than 500 films make it to the bug screen in the same period. While seminars, workshops, and Project Greenlight-style contests have helped feed the screenwriting mania, a large part of the craze can be directly attributed to screenplay formatting software. “We sell the dream of being in the lottery,” says Frank Colin, vice-president of product development for the leading program Final Draft, which was launched in 1991. For $200 or so, total novices can create a script that looks as professional as any Hollywood hackwork, automatically fitting the industry’s strict template designed to deliver one screen minute per page. Script guru Robert McKee (who was paid odd tribute in Adaptation) advises all of his students to use one. “If you hand in an ill-typed screenplay,” he says, “we know you’re an amateur.”

Since the mid 90’s, Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000 have emerged as the Coke and Pepsi of the genre, garnering a vast majority of formatting software sales. Both leapfrogged over Scriptware, the program credited with pioneering the tab-enter typing system that formatting software uses to jump smoothly between sections of a script (from exposition to dialogue to action and so on). So how’d they do it? Fierce marketing. In a town where image is everything, they’ve gained notoriety through celebrity testimonials (Tom Hanks for Final Draft, Francis Ford Coppola for Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000), the favor occasionally rewarded by product giveaways and quid pro quo cross-promotional deals, and have recruited users by offering free software to film schools. Today, there’s hardly a screenwriter out there who doesn’t use one of the programs.

Still, Final Draft’s executive marketing has given it a substantial edge over its closest competitor: Though no official figures are available, it has the lion’s share of the formatting market. And in this arena, market size matters. Because each program’s format is unique, using agreed-upon software ensures both smooth collaboration between screenwriting partners and painless onset script revisions (though all program files can be swapped when saved in rich text format). This herd mentality helps draw in new screenwriters, and then the law of inertia kicks in: Once someone gets used to a program, they’re much less inclined to bother learning a new one. “ It’s like the tobacco companies,” says one of the companies’ reps. “You’ve gotta hook ‘em while they’re young.”

So which program is best? Each one has loyalists who experience love at first type, but the industry’s dirty little secret is that they have virtually all of the same functions. “I haven’t found any real discernable difference,” says Richard Wesley, an NYU screenwriting professor. “Both are very, very good.” The general consensus is that Final Draft and Scriptware offer a slightly shorter learning curve, while MMS2000 has a detail-oriented edge for advanced functions and working with scripts in production.

Everyone agrees that you can’t underestimate the importance of these programs. “Bad formatting drives me crazy,” says a studio script reader. “If I see that, it’s an automatic pass.” But don’t overestimate their importance, either: Final Draft et al won’t make you the next Charlie Kaufman, or even the next Joe Eszterhas. “It has created the illusion that anyone can write a screenplay,” McKee notes. Even fellow scripts sage Syd Field, who’s getting paid for his Ask the Expert feature in the latest version of Final Draft, agrees. “What you throw down looks and talks and acts like a screenplay, [so] you think it must be a screenplay,” Field says. “And that’s not necessarily the case.”