More Scriptwriting Software
6 Jan
There’s a new app for writing screenplays and scripts, and it’s open source. Read about it. Download it. Tell me what you think.
6 Jan
There’s a new app for writing screenplays and scripts, and it’s open source. Read about it. Download it. Tell me what you think.
16 Sep
Social networks for writers come and go, but a new one has come. It’s called Jottify. Like the ones before it, you can share what you’ve written, find new readers, and have discussions. It also allows you to create a group, but it seems that the group doesn’t have any privacy settings.
13 Sep
I still haven’t picked out the definitive examples of what interests me about this eclectic and silly genre of music called “space age pop”.
Meanwhile, I like that I’m able to download dozens of sample albums from the space age pop era.
18 Aug
18 Aug
4 Jul
Tonight, I like to think that the fireworks are celebrating the launch of my latest project: to raise funds to support Infinity’s Kitchen the publication that I started a few years ago. Please take a look!
I had a lot of fun making this video. I did it with Microsoft PowerPoint, since I don’t have a video camera. I think it worked out nicely!
30 Jun
I think that a recent article in PC magazine makes an interesting point about Google+, the new social web app from Google. One of the new features is the ability to group your friends in to what’s called “circles”.
Among all the interesting features of Google+, one of the most heavily touted is Google Circles. Circles are what Google calls the various groups that you can organize your friends into. Once you’ve got them set up and populated, you then can pick which circles get to see the stuff you share. Your thumbs-down review of the latest episode of Glee? Probably just your friends. A chat about the company picnic? Work colleagues only for that one. Pics of your three-year-old niece? Strictly family. You get the idea. This YouTube video explains further:
Although Google holds it up as a differentiator, Facebook actually has a similar feature that lets you pile friends together in specific buckets — although, importantly, the “share only with these guys” isn’t nearly as convenient. Google+, however, puts Circles front and center, playing up the premise that you don’t want to share everything with everyone. And that idea is certainly true, but Google Circles is still the most misguided feature of the new social network.
The main problem with Google Circles is that it’s tedious.
It’s so tedious to do, with Facebook, that I’m sure many users don’t even know that they have the ability to control who sees what. It’s an important feature, and it needs to be simple.
Offline, if I want to hang out with sports fans, I go to the sports pub. When I want to talk about books and literature, I go to a reading. It’s easy to move around among various circles.
Online, I’m expected, by default, to say everything I say to everyone I know, reardless of why I know them, whether they’re interested, etc. That’s no good, and somebody should fix it, and fix it well.
If this article is still to be believed, we’ll have to wait for a feature like that. This new one isn’t any easier, either.
27 Jun
I’m looking to replace my very favorite notebook, which is all filled up now. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to make these anymore.
I’m posting this in the hopes that someone can help to point me in the right direction. I contacted the manufacturer, whose website suggests that they no longer make these, but they never replied. I’ve done all this because I loved that notebook so much and I want another one.
It is a hardbound book, with a cloth covering of some sort. The spine is sewn such that the open book lays flat. The paper is smooth and thick and white; it is acid-free (I think) and does not bleed through when I use a pen. The paper is narrow ruled (1/4 in (6.35 mm) spacing between ruling lines), with no vertical margin line. It measures 8″ wide by 10.5″ high and 1″ thick.

This is my favorite notebook.

When opened, my favorite notebook lays flat.

I have filled my favorite notebook with words and drawings

It has a hardbound cover, with cloth on it
24 Jun
Here’s another interesting book companion site. This one lets you download a free copy of the book, if you tweet about it first. It seems like an interesting way to get readers. The book is called OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED AND WHAT SHOULD I DO?
23 Jun
For a while now, I’ve been collecting examples of what I call the “book companion website”. The new “pottermore” website is probably going to become a very popular one, and if this intro video is any indication, this site will take the whole idea to an interesting new level.
30 May
This summer, I hope to have published e-book versions of my novella. Today, I happened upon some good advice for anyone engaged in e-book publishing. I thought I would pass the advice along. It comes from Levi Asher, over at Literary Kicks.
It’s simple advice, really. I’ll paraphrase.
I’m sure I can handle most of the points above, with the probable exception of number four.
22 May
Stephen Dedalus is my name,
Ireland is my nation.
Clongowes is my dwellingplace
And heaven my expectation.He read the verses backwards but then they were not poetry.
Lately I’ve been reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It isn’t poetry, but on occasion, as in the quote above, it reads like poetry.
I’ve been wondering, too, about stream of consciousness writing. I’m sure that Joyce isn’t simply writing down whatever happens to come to the top of his head (that’s called automatic writing). I think that good stream of consciousness writing has to be crafted, so that it flows as easily as thoughts do, and in the way that certain thoughts do.
Other times, I think it can be a happy accident that the writing comes out like raw thoughts. I’ve had that experience before.
One of the tracks on Strange Punctuation has a sort of stream of consciousness feel to it. It’s a collage, actually, made out of parts of several other recordings. My friend Curt made the track out of the material that hadn’t yet made the cut. This resulted in one of the more interesting spoken word recordings; it has a dreamlike mood to it, I think.
21 May
I’m (slowly) writing the script for a stage play. During my first draft, I sampled the various software apps that are designed to help a writer to produce a stage play, screen play, comic book script, etc. I thought I would blog some of my thoughts, in case anybody else out there finds them interesting.
When I’m writing, I want a comfortable, intuitive interface. I don’t want to fuss around with a bunch of complicated interface controls. I don’t want to spend my time on the formatting of the script; that’s the software’s job. This is very important to me, because I want to be comfortable when I write. It’s worth noting too, that in an age when I can buy a beautifully designed and intuitive app for $1 on my phone, I’m really not impressed by a $30 program that looks like it was designed when I was in High School (i.e. Windows 95). Design is a small point in this case, I know, but it matters to me.
I also want to be sure that whatever I’m writing in this special software is “portable” so that I can export it to an industry standard file type, change the margins and typesetting, or edit the document in another software application altogether. More technically speaking, I need my software to import/export file formats like Final Draft, Microsoft Word, Movie Magic Screenwriter, PDF, TXT or RTF. Why? Because I’m just now drafting my script, and I’m unsure what I’ll need to do with it later. I want my options open.
I tried out a lot of different apps, with help from demo versions and from friends. Here is a list, in order of my preference.
This one tops the list because it is basically free, and totally usable. Celtx is designed to help you write a variety of scripts, including two standard formats for stage plays. The basic package is free. Plugins to add extra features are reasonably priced. In addition to basic scriptwriting, Celtx also has features for storing notes, visualization, formatting templates… This thing does a lot for free. The interface is simple and easy to understand. What it won’t do is import/export to very many standard file types, at least not out of the box. They probably make you buy a plugin for that. I haven’t looked into it. They also have an iphone app, but I don’t want to write on my phone, thanks.
I had a lot of fun using this application. For Windows users like myself, though, it is still in Beta, so there are some glitches. In addition to “word processor” mode, Scrivener also has tools to help you organize your notes, scenes and even the other documents you might be using as source material, etc. I found those extra features to be very helpful with my first draft. The Mac version of this is $50, but the beta for windows is currently free. You will want to go through the tutorial on this one, to learn all the useful features, but then you can get right down to writing with a nice interface. Be warned though: once the beta expires, you’ll have to upgrade, so save your work often or be prepared to upgrade. The beta can export to most, but not all, of the usual file types.
Despite the irrelevant name of this app, I liked it. The word processing features are easy to use. The support for file formats is good. MovieMagic Screenwriter handles notes and scenes fairly well. It also integrates with Dramatica, so you can start there to hash out a rough outline. I found that this app, of all of them, gave me the best ability to write dialog quickly, while preserving format. Unfortunately, it costs $245.95, but if you’re going to spend hundreds of dollars on scriptwriting software, I think this is the best investment.
Dramatica Pro deserves mention on this list. It isn’t going to help you write dialog, etc. but it is a nice brainstorming tool. It’s user interface is in very bad need of a complete and total overhaul, but once you get the hang of it, it might be useful. The software walks you through a sort of plot philosophy that seems to be designed to help you write a Hollywood blockbuster, but I found it to provide useful prompts for thinking about character interactions and plot complexity. It ain’t cheap, though.
This is more like a web app. It supports standard formats. Adobe Story is easy to use. It works online and offline. It’s definitely worth a try. It’s free, for now, I guess?
Final Draft is one of the “industry standard” scriptwriting apps. It’s also very expensive. For your money, you get a word processor with minimal features to make it unique for writing scripts. The features that are there are very powerful. For example, the large number of formatting templates, the character names database, and collaboration mode. You’ll be able to dive right in, here and get the work done. It’s also worth noting that this app’s native file type is a very popular one.
These were listed on Wikipedia but I haven’t tried them out yet. Your results may vary, so I’ll simply list them here.
If anybody knows of any others, or has reviews to share, please do post them in the commetns. As you can tell by now, I’m a windows user, but I welcome my Mac friends to share any notes about the software they like to use.
26 Mar
I’m gearing up to start another project with Second Land. To help with that, I’ll be gathering some useful bits, here on NoCategories, so I can more easily share project notes. The first one: “concrete music”.
Musique concrète (French for “concrete music” or “real music”) is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as “musical” (melody, harmony, rhythm, metre and so on). The theoretical underpinnings of the aesthetic were developed by Pierre Schaeffer, beginning in the late 1940s.