/swg/ - Screenwriting General

What are you working on? What can you show us?

-- Resources --

>The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb)
imsdb.com/

>Screenwriting Software
- Fade In (Windows/macOS/Linux, $79.95) - fadeinpro.com/ [Works with Fountain]
- Highland (macOS, $29.99) - quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/ [Works with Fountain]
- Slugline (macOS, $39.99) - slugline.co/ [Works with Fountain]
- Amazon Storywriter (Web, Free) - storywriter.amazon.com/ [Works with Fountain]
- Trelby (Windows/Linux, Free & Open Source) trelby.org/ [Works with Fountain]
- WriterDuet (Web, Freemium) - writerduet.com/ [Works with Fountain]
- Scrivener (Windows/macOS, $45.00) - literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php [Works with Fountain]
- Adobe Story (Web, Freemium) - story.adobe.com/
- Celtx (Web, Freemium) celtx.com/
- Montage (macOS, $29.95) - marinersoftware.com/products/montage/
- Final Draft (Windows/macOS, $249.99) - store.finaldraft.com/final-draft-10.html
- Movie Magic Screenwriter (Windows/macOS, $249.95) - screenplay.com/catalog/product/view/id/30/category/8

>Fountain, a free and open source plaintext screenplay format (works across multiple text editors and screenwriting apps)
- Website - fountain.io/
- Introduction Video - youtube.com/watch?v=X3ZdiUqrZ1g
- Fountain for Vim - vim.sourceforge.io/scripts/script.php?script_id=3880
- Fountain for Emacs - rnkn.github.io/fountain-mode/
- Fountain for Atom - atom.io/packages/fountain
- Fountain for Visual Studio Code - marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=massivedanger.fountain

Wrote an eight-page short last night after deciding I needed to do something I could produce in my own backyard. First draft is solid, have gotten some decent criticism. After posting it for criticism, I got approached by some podcasters who act out screenplays. They have 235 Twitter followers, which is nothing but also 235 more than I have.

Is any exposure good, /swg/?

I live in LA. How do I become a famous screenwriter?

>famous
>screenwriter
By directing your screenplays.

You can all pat each other on the back and tell each other that your shit is good, but none of it is. All you guys got nothing to say so go on pretending like you are professionals.

Let's look at actual filmmakers and see what their first films are.

Tarantino: Reservoir Dogs
Paul Thomas Anderson: Hard Eight
Orsen Welles: CITIZEN FUCKING KANE
Jim Cameron: The Terminator

Their FIRST EVER FILMS THAT THEY WROTE. And here you are, circlejerking your SHITTY fucking scripts about highschoolers and NEETs that no one gives a FUCK about. Tarantino had SHIT TO SAY in RD.

What do you have to say? "wah wah society is unfair, guys i'm lonely, guys did anyone else realize that everything is meaningless? the system man. why is no one doing ANYTHING i'm going to make movies to show them"

Grow the fuck up and go get a real job, you fucking hacks.

What did Tarantino say in RD?

do it

...

>Screenwriting Software

Thanks for the list of suggestions. I've been looking for good screenwriting software for a while now but I don't know which one is the best.

What would you guys recommend?

>Their FIRST EVER FILMS THAT THEY WROTE
I genuinely and seriously doubt that any of those infamous faggots got started writing with those specific films. /swg/ has always struck me as a platform to educate and encourage, or to share ideas. Whatever.
I don't even peruse this thread but I have to call you out for being such an a myopic, self-hating mope. Shut up little man.

OP should've just capitalized SHIT.
Reservoir Dogs really had no higher purpose other than entertainment.

Do you honestly think those films were the first things they ever sat down to write?

I have an unfinished Batman script from when I was 15. I haven't even seen it in years.

Final Draft is objectively the best, but also the most expensive. It's really easy to get the student discount if you're in anything resembling education, though. I got it for an online Certificate III program in Business.
I used Celtx and Trelby before. Trelby worked decently for a while, but is too bare-bones to use seriously. Celtx is shit, though some of the features are cool.

Thanks a lot. Yeah I hear nothing but great things about Final Draft but as you've said, it's pricey.

I've been thinking about getting it through "other means" if you catch my drift. But uh, I hear they crack down pretty well on getting it that way.

How do you give your characters a voice?

I feel like all the character I write are just me, they don't actually read like a different person.

Tarantino's first film wasn't Reservoir Dogs.

Alternate timeline for the new Star Wars movies where after the events of the new trilogy, due to rampant Force users springing up all over unchecked and with no training required to harness the power of the Force, people flying through outerspace without space suits, astral projection assassins killing people and committing crime, Force ghosts being able to interact with the physical world, hyper space suicide bombers crashing into various civilian centers, no Jedi archives or history to guide any of these new Force users, and so on and so on, a splinter faction breaks off tapping into the full power of the Dark Side. Without any guidance of any kind, they begin to trying to take control of time itself. Rey and her new band of Jedi (which looks a lot like a sci-fi Burger King Kids Club) get to work trying to stop this renegade faction since reality itself begins to warp. The series culminates with this group of Dark Jedi basically bringing about a cosmic Ragnarok in which the universe itself is destroyed, fade to white, then you hear "Master Skywalker" as Luke wakes up from a meditation, smiles at his padawans, one of them tells him about a bad vision that he had. Luke looks at him and begins instructing them that "the future is always in motion and can be changed."

Yeah, when I tried to pirate it a while ago it didn't work. Maybe just try Celtx. Or I hear good things about some of the mid-range options -- mostly, admittedly, from people bitter about not being able to afford Final Draft.
Are your characters you because you write characters *too much* like you? 'Write what you know' is a meme unless you know a whole lot.
kys franchisecuck
thanks user

THE 2017 BLACK LIST top 5

68 votes – “Ruin” by Matthew Firpo, Ryan Firpo – A nameless ex-Nazi captain must navigate the ruins of post-WWII Germany to atone for his crimes during the war by hunting down and killing the surviving members of his former SS death squad.

42 votes – “Let Her Speak” by Mario Correa – The true story of Senator Wendy Davis and her 24-hour filibuster to save 75% of abortion clinics in Texas.

40 votes – “Daddio” by Christy Hall – A passenger and her cab driver reminisce about their relationships on the way from the airport to her apartment in New York.

32 votes – “Keeper of The Diary” by Samuel Franco & Evan Kilgore – Chronicles Otto Frank’s journey, with the help of a junior editor at Doubleday Press, to find a publisher for the diary his daughter Anne wrote during the Holocaust.

22 votes – “Where I End” by Imran Zaidi – In a world where your life can be saved, uploaded to a computer, and restarted in the case of your untimely demise, a husband returns from the dead, suspecting his wife may have been involved in his death.

I fucking hate what Irony has done to cinema. I hate the bathos influenced humour that plagues every dumb fucking movie out there. It officially ruined Star Wars. When will sincerity make a comeback?

That seems to be the more common solution I've found when people tell me that Final Draft is too expensive; just download Celtx.

It's free, and doesn't seem tooooo far off from Final Draft. Thanks a lot for the recommendation!