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First peek: Final Draft 10

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A new version of the screenwriting software Final Draft for Mac and Windows has just been released. I was on the beta test program but still I’m going to call this a first peek: call it a full and frank review of the price rather than of the program itself.

The quick summary is that this is definitely the nicest version of Final Draft we’ve had and it does add new features but nothing that would make you pause with your mug of tea halfway to your open mouth. I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss the new features but we’ll come to know whether they’re good or just gimmicks when we’ve been writing scripts in the app.

Script formatting hasn’t changed since time began and the ways in which Final Draft speeds up that part of the job can only go so far. They’ve gone so far. It’s unlikely that there will be some enormous new feature that you must have but there is something that I want. I want Final Draft to stop betraying the fact that it’s written for both Windows and Mac: it has always felt lowest-common denominator, it has always felt like an ancient PC app.

Of course it’s great that the app is on both platforms, the problem is that doesn’t feel as if it’s on either: it previously hasn’t kept up with Microsoft or Apple’s operating system.

Final Draft 10… still can’t quite shake that. Oddly, although the Mac version does still look like a Windows app, it’s still not as ugly as the actual Windows version.

It’s better. It’s getting there. And the reason for buying Final Draft at all remains how great it is at helping you zoom through a scene: forget writing out each character’s name in a fight, just write their line, trade their blow, hit return and give the other guy some words. This is the key part of the software, it is the key reason why it’s used: it means you can write down scenes just about as fast as you can hear them in your head.

If you don’t already have Final Draft, that would be the reason to get it. There are these new features, though. It is features, plural, as it really comes down to two. I’m being harsh: the makers would point to more but then they are obsessed with how Final Draft paginates and every time they boast about that, I think of how it is substantially less important than it was.

The two features that are worth examining begin with the story map. Sorry, Story Map(TM). They must be serious about it, they’ve trademarked it. Click on this and along the top of your screen where you might usually see a ruler, you get a timeline. Every scene has a mark on that time line and significant ones get bigger blobs. Click anywhere to go that screen. Or just look at the spacing between what you’ve said are the bigger blobby scenes.

Then there’s the Beat Board (also trademarked) which is to modern screenwriting what the cork board was to it before. If the cork board is for a single writer to plan out a single project, the beat board is more for a room of writers breaking a TV series.

That said, Final Draft still feels like an app for an individual, not a group. But there is now a collaborative feature: I’ve yet to test it out in anger or even really at all so I can’t tell yet whether it’s Google Docs-level collaboration. It’s certainly a way for many people to see the same script and exchange instant messages about it.

If you’re new to Final Draft then note that it retails for £188.40 ($249) but is temporarily on sale for £127.37 ($169. Education or military people can get some reduced price and upgrades can get version 10 for £75.36 ($99.99), temporarily reduced to £59.54 ($79.99). The reason for the odd Sterling price is Brexit. It will vary every time you look at it, but the trend ain’t going down.

You can buy the software from the official website where there is also a trial edition of both the Windows and Mac versions.

You can’t get a trial of the iPad and iPhone versions of either Final Draft Writer or Final Draft Reader. Never bother with Final Draft Reader. Just don’t. The Writer iOS app has been updated to work with Final Draft 10 features and if you already had it lurking away on your iPad or iPhone, you’ve just got the update for free. If you haven’t, then you need to buy and it costs approximately £23 ($29.99) temporarily discounted to £7.99 ($9.99). You can get this iPad and iPhone version here.

One writer on a date, one nearby

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Why did he have to say he’s a writer? A real one, Anne Thériault, was sitting next to – well, here’s what she tweeted first:

Watching a couple on what appears to be a terrible first coffee date at the table next to me. Dude is [a very] precious self-involved writer.

A Woman Live-Tweeted the Worst First Date in the World and it was Brilliant – David Elkin, TheJournal.ie (7 July 2015)

They’re in Toronto, it’s 3:12pm and the whole shebang is reported in TheJournal.ie (via Yahoo Tech). Now read on, if you can bear it.

Amazon to pay authors per page read

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From next month, Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library will pay out royalties “based on the number of pages read”.

So if your book is opened on someone’s Kindle and they leave page 1 on there long enough that they could’ve read it, you get cash. It’s not entirely 1 page equals 1 payment: instead, the money comes from a pot that is shared amongst all authors whose work gets included and then gets read. Says Amazon:

Here are some examples of how it would work if the fund was $10M and 100,000,000 total pages were read in the month:
The author of a 100 page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

The author of a 200 page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $2,000 ($10 million multiplied by 20,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

The author of a 200 page book that was borrowed 100 times but only read halfway through on average would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

Kindle Unlimited Pages Read – Amazon

It’s that bit about a page not actually being read, there’s no way to know that, but it needs to be open on the Kindle for long enough that it could have been. There’s got to be a way to game that.

Read the full Amazon detail, though be warned it’s (possibly deliberately) the most boring thing you’ll see today.

Learn structure from Obama’s script writer

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By far, the best way to learn how to write speeches is to read the great ones, from Pericles’ Funeral Oration, to Dr. King’s Mountaintop speech, to Faulkner’s Nobel acceptance address. But if you’re looking for some quick tips, here are a few things to bear in mind next time you’re asked to give a speech:

1. Write like you talk. There is no First Law of Speechwriting, but if there were, it would probably be something like this: a speech is meant to be spoken, not read. That simple (and obvious) fact has a few important (and less obvious) implications. Use short words. Write short sentences. Avoid awkward constructions that might cause a speaker to stumble. Tip: Read the speech aloud as you’re writing. If you do it enough, you’ll start hearing the words when you type them.

6 Tips for Writing a Persuasive Speech (On Any Topic) ≠ Adam Frankel, TIME (12 January 2015)

Read the full piece.

Ten Tips on Being a Productive Writer

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Lucy Hay usually blogs about the techniques of writing and the industry that we writers work in but she did once do this very concise and smart round up of productivity tips for us.

There’s plenty in here that I do and that I recommend endlessly in The Blank Screen but also much that I hadn’t considered. Some of that comes from how Hay covers juggling the kinds of demands you have on you when you’re a parent.

But she also recommends relaxation. That’s where I turn my face against her.

Read the full feature on her Bang2Write site.

Be bad. A bit.

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Seriously, this is not the point of a 99U article I read today and that I want to recommend to you. The article is really about being good all the time: specifically, don’t reward yourself with bad treats just because you’ve been good and productive this week.

But there is more to life than being steadily productive and good. And if bad is a dark chocolate Mars bar, you need to live a little more. What’s the point of being a writer if you don’t stray from the Boy Scout code?

Within limits, said William thinking of the legal ramifications of anything illegal you might now be considering.

That’s what I believe, as a writer with a chocolate problem. But take a look at 99U’s position – if not to agree with it, then at least to enjoy feeling bad.

More advice on how to get hired at a job

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There’s this firm, right, and it’s looking to hire various people but one particular group is proving a problem because they write rubbish applications. Apparently Project Managers are so bad at managing to project an image of themselves that the person hiring them was driven to write an article about how they should do it. Remarkably, just as with so very many other pieces of advice for job applicants, the answer is to write better.

You can do that. You’re a writer. We forget sometimes that what we do is hard and that many, many or even most people just can’t do it. So use your skill, use your talent, write your way into a job interview.

I also think that Product Managers need to write better resumes. Designers have, for the most part, figured out that it’s more about showing than telling. It’s easy to go to someone’s sites and portfolio to get a sense of what they’re about. Product Managers still appear to be stuck in the “Let me tell you how awesome I am” rut, though. This is a generalization, of course, but what I’m mostly seeing right now is resumes that excel at vagueness. It’s not uncommon to see a sentence like “Applied world-class methodologies to create a successful customer-centric product”, or some variation of that. What does that mean?

It’s great to see proof of success, yes — stats about conversion improvements, etc. are extremely useful. But hiring managers need more than that to assess Product Managers. We need to know how you think. We need to know how you approach problems, how you work, what methods you like and don’t like, and why. And for some reason most PMs I speak to seem surprised by those questions and have trouble answering them.

How to Get Hired as a Project Manager – Rian van der Merwe, Elezea