Note: The pointer you move on the screen with the mouse is called the cursor. The blinking bar in the script that shows your present position and is moved using the cursor keys (or by clicking the mouse), is called the caret. Keep this in mind when reading the help information
We are going to create a short ½ page, 2 scene script. This will take about 15 minutes. Here is the script we are going to type in.
“The Tutorial”
FADE IN:
HOWARD and VIVIAN sit in a park.
VIVIAN
This is so sweet of you darling.
HOWARD
It's the least we could do.
VIVIAN
I may not get it.
HOWARD
You deserve it babe.
INT. VIVIAN'S OFFICE -- DAY
Several people enter the office.
TAMMY
Way to go. Your first major account.
VIVIAN
Thanks guys.
When you start Screen Writer Studio, at the bottom of your window is a status bar. The left-most part shows you a quick help message when the cursor is over a menu item or toolbar button. Go ahead, move the cursor over some buttons and read the status bar to see what each does. Now select a menu item from the bar and move the cursor over some of the menu items that drop down – but don’t click on any of the menu items, once again read the status bar to see what each item on the menu does. When you are done click anywhere in the window to make the menu go away.
If you look further to the right on the status bar you will see the word title. This is the paragraph type. The first line is of type title. The paragraph type determines the format and positioning of that paragraph. There are 10 predefined paragraph types, the common ones being Action (stage direction), Character (the name of the person speaking), and Dialogue (what they say).
The next 5 blocks of text show the position of the caret in the script.
The final 3 blocks of text show the status of your INS (Insert/Overwrite), Caps Lock, and Num Lock keys.
The first step is to create a new document. Select New from the menu and then Screenplay. (You could have pressed the New button on the toolbar instead.) It has now created a new document that will use screenplay formatting.
The script has already been started. You have the quotes for the title and FADE IN: which starts every script. The caret is between the “ ” marks ready for you to enter the title.
Type in “The Tutorial”. You have now entered the title.
While you only see two lines on the screen, there are actually 3 lines. The third line is after FADE IN: and is blank. It is of type scene and is waiting for you to enter your first scene. Press CTRL-END to go to the end of the script, which is the beginning of the third line.
You now see a pop-up window:
These are your standard beginnings for a scene line (which indicates a new scene). Use the up and down cursor keys to move through the choices. As you move through the choices, you will see the text in the script change to match. The text in the script is gray because it is not part of the script yet.
Now type “E”. The cursor in the pop-up window moves to EXT. because that is the first word in the list that matches the letters typed so far. Now press ENTER to have Screen Writer Studio put in all of EXT. (You could also have pressed the down cursor key to move the selection to EXT. and then pressed ENTER.)
Screen Writer Studio is now ready for you to type in the location that you want your scene to be set at. Screen Writer Studio will automatically capitalize the location of the scene as this is a standard practice. Type in “PARK -- “ (the space after the – is required). The final “ -- “ tells the program that you have completed the scene location and are now ready to put in the time of day of the scene.
You now see a new pop-up window:
This time we will use the cursor to select the text. Press the down arrow once to highlight DAY and then press Enter.
Note: if anytime you wish to remove a pop-up window, you can either press the ESC key or click the mouse on another line.
Press Enter a second time to go to the next line. If you look at the status bar at the bottom of the window, you will see it says Action. You can also see this by looking at the toolbar at the top of the window. The button for action will be depressed showing the paragraph type.
This next paragraph has been made an action paragraph because a scene is almost always followed by an action paragraph. When you create a new line, Screen Writer Studio will make it the type that most commonly follows the line you are on. Screen Writer Studio only does this when you create a new line.
You can change the paragraph type by either pressing the TAB key or clicking on the toolbar for the paragraph type you want. When you press the TAB key, it will cycle through the choices of Action, Character, Parenthetical, and Dialogue – but will only show the types that can follow the line above.
Try it now. Press TAB once and the line will become Character where you can type a character name. Press TAB again and it goes back to action. It does not cycle through Parenthetical or Dialogue because those paragraph types are not supposed to follow Action.
Ok, we are now ready to enter the action. Type in “HOWARD and VIVIAN sit in a park.” And then press Enter.
You are now once again on a new paragraph. The paragraph type is now Character. Now type in “Vivian”. Once again, you do not need to capitalize all the letters as Screen Writer Studio will do that for you. And then press Enter.
A good practice is to capitalize all words as they would be capitalized in normal usage. Then, if the text is pulled out for other use, such as in a report, where it is displayed as mixed case, it will appear correct.
You can now type in Vivian’s dialogue. Type in “This is so sweet of you darling.” And press Enter. Then do the same typing in Howard and his first line of dialogue. Ignore the window that pops up as you type Howard.
After you press Enter after Howard’s line of dialogue, you will see another pop-up window:
You are now being presented with a list of all known characters in your script. These names are taken from when you typed them in previously. In addition, the prompt is on the character that talked 1 previously as this is the most common speaking situation – two people exchanging comments.
For all pop-windows displaying text that Screen Writer Studio can automatically insert, you can start spelling out the word and it will move the prompt to the word that is the closest match. In addition, if the word you type in is different from the start of any word in the list, Screen Writer Studio will consider that a new word and add it, not use the closest match in the pop-up window.
For example, if you type “VIV” and press Enter, you will get Vivian because all of the typed letters match. However, if you type “VIN” and press Enter, you will get a new name Vin even though the prompt was on Vivian. If you want to add a new character named Viv, press ESC to remove the pop-up and then enter the name and press return.
The details of the pop-up boxes may seem a little complex. But the result is that the pop-up box almost always is doing what you think it should do. And in return you not only save a bunch of typing, but you are using the exact same text for the same character each time, instead of mixing Dave, David, etc.
Press Enter to select Vivian and then type in Vivian’s second dialogue. Then do the same for Howard’s second dialogue.
You are now on a blank line of type Character. But we want to enter our next scene here. Press TAB until the paragraph type changes to Scene. (Or you can click on the Scene toolbar button).
Once again you will see the pop-up window giving you the choice of INT., EXT., etc. This time we want INT. so just press Enter. You will now see the following window:
This is giving you the list of all scene locations you have entered so far. As with Characters, these are automatically entered in the list as you create scenes.
Because Vivian’s Office appears here for the first time as a scene location, we have to type it in. So type “VIVIAN'S OFFICE” and press Enter. You do not need to press ESC to remove the pop-up window. It will stay out of your way. And it will not put in Park when you press enter since the text you types does not match Park.
You now have the time of day pop-up. Press ‘D’ and then Enter to finish the line with DAY.
Now type in the last 5 lines of the script. Congratulations, you have completed your first script with Screen Writer Studio.
The critical thing about this process is, you did not need to know anything about the proper format for a script. Everything is properly placed on the screen for you. You can forget about formatting and just create the script. (Unfortunately, we have left the hardest part for you – the actual writing.)
And anywhere text can be written for you, it is. This keeps your naming consistent. And it makes typing dialogue noticeably faster as the names shoot in leaving just the dialogue itself to be typed.
Now we need to save this future academy award winning script. To do this select File and then Save from the menu. Because this script has never been saved before, you will be prompted for the name of the file. Enter tutorial and press Enter. Your script is now named and saved to disk.
Screen Writer Studio keeps two backups of every script you write. The first is a backup of the work you are presently doing. Every time you do not press any key or click the mouse for 20 seconds, it will save a copy of your work as it is right then. If you are typing constantly with no 20 second breaks, then after 10 minutes it will save a copy as you are working. So this backup copy is never more than 10 minutes old.
This backup copy has the same name as your saved file but has an extension of sav instead of sws. So for the file tutorial.sws, the backup file is tutorial.sav. For a new document that has not been saved, and therefore has no file name, this file will use the name given it until it is named, which is usually Script1.sav.
If your computer loses power or locks up, when you restart Screen Writer Studio open the .sav file. When you first save the file, Screen Writer Studio will ask if you want to change the extension back to sws. You should do this. The .sav files are deleted when you save or close a file because they are now identical to the saved file.
The other type of backup file is discussed in the next tutorial.
You’ve finished this tutorial. And you have written your first script.