We are going to open and edit a script. You will learn basic editing in this tutorial. This will take about 30 minutes. Do not save the script as you practice this tutorial.
Every time you open a file to edit it, Screen Writer Studio will save a copy of the file before your editing, with an extension of bak. In the case of tutorial.sws, the backup would be tutorial.bak. This file is copy of the file when you first open it, before any edits or saves. Saving a file multiple times while editing does not change the .bak file. It is a copy of the file before your editing session.
The .sav files are deleted when you save or close a file because they are now identical to the saved file. The .bak files are never deleted because they are different than the saved file. (If you open a file and do not change it, the .bak file will not be created. It is when you first save a changed file that the .bak file is created.) Every time you start a new editing session, the old .bak file is replaced with the new .bak file.
If your computer loses power or locks up, when you restart Screen Writer Studio open the .sav file. If all the changes you made this editing session are terrible and you want to go back to the previous version, open the .bak file. In both cases, when you first save the file, Screen Writer Studio will ask if you want to change the extension to sws. You should do this.
We are going to open the file Till Death Do Us Part.sws so we have a sizeable file to practice editing on. Select File, Open… and the File Open dialog will appear. Select the File Till Death Do Us Part by clicking on it with the mouse and then click the Open button.
When you open the script, it may reformat. If it reformats, the File, Save menu item will be available. If it does not reformat the File, Save menu item will be grayed out because there is no reason to save a document that has not changed.
Scripts are formatted using the fonts in the default printer. Printers do not all render Courier 12 pt (or any other font) identically. And how the font renders determines how the text in the script breaks. So, when a script is opened by Screen Writer Studio, it compares the font used to format the saved document with the font in the present default printer. And if they are different, re-formats the script.
With all that said, even when the font renders differently, it will almost always break the same on the page. However, because it could break differently, Screen Writer Studio reformats the file when it reads it in.
Screen Writer Studio will also reformat the file if it was saved with a different version of Screen Writer Studio. This is done in case there is a difference between the two versions in how they break text.
Now you are going to move around the document. These are the keyboard commands you can use to move around. Try each of them so you are familiar with what they do.
All left/right caret movement will wrap from line to line. If you are at the end of a line and press ® you will go to the beginning of the next line. Go from line to line and paragraph to paragraph using left/right cursor movement.
All up/down caret movement holds a virtual column which is the column the caret was on when the first up/down command was entered. If the caret needs to move in because it moved down to a shorter line, it will move back out if the next line is longer. Go to the end of an action paragraph and move the caret down past dialogue to another action line. You will see the caret move in to the end of the shorter lines and then back out to the same column on the longer lines.
If you move the caret off the window, the script will scroll so that the caret remains visible. The only time the caret will be invisible is when you use the scroll bars to reposition the screen.
® Move 1 character to the right.
¬ Move 1 character to the left.
¯ Move down 1 line. (Move selection down 1 if auto-prompt window is up.)
Move up 1 line. (Move selection up 1 if auto-prompt window is up.)
PgDn Move down 1 screen (not page).
PgUp Move up 1 screen
End Move to the end of the line.
Home Move to the beginning of the line.
CTRL ® Move 1 word to the right.
CTRL ¬ Move 1 word to the left.
CTRL ¯ Move to the next paragraph.
CTRL Move to the previous paragraph.
CTRL PgDn Move to the lower right corner of the screen.
CTRL PgUp Move to the upper left corner of the screen
CTRL End Move to the end of the script.
CTRL Home Move to the beginning of the script.
CTRL M Center the screen on the caret. (The caret does not move, the screen is scrolled.)
CTRL ALT PgDn Move to the next page.
CTRL ALT PgUp Move to the previous page.
Try each of the above commands several times.
To select text using the caret keys. (If you don’t know what select is, it is covered later in this tutorial.) Just hold down the shift key as you press any of the above cursor commands (except CTRL-M). As long as you keep the shift key down, your caret movements will change the selected text.
Press any caret movement key without the shift key down to un-select the text.
You can use the mouse to move the cursor. Just move the mouse to where you want to place the caret and press the left mouse button.
You can also use the scroll bars to move through the script. The scroll bar on the right is always there. A scroll bar will appear at the bottom if the entire width of the script cannot fit on the screen. Both scroll bars let you move throughout the document. The button in each scroll bar shows you what percentage of the script is presently visible.
Click the arrow button at the end of the scroll bar to scroll a line. Click between the arrows and the button to scroll a screen. Drag the button to move to any position. The script will be redrawn at the new position(s) as you drag the scroll bar.
When you scroll the script, the caret stays at its present position in the script and will scroll off screen. If after you scroll, you then use a key to move the caret, the script will scroll back to make the caret visible. So after you scroll, click the mouse over the script to place the caret somewhere in the now visible part of the script. (This is done so you can scroll and then use the mouse to select a large block of text.)
To select text using the mouse, place the mouse at one end of the text you wish to select. Then move to the other end, hold down the SHIFT key and click again.
You can also press and keep the left mouse button down, move the mouse to the other end, and release and the text will be selected. If you want to select more than a screen of text, move the mouse past the end of the window and it will scroll in that direction. The further you move off the screen, the faster it will scroll.
You can also select lines of text at a time by moving the mouse to the left before any text (the arrow will change and point to the upper right instead of the upper left). Now press the left mouse button and the entire line will be selected.
You can also go to any page or any scene using the go to commands in the Edit menu. To go to a page, select Edit, Go to page… You will see this dialog:
You can set the page number either by entering the number or using the little arrow bars. The scene on the start of that page is shown below to help you find the correct page.
In tutorial 1 you entered text. Now we are going to edit it. Move to the top of page 2, which is the beginning of the first scene.
SUSAN (19 year old pretty female) walks down a trail. We hear HOWARD (21 years old, very personable).
We are going to change pretty to beautiful. Move the caret so it is before the p in pretty. Now press the Delete key 6 times. You know have “old female”. Type in “beautiful”. The paragraph should now read:
SUSAN (19 year old beautiful female) walks down a trail. We hear HOWARD (21 years old, very personable).
We are now going to change female to woman. We are also going to make a mistake here - on purpose. First, use the mouse to place the caret before the f in female. Now move the mouse so it is after the e in female. Hold down the SHIFT key and press the mouse again. The word female should now be selected.
SUSAN (19 year old beautiful female) walks down a trail. We hear HOWARD (21 years old, very personable).
You can press Delete to delete the selected text. However, you don’t need to do that. Just type in “women”. When you type the initial ‘w’ it will delete the selected text. Note, you are typing in women, not woman. So you now have.
SUSAN (19 year old beautiful women) walks down a trail. We hear HOWARD (21 years old, very personable).
But this is wrong. We want woman. So press the Backspace key twice and then type “an”. We now have the correct change with:
SUSAN (19 year old beautiful woman) walks down a trail. We hear HOWARD (21 years old, very personable).
You can also edit it overwrite mode. (You have been editing in insert mode.) In overwrite mode the characters you type overwrite the character the caret is on rather than inserting themselves in front of the existing characters.
When you go to overwrite mode the caret will become a block covering all of the letter that will be replaced. Also in the status bar, the text INS will be replaced with OVR. Overwrite mode will not overwrite an end of paragraph. You need to press Delete at the end of a paragraph to join two paragraphs even in overwrite mode.
We are going to change Susan’s age to 20. Move the caret to the ‘1’ in “19”. Then press the Insert key to change the edit to overwrite mode. The status bar at the bottom of the screen should now say OVR. Now type “20”. The “20” replaced the “19”. Now press the Insert key again to go back to insert mode. You now have:
SUSAN (20 year old beautiful woman) walks down a trail. We hear HOWARD (21 years old, very personable).
You can break a paragraph in one of 3 places. The beginning, the end, or the middle (which is anywhere except the ends). If you press Enter in the middle of a paragraph, it will split the paragraph in two. The paragraph type will stay the same for each half.
Go to the paragraph at lines 12 - 14 on page 2. We are going to turn this into 2 paragraphs. Move the caret so it is before the beginning of the fourth sentence. (“She looks…”)
Howard runs up to where Susan fell and leans over. About 10' down the cliff Susan hangs on to a branch with her hands. The rest of her dangles over a 100' drop. She looks absolutely panicked and cries with fear.
Now press Enter. You will see that the paragraph is now split into two paragraphs.
Howard runs up to where Susan fell and leans over. About 10' down the cliff Susan hangs on to a branch with her hands. The rest of her dangles over a 100' drop.
She looks absolutely panicked and cries with fear.
It is now broken into two paragraphs. Both paragraphs are of type Action. You can now change the paragraph type of either paragraph if you wish to. But don’t just yet.
What we want to do is insert some more dialogue between these two Action paragraphs. Move the caret to the end of the first paragraph (“…a 100’ drop.”). Make sure you are at the end of the paragraph (press the End key).
Press Enter. Your screen will now look like this:
Because the Action type specifies that Character normally follows, it has added a paragraph of type Character.
If you press Enter at the beginning of a paragraph, it will look at the paragraph preceding it to determine what style to use for the new paragraph.
Now, we did not want a Character paragraph here. So press Backspace to undo the paragraph you just added. You now have the Action in two paragraphs again. What we want is another paragraph of Action here.
With the caret at the end of the first paragraph (it should be there), press SHIFT-Enter. You will now see the below with the new paragraph of type Action.
Howard runs up to where Susan fell and leans over. About 10' down the cliff Susan hangs on to a branch with her hands. The rest of her dangles over a 100' drop.
She looks absolutely panicked and cries with fear.
When you press SHIFT-Enter it adds a new paragraph of the same type as the preceding paragraph. (Note: this only works if the caret is at the beginning or end of a paragraph. If it is in the middle the SHIFT is ignored.)
Screen Writer Studio will only set the style of a paragraph when you first create a new paragraph. It will never change the format of any other paragraph. It will only change the paragraph style when you explicitly change it or when you press Enter. (This is different from some screen-writing programs that will automatically change paragraph formats at other times.)
We now need to throw away everything we have done to the script. Therefore we want to close it without saving it. Select File, Close from the menu. Because the script has changed, you will be asked if you are sure. This question is to make sure you do not throw away your work by mistake. Answer No to the dialog box.