We are going to open and edit a script. You will learn about auto-text and styles in this tutorial. This will take about 30 minutes. Do not save the script as you practice this tutorial.
Once again open the file Till Death Do Us Part.sws.
Auto-text is text that is automatically written for you. You have already seen some of this in tutorial 1 where the character names and scene locations were listed for you. Auto-text is used in several ways:
These lists appear whenever you are in a paragraph of type Scene, Character, or Transition. On the first page, move the caret to the end of the paragraph “Hang on, just hang on, I'm coming.” Then press Enter. The screen will now look like this:
Here is what happened. When you pressed Enter, it created a new paragraph. Because Screen Writer Studio is set (unless you changed it) to have a paragraph of type Character follow Dialogue, it made the new paragraph a Character paragraph. Then, because the caret is on a new paragraph of type Character, it brought up the list of Characters in the script. Finally, it looked up previously in the script and found that previous to Howard, it was Susan speaking. So it set the default to Susan since most dialogue bounces between two people.
Press Enter again and it writes in SUSAN for you and you are on the dialogue for Susan. So for alternating dialogue, all you have to do for the name is press Enter.
Type in “Hi there.” As Susan’s dialogue and press Enter again.
Now it is defaulted to HOWARD as he is the speaker two back. But we want MICHAEL this time. Type a ‘M’. It moves the selection to MARGIE, the first name starting with a ‘M’. Now type ‘I’ and it moves to MICHAEL. Press Enter and then type “Hello.” As Michael’s dialogue.
It has now defaulted to SUSAN as she is the speaker two back. We want ROBERT this time. But instead of pressing ‘R’, press the cursor key. This will move the selection up one line. Then press Enter. The name ROBERT is entered. Then type in “How are you?” as Robert’s dialogue and press Enter again.
Now we want to add a new name, David. So type in “David” and press Enter. (Note: you can type in lower case because all Characters are displayed in all upper case.) This adds the name David to the list of characters, places DAVID on that line, and moves to the next line where you can enter the text.
So how does Screen Writer Studio know if you are entering a new name or telling it to use an existing name? If you enter letters that perfectly match a name in the list, it uses that name in the list. If you enter a name that does not match, it is a new name. So entering “MARG” will become MARGIE but entering “MARJ” will enter a new name of MARJ.
Enter “I’m fine thank you.” As David’s dialogue and press Enter.
We now want to add a new character named Mich. However, if we type Mich and press enter, we will get Michael. So, first press ESC, then type “Mich” and press Enter. This enters the name MICH in the script and as a new character. You can press ESC to get rid of any pop-up list. It will stay away unless you move to a different line, then back to the end of that line.
Now David is speaking off-screen. You can handle (O.S.) and (V.O.) two different ways. First you can move back to the end of the character name and type “ (“. This will bring up a pop-up. Or you can type in the character’s name and the space (, ie don’t press Enter. So type in “David (“. This will give you the following screen.
Then press Enter to put in (O.S.). The two step process to add in (O.S.)/(V.O.) is because usually you do not use these and that makes entering just a character name much faster.
Screen Writer Studio builds up lists, based on what you type, for the Characters, Scene locations, and Scene time-of-day lists. Sometimes you want to edit these lists directly. You may have removed or renamed a character and the old name is still displayed.
Select Tools, Lists, Script Lists. You will see a dialog box listing all of the characters. You can add or delete names directly. However, we are just going to tell Screen Writer Studio to rebuild the list. Click on the Reset button. The script is scanned and rebuilt from the names in each Character paragraph.
You can do the same for Scene Location and Time-of-Day.
Clink OK, then select Tools, Lists, Standard Lists. These are standard lists of words that exist for every script. You will note that Character, Scene Location, and Time-of-Day exist here too. The words in these lists are not rebuilt, they are here until you change them. These words are added to the script specific lists. The same word, if in both lists, will not appear twice in a pop-up window.
Select the Shot tab. In Item, type “REAL CLOSE”, then click Add. You now have another shot. You can click Reset and it will go back to the standard list. Don’t do this. Click OK to save the change.
We are now on the line for David’s dialogue. We want a shot here. Instead of formatting the paragraph as type Shot, which would give us the pop-up list, type “angle on”. The paragraph will be changed to type Shot, a new paragraph will be created after the Shot paragraph, and the caret will be placed at the beginning of the new paragraph.
The beginning of every paragraph you type is compared to the lists for Scenes (INT./EXT.), Transitions, Shots, and Fade In (Action). If you type in the complete text from one of these lists, the paragraph will be changed to that type. In the case of a Scene it will then prompt you for the scene location while the other types will assume it is a complete paragraph and create a new following paragraph.
If you want to have an Action line start with “Angle on”, then go back to the paragraph and change it’s type. Move the caret back up to the line “ANGLE ON”, set it’s type to Action, then go to the end of the line and type “ me.” This will give you an action paragraph that says “ANGLE ON me.”
The best way to handle all of this is to not think about it. Screen Writer Studio will generally be doing the correct thing as you just type. You can also undo any of these actions. First, you can turn off the auto-complete in the options. Second, you can press ESC and the list goes away for that line. Third, it only auto-completes or auto-changes paragraphs when you first type the text in. If you change it and then type some more, Screen Writer Studio will not change it back.
You have been using paragraph types and script styles throughout Screen Writer Studio up to now. However, we have glossed over what they are and how they work.
Every paragraph has a type. This type defines how the paragraph is laid out. Items like margins, spacing, etc. Every paragraph that is set to the same type, except special (details below), will be laid out identically. All Dialogue paragraphs will start on the same margin, break on the same margin, and have the same spacing.
You do not change the settings for a paragraph, you change it for the paragraph type. When you change the settings for the paragraph type, it changes the settings for all paragraphs of that type.
Every script has a style. This style is the collection of the formats for each paragraph type. A style also has the settings for the paper for that script, the paper size and margins. A style fully defines the format that a script will be displayed in.
Select Format, Edit Script Style. This is the script style for Till Death Do Us Part, which matches the screenplay style. For complete information on this dialog box: Click here for paragraph formatting. Click here for paper formatting.
We are going to make the dialogue right justified and red. Select the Dialogue tab at the top. In the center top section of the dialog box, next to alignment, change the settling from Left to Right. Then click the Font button. In the lower left corner of the font dialog box, under Color, change it from Black to Red.
Note: You can have Screen Writer Studio display all fonts or just fixed width fonts. This is set in the options. If you are running a version of Windows that is using a Western European alphabet (English, German, French, etc.) the default is to only show fixed width fonts. Otherwise the default is to show all fonts. Fixed width only can be a problem because fonts like Courier Old are considered variable width fonts.
Now select OK twice to get back to the script. Your script will look like this:
If you page through the script, you will find that the entire script has changed it’s dialogue format.
You can also format a paragraph individually. To do this, select Format, Paragraph. This will let you set this one paragraph’s format independent of all of the other paragraphs. Any paragraph you set individually will not be changed when you change the script style – it is it’s own format unless you set it back to a standard script format type.
Place the caret anywhere on the paragraph near the top of page 1 that says “I started climbing down to grab…”. Then Select Format, Paragraph. In the top center of the dialog box, select the Bold box. Then click OK. That paragraph is now bold. In addition, if you change the script’s style, this one paragraph will not change.
Script Styles in Screen Writer Studio come in two flavors, standard and program (file). The standard styles are the four main styles; Screenplay, Sitcom (tape), Sitcom (film), & Stageplay. These four formats are stored as part of Screen Writer Studio and are always available.
Program styles are styles that are for a specific show or studio. Each style is a separate file. If you have the correct style file, you can load and use it. As shows come and go, style files for new shows are created and can be downloaded from our site as needed.
But if you don’t have a show’s style file, you cannot load it. Standard styles are always there while program styles require the appropriate file.
When you create a script or load a style, the style used is copied into the script. If you change that style later, it does not change the style in that script. The only way to have changes in a style applied to a script is to load that style into that script.
Select Tools, Load Script Style, Sitcom (Film). This reformats the script in the Sitcom Film format.
If there is a specific show format you need to use, select Tools, Load Script Style, File. Then select the style you want. It will then apply that style to your script.
Note: When you change a style, it does not affect scripts set to that style. When a style is applied to a script, a copy of the style is placed in the script and the script uses that copy.