Script Studio for Mac

This app is simply tremendous. It's made the process of outlining and writing a screenplay or novel not just straightforward, but fun! It's intuitiveness allows you to focus on the toughest part - crafting the best possible story and getting it on to the page. Highly recommended to anyone who's serious about a career in writing.

I just updated to 1.0.3 and it works fine for me so I have no idea why the other reviewer is having so many problems. I will comment on his review separately. For me the in-update install was very smooth and prefer that kind of update rather than the ones were you have to go to the website for a full download etc. I'm now giving it five stars because I have finished my spec and found the whole experience to be very positive. I ended up working in Night Mode most of the time (even during the day) because it helped me focus without screen glare. I think the Scratch Pad was extremely helpful, especially to store different versions of scenes and dialogue. Storing them there when I was being indecisive stopped me from procrastinating which is something I tend to do. I am now getting some friends to read the script but expect to do a rewrite soon and it will be interesting to see how that process works in comparison to working on your first draft.

Well it's at 1.0.3 and I keep getting crash after crash and it throws post-crash Exception notices. It is just not a reliable writing app yet. Still blanks out when going from Story Arc to Character Spotlight. So much promise and so little delivery. I live in hope. Just not useable yet.

I purchased Script Studio a couple of weeks ago and thought I'd give my two cents. This is my first time using screenwriting software but I did try a few demos of other apps incuding Final Draft, Fade In and Scrivener. $200 bucks is a hefty price tag so I wanted to be sure the program was right for me before buying it and I'm pleased to say that so far it has met my expectations and more.

Let me start by explaining that what works for one writer does not necessarily work for another and that this is just my personal opinion. The features I like might be the features another writer doesn't so please do what I did and try various apps and also with a working project. That's the key because just trying a demo without a focus doesn't really give you a true insight into its pros and cons. I was working on a new feature spec and used this to trial Script Studio.

Aside from all the superficial stuff (like the design and icons etc) what was important to me was the story planning and the formatting. Don't get me wrong, it's actually very pleasing on the eye, especially the Night Mode option but that kind of thing doesn't concern me.

So I managed to create a beat by beat outline of my story very quickly using Script Studio's outlining feature which basically lets you create each story beat chronologically and then gives you the ability to move them around as needed either by drag and drop in the outline list or in the index card feature the software calls "Step Cards".

This for me was the primary differential between Script Studio and those other apps I mentioned, especially Final Draft which was slightly more expensive than Script Studio. They only let you outline by "scenes" and planning a story outline before writing the script is almost possible but not really. At least, not the way I like to do it.

I will say that Scrivener is probably the better of the other apps I tried in terms of features for writers and having the ability to collate notes, ideas and research but it's a little all over the place for me and certainly not as focused for screenwriters as Script Studio.

After writing my outline (well, the first ten beats of it because that's all the demo allows) I moved over to the script section and started on the screenplay. The automatic formatting worked like a charm and I found the process very fluid. I had a few ideas for character arcs along the way but decided to note them down in the Scratch Pad instead of using Script Studio's Character Spotlight and Story Arc feature because I don't really do that stuff until rewriting and even then not so much.

On the whole I think it's an excellent and intuitive app with huge potential, only perhaps let down by the price tag but then again, I guess you get what you pay for. It has many features I found extremely useful like the Scratch Pad and PowerView act structuring, and some like FeelFactor (story engagement graphs) which seems cool but again probably not necessary until a rewrite or if you stumble upon a pacing problem.

I'm still in the middle of writing my spec and enjoying the process but if I run into anything else worth mentioning I'll tag on some comments at a later date but so far so good!

Terrible. Was so excited to see that the original piece of software that I used all the time was getting a reboot. While it added a few features that looked promising, it is filled with glitches and crashes about every 20 to 30 minutes. Tech support is non existent. The absolutely most horrendous flaw is in the scratch pad section. After creating a folder and writing out a treatment, I clicked outside the field and everything was deleted. Don't believe me? Just try a random sentence, click on the pane to the right and watch your work disappear. For a writing program, this is unforgivable. And did I mention tech support is non existent? I wish I could give negative stars. If you have Movie Outline, stay with it. You'll regret paying for something that was poorly executed.