You can open it on many different platforms, as opposed to having to open it one paid software suite. But if you work with an app that at its core treats your files as plain text files, your work is liberated. If you work with a paid mainstream screenwriting app, you’re likely need that app to open and edit your screenplay file. Whether or not that’s an important distinction really comes down to personal choice. But text wrapped in a proprietary wrapper… Well, it’s not really text. Whereas Slugline, and other apps that use the open-source Fountain markup, allow your screenplays to be written, opened, and edited in any text editor, whether it’s the free Notepad on Windows, or the free TextEdit on OS X, or suites like OpenOffice, or even in the bloated and increasingly dysfunctional Microsoft Word. (Or do a bunch of convoluted exports/imports and other workarounds.) Sure, it’s text, but to get to it, you pretty much need to use one of their apps to open it. Final Draft, Screenwriter, and many other apps use proprietary file formats to “wrap” your screenplay’s text within. What are you talking about? Every screenwriting program is based on text. The first big reason I like Slugline is that it’s based on the Fountain markup, which lets you use any simple text editor, even your TextEdit program that comes standard with OS X, to write and format screenplays. Minor little things like that make its flow slightly different than Final Draft (read about my free alternatives to Final Draft) or Movie Magic Screenwriter, but like I said, your brain remaps quickly around them, and it’s worth it, for a number of reasons: Slugline app is text-based and non-clunky It’ll start out justified to the left, like an action line, but once you type the name, any name, and hit RETURN, it knows if it’s a character name, and justifies it towards the center, like propah. Then to type a character name, hit RETURN again, and type a character name. Hit RETURN after that, and your next line, like in many other apps, is ready to go as an ACTION/DESCRIPTION line. Start typing “INT.” or “EXT.” and your line turns into a scene heading. For those of us used to Final Draft, you might experience one or two minor hiccups in the flow, but your brain quickly remaps around the one or two non-Final-Drafty keystrokes you may experience.įor example, instead of tabbing through from SLUG/SCENE HEADING to ACTION to CHARACTER, you simply type, and the program understands what you’re doing. Tabbing, hard returns, going back to reformat a line of action as a character name, stuff like that, all easy peasy. The Slugline app is great for jumping between character and dialogue Because that’s really what it’s all about when I’m looking for a screenwriting program: how fast I can go and how unobtrusive the app is. The first thing I do with any screenwriting software is start writing, to see how intuitive the interface is, how well the keyboard commands respond, and to see how quickly I can get “beyond the app” and into the screenwriting zone. The Slugline demo was easy to find on the modern, simple Slugline website, and easy to download and install. I decided I’d do a quick review of the program. Slugline is a screenwriting app that kind of flies under everybody’s radar.
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