I don’t quite remember much other than I wasn’t a very good beta tester because I was extremely busy at the time, and that the Final Draft folks were very nice and responsive.īut I’m not here to rake Final Draft over the coals. Update 5/23/22 - A few months after this article was originally published, I was invited to take part in the beta development for Final Draft. And Final Draft is there with a fair priced offering for it. And while screenwriters who got their start during the heady days of the typewriter (like me and many of my generation X) are probably not keen on the idea of writing a screenplay on a tablet, thousands of younger screenwriters have no problem banging out scripts on a mobile device. There are tons of excellent features that make Final Draft a solid writing app, and most folks wouldn’t dream of trading their Final Draft for another screenwriting app.Īnd as far as pricing goes, I have to emphasize that Final Draft does offer a lower-cost version of their app for iOS, as well as educational discounts, so my beef with their pricing isn’t full-on Kobe / Angus. But I don’t blame Final Draft – they’ve created and marketed a great product that basically now dominates the screenwriting space.Īnd that domination didn’t come just through great marketing. $199 for Final Draft 12 is a big chunk of change for most aspiring screenwriters. The game has changed when it comes to simplicity and UI design, yet Final Draft still feels a bit stuck in that 90s Microsoft Word vibe, as does its cousin, Movie Magic Screenwriter, and many other writing apps, if we’re being perfectly honest.ĭislike 3) The price. But it was certainly mine, on two different sets of hardware over several years and on several iterations of operating systems.ĭislike 2) The interface/user experience. Is that everybody’s experience? I don’t know. Though it did crash on the Mac, it crashed a lot less than when I ran it on my pc. And to be certain, Final Draft is a solid app and deserves a lot of credit, and certainly not hate.īut what do I strongly dislike about Final Draft? Three things:ĭislike 1) Before I switched from a Windows machine to a Mac, Final Draft had a penchant for crashing in the most inopportune moments, no matter what version I ran.

I reserve that word for shows like The Bachelor. What do I hate? Well, “hate” is a strong word. And 95% of the time, that’s either a PDF or, you guessed it, a Final Draft file.) (And if you’re running a script coverage service like me, you need to be able to open whatever file the client sends in. What do I love? Its ubiquity: Everybody uses it.

Final draft screenwriting competition