At worst it's a tax you have pay as you climb the ladder. That's a bargain compared to most other career choices, especially when you consider so many professional screenwriters like working in Final Draft. I think you need to look at this a little differently, for a couple of hundred dollars you can have no software demands to worry about. A few seem to mix up industry standard and software capability. There are people out there who think Final Draft is somehow special in terms of its programming, it's a shame you've bumped into one. However it is, without doubt, the file standard every screenwriter has to respect because it's so deeply routed into the working process of the industry.

Don't be fooled into thinking Final Draft is anything special or the alternatives inferior, it's overpriced and underdeveloped. Michelle, contrary to what's been written above it is possible to format a Word document and export a pdf to script standards, but it is relatively cumbersome to work with and can't be exported to Final Draft format.

I'm familiar with screenwriting format standards (thank you, Google and research!) so feel I have a good grasp on how to set margins, indents, sluglines, and so on, but I could be wrong. Anyone know which is accurate, or does it just depend on the producer's/agent's preference for reading-script submissions? Asking because I do have MS Word and Adobe Acrobat, and am not a multi-millionaire, so don't feel like popping down the $100-plus for a Final Draft install if I really don't have to. However, I've heard recently from an independent producer that Final Draft (and to some extent CeltX, which as I understand is a lower-grade stepchild of Final Draft) is the ONLY admissible format that producers and agents will accept. I see calls for screenplays in which producers and agents seek scripts in either PDF or RTF (Rich Text Format), which can both be generated via a Word doc source. Hi all, I'm trying to resolve an informational conflict I'm coming up against re: submitting screenplays in Final Draft vs.

Trelby script writing software