How to Write a Great Script with Final Draft 13

The Beat Board is Final Draft's digital version of a cork board with index cards (a beat). By creating beats and typing text inside of them, you can capture ideas. By resizing, moving, or coloring beats, you can group related beats together. To further show connections between beats, you can draw lines between two beats.

Think of the Beat Board as a place to capture and store ideas in the same file as your Final Draft screenplay. This way you never risk losing or misplacing an idea again.

For a fast way to create a beat, use keystroke shortcuts:

• Command + Enter (Macintosh)

• Ctrl + Enter (Windows)

You can also put an image inside of a beat by clicking in a beat by following these steps:

1. Click or double-click to place the cursor inside the beat.

2. Right-click inside the beat so a popup menu appears.

3. Choose Insert Image. A dialog box appears.

4. Click on the image you want to use and click OK.

To delete a beat, follow these steps:

1. Click a beat to select it. (Make sure the text cursor does NOT appear inside the beat.)

2. Press the Backspace or Delete key.

You can place beats anywhere on the beat board, but to help you organize related ideas together, Final Draft lets you align two or more beats in three different ways:

• Column

• Row

• Cascade

To align beats, you must select two or more beats. You can select beats in two ways:

• Hold down the Command key (Macintosh)/Ctrl key (Windows) and click on two or more beats

• Drag the mouse to select two or more beats

By aligning beats neatly in rows, columns, or cascade (overlapping like playing cards), you can keep your ideas on the beat board organized.

Normally, Final Draft displays either the Beat Board or your script. If you want to see both at the same time, you can split the window in half, either vertically or horizontally.

With a split window, you can display the Beat Board and your script at the same time. You can even display two different parts of the Beat Board in each split window, or two different parts of your script in each split window. That way you can reference and edit a large Beat Board or script easily.

By itself, the Beat Board lets you capture ideas and view them later. However, the Beat Board can integrate with the Outline Editor to help you organize the structure of your story.

The Outline Editor consists of Outline 1 and Outline 2. Beats placed on Outline 1 represent major acts in your story while beats placed on Outline 2 represent parts of a major act.

By placing beats on the Outline Editor, you can visually structure your story. When you're finished organizing your story on the Outline Editor, you can then convert your beats into an outline directly into your script.

A script outline takes the beats from the Outline Editor and places the beat text directly in your screenplay document. This lets you type and edit your screenplay using the guidance of the script outline to help you.

To further aid you, the script outline can display vertical lines in the left margin, called structure lines. These structure lines can help you visualize the specific beats that appear in the Outline Editor.

Creating and using a script outline is just another tool to help you organize your story and then write your actual screenplay. This assumes you know how to organize and tell a story in the first place, which is the subject of the next section of lectures in this course.

A good story idea offers something unique that we've never seen before, and includes inherent conflict to make us wonder how the story will end. If you have a great story idea but can't write a great screenplay, you'll fail. If you have a mediocre story idea but a great screenplay, you'll also fail because nobody cares about a mediocre story.

You must have both a great story idea and a great screenplay. An idea by itself is useless unless it's executed well at the same time. Every bad movie starts with a good idea. Every great movie starts with a great idea.

Always look for great ideas that appeal to the widest audience possible. The more people your story can reach, the greater the chance your story will succeed. Just make sure you write a great screenplay to back up your great story idea.

A title serves two purposes. First, it summarizes your story to intrigue people to want to know what your story is about. Second, a title helps keep you focused on what your story is about. A good title can help "sell" your story to others. A poor title will make it easy for others to ignore your story altogether, even if you have a great story to tell. 

Always create multiple titles for your screenplay because the more titles you make up, the more likely you'll find that perfect title.

Every story poses an initial question. Resolving this initial question is what drives the entire story until this initial question finally gets answered in the end.

A story's initial question defines the conflict. All conflict must stop the her from resolving this initial question. In addition, conflict must force the hero to constantly choose between accepting their character flaw or changing to become a better person.

The hero's character flaw creates the problem of the initial question. Only by changing and overcoming the character flaw can the hero resolve the initial question on a happy note.

For a hero to change, they must overcome a character flaw. That character flaw often originates in a traumatic past event. Sometimes that haunted past is an opening scene but more often, that traumatic past event occurred long before the story even started. The only way the hero can possible answer the initial question happily is by overcoming their character flaw.

This character flaw change often goes through four parts:

• The character flaw initially puts the hero in a dead end life

• The hero has a chance to change, but fear holds the hero back

• Surprisingly, the character flaw can actually prove useful, making it even harder for the hero to abandon it

• The character flaw tempts the hero into giving up the initial question in exchange for an easy way out of life

The character flaw often represents the theme of the story where the hero must embrace the theme (an empowering belief) to achieve their goal. Think of your story's theme and its direct opposite. That direct opposite will be the hero's character flaw.

Every story follows a structure to grab and hold our attention. Take any story and divide it into four parts like this:

• Problem

• Solution

• More problems

• New solution

Nothing should ever come easy because that makes a boring story. What creates a compelling story is conflict where a hero pursues a goal and must overcome multiple problems until achieving their original goal.

Take a screenplay and divide it into four parts and you'll be able to create the outline of your story like this:

• Act I - Initial problem

• Act IIa - Positive rising action

• Act IIb - Negative rising action

• Act III - Climax

This four part story structure can work for an entire story, an Act, or a single scene. It always begins with a problem that needs to be solved. By the end, that problem either gets resolved or not.

Before you start writing a story, keep in mind two crucial rules:

• Always grab and hold the audience's attention

• Never be boring

If you can't grab and hold an audience's attention with every page and ever scene, nobody will care about your story. Never be boring because the moment your script feels boring, you've lost your audience. Writers often bore their audience by dumping exposition on them, usually through unnatural dialogue that exists solely to give information to the audience.

Don't do that.

Do whatever you can to grab and hold someone's attention so your script is never boring.

When writing a scene, always make sure every scene has a goal for a character to pursue. A goal gives a scene a purpose and defines the conflict that threatens to keep a character from reaching a goal.

More importantly, a goal creates suspense as the audience wants to know if the hero will get their goal or not.

Genre defines the type of story you want to tell whether it's a romance, action thriller, comedy, or horror story. When you choose a genre, you define an audience's expectations. More importantly, you also define what type of story you're telling so you know that every scene, from start to finish, must reflect your chosen genre.

Stories often consist of two genres where the main genre defines what story you're telling and the second genre defines how you're telling that story. A romantic comedy tells a romance story with humor while a romantic drama tells a romance story in a serious manner. Once you know your genre, you know the tone of your beginning and ending scenes.

Once you know the genre of your story, you can use your genre as a guide to turn your good (or great) story idea into a basic story outline. In any story, you need to know how your story begins, what happens next, what problems occur, and finally what happens in the end. Every genre uses the same pattern so by knowing each genre's pattern, you can lay out the basic foundation of your own story within that genre.

Use genres as a guidelines to help you shape your story. Most importantly, follow the established conventions of a genre rather than try to redefine that genre. For example, don't write a romance story and suddenly change it into a horror story. Although such a surprise will be unexpected, it won't be welcome because it will break the conventions of the initial genre.

You won't be creative by surprising an audience by violating genre conventions. You will be creative by telling a story within the expected convention of a specific genre.

A genre defines your basic story, but a single genre creates a one-dimensional story. To create a multi-dimensional story, you need to apply two (or more) genres where each genre provides a basic structure for your overall story. By applying the structure of multiple genres to your idea, you can shape any idea into a more fully formed, structured story.

When shaping your story idea, play around with two different genres. The first genre defines what the story is about and the second genre shapes how that story is told. A horror comedy like "Ready or Not" is mostly a comedy told through a horror story while "Ghostbusters" is mostly a horror story told through comedy.

By combining different genres that emphasize the story and the way that story is told, you can create different ways of telling your idea as a story.

Stories can end in four ways:

• A happy ending where the hero wins

• A tragic ending where the hero loses

• A happy ending where the hero loses, but actually gets something better

• A happy ending where the hero wins, but at a bitter cost

No matter how a story ends, it must finally answer the initial question posed by the opening scene. By studying these four types of endings, you can choose the best type of ending for your particular story.

There are three ways to start a story:

• A scene that includes throw-away, disposable characters that are seen once and never seen again
  

• A scene that introduces your hero
  

• A scene that introduces your villain

By understanding the different options you have for starting a story, you can choose the best type of opening scene for your particular story.

The beginning and ending must work together. Once you know you're ending, you automatically know your beginning (and vice versa). Three ways the beginning and ending can work together are:

• The opening foreshadows a bigger and more exciting ending

• The opening shows the start of a journey and the ending shows how that journey ends

• The opening shows an awful life and the ending shows the hero is a complete opposite, far better life

Make sure the opening and ending of your story match because if they don't, you'll create a disjointed story where the opening promises one type of ending but the ending fails to deliver on that opening promise.

Although every story is different, stories follow similar patterns in the same way that every house follows a similar pattern of walls, a roof, and a door. With stories, the basic beats are:

• Beginning - Defines the hero's goal

• Leap of Faith - Shows the hero's transition from an old world into a new, unfamiliar world

• Midpoint - Shows the high point of the hero's adventures (so far)

• Rock Bottom - Shows the hero's lowest point

• Climax - Shows whether the hero wins or loses

These basic beats define nearly all stories so if a story lacks one or more of these beats, it will likely be flawed and unsatisfying. By simply outlining a story using these basic beats, you can outline the rough structure of your entire story.

What links all the major beats of a story together is the hero's pursuit of a Symbol of Hope. Such a Symbol of Hope gives the hero a concrete path and object to pursue to fulfill their initial dream. This is how the Symbol of Hope works in a story:

• Beginning - The hero has a dream but no way to achieve it

• Symbol of Hope arrives - The villain indirectly sends a Symbol of Hope into the hero's life, giving the hero a way to achieve their initial dream

• Leap of Faith - The hero leaves their old world to pursue the Symbol of Hope into a new world

• Needs help - The hero can't achieve the Symbol of Hope without the help of an ally or mentor

• Midpoint - The hero achieves a goal related to the Symbol of Hope

• Minor victory - The hero achieves a victory over the villain to protect the Symbol of Hope

• Rock Bottom - The hero appears to have lost the Symbol of Hope

• Major victory - The hero threatens the villain and gets close to getting the Symbol of Hope

• Climax - The hero wins and gets the Symbol of Hope (or loses)

The Symbol of Hope defines the structure of an entire story. The hero has a goal or dream but often has no way of achieving it until the villain inadvertently sends a Symbol of Hope into the hero's life. From that point on, the hero pursues the Symbol of Hope while the villain constantly threatens it.

This fight over the Symbol of Hope is what forces the hero and villain to fight until only one of them can win.

Study poor movies and you'll often find a Symbol of Hope missing. Study great movies and you'll often see how a Symbol of Hope drives the entire story from start to finish.

Divide any good story in half and you'll notice several similarities. The first half of a story introduces characters, situations, relationships, and settings. Then the second half of the story uses all this information to finish the story. That means everything needed to understand a story must be introduced in the first half. Once the first half is done, nothing new should be introduced.

The first half of the story is where the hero is slowly changing from passive to proactive. Then the second half of the story shows that hero taking action that they wouldn't;'t have done much earlier in the story.

In "Star Wars," Luke is mostly passive in the first half, simply reacting and following Obi-wan. Ion the second half when Luke's trapped on the Death Star, he takes the initiative by deciding to rescue Princess Leia. That's a huge change for him and that's the type of change your hero must show in your own story.

Most importantly, the first half of the story is where your hero is still trying to be two people: their old self and a better self. This forces the hero to deceive others. In "Tootsie," the hero disguises himself as a woman to work on a soap opera. Only in the second half of the story does the hero realize this deception cannot last so he willingly reveals this deception.

The second half of the story is where the hero can see why this deception can no longer last. That motivates the hero to change into a better person for good.

What makes a story interesting is when the hero changes into a better (or worse) person. That means the hero must be a completely different person in the end than they are in the beginning. To make a hero change, focus on a character flaw that the hero eventually overcomes in the end.

A character flaw is the opposite of a theme. In "Liar Liar," the theme is that "Honesty is the best policy," so the hero's character flaw is the opposite in believing that lying is justified. In "Back to the Future," the theme is that you can do whatever you put your mind to. So the hero's character flaw is the opposite in believing that he's not good enough to pursue his dreams.

Once you know your hero's character flaw is the opposite of the theme, you automatically know all your other characters. The villain represents the evil version of the hero who either represents the opposite of the hero's character flaw or the hero's character flaw used for evil purposes.

The mentor has nearly the same skills and power as the villain, but is tormented by a mistake from the past. Only if the hero succeeds (with the mentor's help) can the mentor finally overcome their haunted past.

In "The Karate Kid," the mentor (the karate instructor) is tormented by the loss of his wife and son. By mentoring the hero and seeing the hero win, he redeems himself for his guilt in losing his wife and son.

The ally helps the hero and often has similar problems to the hero. In "Legally Blonde," the ally is a hairdresser who wants to finds love, just like the hero. The hairdresser helps the hero deal with the frustration of law school, then the hero turns around and helps the hairdresser win back her dog by pretending to be her lawyer. Finally when the hero's in court, the hairdresser returns to show the hero support.

Study every great movie and you'll find a character flaw that the hero needs to overcome. Sometimes this character flaw is obvious (such as in "Liar Liar") but sometimes this character flaw is more obscure (such as in "Die Hard" where the hero's character flaw is that he's arrogant).

By identifying the hero's character flaw, you literally know who the other characters must be and how all conflict must revolve around forcing the hero to choose between keeping their character flaw or overcoming it.

Act I must grab the audience's attention and let them know what type of story they're about to see. The main elements of Act I are:

• Introduce the hero and their dead end life (created by their character flaw)

• Introduce the hero's dream (that they can never get because of their character flaw)

• Introduce the villain or the forces working against the hero

• Introduce a Symbol of Hope that gives the hero a way to achieve their dream

• Show how the Symbol of Hope leads the hero to a mentor

• Show the mentor explaining a new world to the hero

• Show how the hero makes a Leap of Faith into a new world to pursue the Symbol of Hope

Act IIa is driven by the hero's pursuit of a Symbol of Hope, which he/she found in the middle of Act I. By pursuing this Symbol of Hope, the hero enters a whole new world. The main points of Act IIa are:

• Introduce the hero to a new world

• Show the mentor's power that can help the hero

• Show the hero needing help to continue pursuing the Symbol of Hope (and meeting an ally who can help them)

• Show the hero achieving a goal related to the Symbol of Hope

Act IIa typically ends on a high note where the hero appears to have succeeded as shown in the following movies:

• "Die Hard" - John McClane finally succeeds in contacting the police

• "Legally Blonde - Elle finally excels in law school

• "Back to the Future" - Marty convinces Doc to help him use the time machine to get back to his own time

• "Avatar" - Jake makes love to Neytiri, a native woman

• "Top Gun: Maverick" - Maverick finally gets his team of Top Gun pilots to bond and work together as a team by playing beach football

Act IIb occurs right after the midpoint where the hero achieves a Symbol of Hope goal. From that point on, the villain starts winning and the hero gradually starts losing until by the end of Act IIb, the Symbol of Hope appears lost for good and the hero looks completely defeated. The basic elements of Act IIb are:

• The villain threatens the Symbol of Hope so the hero takes action to protect it

• In the process of protecting the Symbol of Hope from the villain, the hero wins a minor victory over the villain

• The hero learns the real goal of the villain

• The villain nearly gets the Symbol of Hope

• The villain nearly defeats the hero

• The hero is left isolated and alone where the Symbol of Hope appears lost for good

Act IIb is all about the hero's life falling apart because of the villain. Often the main conflict of the story occurs in Act IIb. In "Die Hard," Act IIb is where John McClane engages in his biggest fights against the terrorists. In "Legally Blonde," Act IIb is where Elle is the closest she'll ever be in becoming a lawyer as she works on a real court case.

Make Act IIb in your story focus on the main conflict that your story promises because this is where the her starts fighting back against the villain to demonstrate his/her gradual change from a passive character to a proactive one.

Act III must answer an initial question posed in the beginning of the story. In "Little Miss Sunshine," this initial question is will Olive get to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant? Act III shows that she finally gets to compete.

In "The Hangover," the initial question is will the guys find the bridegroom that they lost in Las Vegas and get him to his wedding on time? Act III shows that they eventually find the missing bridegroom and get him to his wedding on time.

Act III occurs right after the Rock Bottom moment where all appears lost. That's when the mentor inspires the hero to try one more time and head straight into the villain's stronghold where the hero must defeat the villain's henchman.

Sometimes this villain's henchman is a simpler version of the villain themselves. In "Rocky," the villain (Apollo Creed) toys with Rocky when he realizes Rocky isn't that skilled. So for the first half of Act III, Apollo Creed isn't much of a threat until Rocky knocks him out. From that moment on, Apollo Creed suddenly becomes a completely different villain who's intent on getting revenge.

In "Ghostbusters," the villain initially appears in the form of a woman who the Ghostbusters blast apart with their laser packs. Then the villain returns in the form of a giant marshmallow man who poses a much greater challenge.

In the second half of Act III, the hero must face the villain one on one. That's when the villain often cheats or uses an unfair advantage to nearly defeat the hero. The only way the hero can win is by relying on a lesson from the mentor that allows him/her to defeat the villain.

In "Bloodsport," the hero is a skilled martial artist fighting the villain in a deadly martial arts contest. The hero appears to be winning initially until the villain cheats by throwing salt in the hero's eyes to blind him. Then the hero remembers when his mentor taught him how to fight blindfolded. Using this knowledge, the hero finally defeats the villain.

Act III must be the biggest, action-packed moment of your entire story because this is like the finale of a fireworks show. The ending is what people will remember the most so make sure Act III in your story is the biggest battle possible that challenges the hero to finally change and become a better person in the end.

The Symbol of Hope defines the backbone of your entire story. Your hero has a dream but can't get it because of their character flaw. The only way the hero can achieve their dream is by pursuing a Symbol of Hope, which will force the hero to overcome their character flaw.

Act IIa is where the hero pursues the Symbol of Hope, meets an ally, and finally achieves a goal related to the Symbol of Hope.

Act IIb is where the hero must protect the Symbol of Hope and in the process, starts changing into a better person by caring for others instead of themselves.

Act III is where the hero must save the Symbol of Hope from the villain.

By studying how the Symbol of Hope works in your favorite movies and using it to structure your own stories, you can create a unified and stronger story.

The four most common screenplay formatting elements are:

• Scene Heading

• Action

• Character

• Dialogue

Scene Heading and Action work together in the same way that Character and Dialogue work together.

For a fast way to format different parts of your screenplay, just use the Enter/Return keys and the Tab key. For a slower but more precise way to format text, click on the menu that appears in the top middle of the window (Macintosh) or in the top middle of the Home tab (Windows).

Scene headings consist of three parts:

• INT. (Interior) or EXT. (Exterior), sometimes I/E. (Interior and exterior)

• Location

• Time (DAY or NIGHT), sometimes specific times such as DUSK or MORNING

The key is to define a location in your scene heading to create a visual image. So rather than describe a generic location such as EXT. STORE, consider defining a specific location like EXT. HARDWARE STORE or EXT. TOY STORE.

By specifying a unique location, you can elevate your scene headings from feeling generic to creating a distinct setting that's unique to your particular story.

After you define a scene with a Scene Heading, the next part is to write an Action paragraph. The purpose of Action is to do the following:

• Give more details about the location

• Describe any characters in the scene, who they are, what they look like, and what they're doing

• Use words and phrases that evoke a certain mood that reflects the story genre such as horror, comedy, romance, mystery, or action

As a general rule, use a maximum of four lines of text in an Action paragraph. A maximum of four lines of text makes it easier to read. You can use as many Action paragraphs as you want but try not to get too wordy and always remember that you must describe what a camera can see.

When choosing names for your characters, make sure every character has a distinct name. Avoid names that look and sound too similar such as Dan and Don or Fran and Frank. Names that look too similar will be confusing to read in a screenplay.

Come up with names that represent your characters and reflect their personality or attitude. The more memorable a character name, the more memorable your screenplay will be.

To help you come up with different names, Final Draft offers a Names Database. By using this Names Database, you an quickly see a variety of names and pick the one best for each of your characters.

Once you choose a character name and use it throughout your screenplay, you can easily change names with one simple command: Rename Character. To rename characters in Final Draft, just do one of the following:

• (Macintosh) Click the Edit menu and choose Rename Character

• (Windows) Click the Edit tab and click Rename Character

When the Rename Character dialog box appears, choose the name that you want to change, type a new name, and click Rename. Final Draft will change your character name throughout your entire screenplay.

By using the Rename Character command, you can freely experiment with different character names until you find the one that's right for your screenplay.

To make your characters more distinct, you can give them unique traits. Rather than store various character traits in a separate file or notebook, Final Draft lets you store character traits directly in the same file as your screenplay. That way you can always keep your character traits together with your screenplay.

Final Draft stores character traits in a Navigator pane that you can open and close. You can store the following traits within the Navigator pane:

• Age

• Disability

• Ethnicity

• Gender

• Occupation

• Orientation

• Role

As a general rule, use dialogue as little as possible. This will force you to focus on only writing dialogue that matters. If you can delete one or more lines of dialogue without affecting a story, then you don't need that dialogue.

Novices tend to rely too much on dialogue to tell a story, but dialogue by itself can be boring. Ideally, every scene should involve conflict and all dialogue within a scene should focus on each character striving to get a goal. Dialogue should always reveal what a character wants.

The best way to learn how to write dialogue is to study stage plays and playwrights who write screenplays. That's because stage plays are stories told through dialogue so the dialogue must always have a purpose.

Most of the time, you'll write a character's name followed by their dialogue underneath. However, some alternate ways of writing dialogue include:

• Parentheticals

• Voice-over, Off-screen, and Text messaging

• Dual dialogue

• Alternative dialogue

Parentheticals should be used sparingly to make sure an actor speaks dialogue correctly. Voice-over and off-screen defines an actor speaking but not necessarily appearing in a scene. Text messaging duplicates a text message dialogue on a smartphone.

Dual dialogue lets two characters speak at the same time. Usually both dialogues will be short so it's easy to hear both of them.

Alternative dialogue lets you choose two or more dialogue to appear in your screenplay. Then you can review all the alternative dialogue to see which one fits your screenplay the best.

Editing and reviewing a character's dialogue can be difficult in a screenplay because of all the action and other character's dialogue that appears. To help you focus on one or more character's dialogue, Final Draft offers two options:

• Highlight dialogue within a screenplay

• Create a separate report

By highlighting one or more character's dialogue within a screenplay, you can see a character's dialogue within the context of the screenplay.

By creating a separate report, you can see only one character's dialogue without the distraction of anything else in the screenplay.

With either option, you can focus on one character's dialogue at a time as you rewrite your screenplay.

The more time you spend practicing any skill, the better you'll get at it. The key is that each time you practice that skill, you either reinforce a useful skill or develop a new skill. Spending time doing the same thing that doesn't work will not represent any type of progress no matter how much time you spend doing it.

In Final Draft, you an track time through the Sprint Timer, which lets you track time in two ways:

• Countdown - Lets you specify a fixed amount of time to use Final Draft

• Stopwatch - Tracks how much time you spend using Final Draft

Do NOT make a common mistake that novices make, which is to try and make up your story as you try to write the screenplay. You cannot write an effective screenplay if you have no idea what your story is.

So focus on making up your story first, then worry about writing it as a screenplay. By dividing the screenwriting process into two steps (make up the story first, then write it as a screenplay), you'll save yourself a tremendous amount of time and avoid frustration.

Every screenplay consists of scenes. Ideally a scene should jolt a character's life out of whack, forcing them to respond and creating tension as the audience waits to see what that character will do. Scenes should tell a mini-story to reveal new information through conflict.

Final Draft defines a scene using Scene Headings to mark the beginning of a scene. A scene can be short or long, but Final Draft makes it easy to organize your story and rearrange scenes in two ways:

• As boxes in the Scene View

• As index cards

By rearranging boxes in the Scene View or rearranging index cards, you can quickly and easily rearrange scenes without selecting large chunks of text. Both Scene View and index cards can also be useful ways to organize and structure your story before you start writing the details of your screenplay.

Scene View can be used to rearrange existing scenes or create an outline in a document. Each scene within a Scene View consists of two parts:

• Scene Heading (such as INT. CLASSROOM - DAY)

• Scene Title (such as a brief description of the scene's purpose)

Only a Scene Heading appears within the actual screenplay. The Scene Title exists solely to help you define each scene's purpose. In addition, ou can color each scene to associate them with a specific idea. That way you can quickly see how an idea progresses through similar colored scenes.

Since a scene can represent large amounts of text including dialogue, you can NOT delete a scene within Scene View. You can only delete scenes within a Script View so that way you can see all the text that you may delete.

Index Card view provides another way to arrange and organize scenes when writing a screenplay. The Script option can display both the summary and the actual script text of a scene. The Summary option can only display the summary but also lets you edit this summary as well.

The summary appears in an actual script as faint blue text to help provide a rough outline for each scene. Once you're done writing a scene, you can delete the summary text from the script.

Index Card view mimics index cards that many screenwriters use to organize the structure of their screenplay so you can use the Index Card view the same way. By focusing on the purpose of each scene (summary), you can outline your story before writing the actual screenplay itself.

Script Notes act like digital Post-It notes that you can add to a screenplay to keep track of ideas or issues you want to store without affecting the text of the screenplay. Script Notes consist of the following parts:

• Title - For identifying the script note

• Body - For typing the complete text of the note

• (Optional) Color - For associating related notes

• (Optional) Type - For associating notes to user-defined categories

Once you create a script note, you can view them individually within a screenplay, view them in the Navigator pane, or create a report of all the script notes stored in a screenplay.

Script notes make it easy to store notes with the file of your screenplay.

Bookmarks let you mark one or more locations in a screenplay so you can quickly jump to that location again in the future. Bookmarks are invisible so they do not appear in a screenplay.

To create a bookmark, do one of the following:

• (Macintosh) Click Insert and choose Bookmark

• (Windows) Click the Insert tab and click Bookmark

Once you've created one or more bookmarks, you can view or delete them by doing one of the following:

• (Macintosh) Click Document and choose Bookmarks

• (Windows) Click the Document tab and click Bookmarks

From within the Bookmarks dialog box, you can click on a bookmark and choose Go To or Delete.

Screenwriters often run table reads where different people read parts of a screenplay out loud. That way the screenwriter can hear how dialogue sounds and how well the story flows.

Since it's not always easy to round up different people to read your screenplay out loud, Final Draft can read your screenplay out loud using computer-synthesized voices. By selecting different voices for each character (including the narrator), you can mimic a table read using nothing more than your computer.

One way to write a screenplay is to do what most people do, which is to store everything in a single file. The problem with this approach is that reading and editing a full-length screenplay can be clumsy. As an alternative, consider writing individual scenes or Acts in separate files, then combining those files together later.

By dividing a large screenplay into separate files, you can better focus on each part of your screenplay and polish it without seeing the distraction of the rest of your screenplay. When you've polished several files, you can then combine them into a single file. By doing this, you can gradually create a full-length screenplay one scene at a time.

Remember, the goal of screenwriting is to make sure you always grab and hold and audience's attention. By making sure every scene grabs and holds someone's attention, you'll eventually create a full-length screenplay that grabs and holds and audience's attention from start to finish, and that's the trademark of a great screenplay.

Reports summarize different parts of your screenplay. While most reports are designed for a film crew, reports can be useful for writers as well. For example, the Character report displays dialogue for one particular character, which makes it easy to review that character's dialogue to make sure the tone and wording of the dialogue remains consistent for that character.

Another useful report is the Statistics report that summarizes how often every character in the screenplay speaks. This can give you a rough idea if your main characters are speaking enough or if secondary characters might be speaking more often than your main characters.

By using reports, you can get an overview of your screenplay.

Tracking changes lets you see what has been added and deleted. Final Draft color codes changes so each person can assign themselves a different color. That way people can see at a glance who made which changes.

Once you track changes, you can then accept or reject changes individually or all together. In most cases, you'll want to review each change to accept or reject them, but sometimes you may want to accept or reject all changes all at once.

By using track changes, you can make sure you always see any new changes to a screenplay and approve or reject them before they become part of the screenplay.

When making major changes to a screenplay, it's common to make a separate copy of a file and then modify this copy. That way you preserve the text of the original screenplay.

To make it easy to compare changes between two versions of the same screenplay, Final Draft offers a Script Compare feature that combines two files and creates a third file that shows all the changes between the two files. Once you see all the changes, you can decide which changes to keep and which ones to discard.

Collaborating with a co-writer often requires being together in the same location, but Final Draft makes it easy o collaborate over the Internet. Now two or more people can be in different locations and collaborate on the same screenplay.

Before collaborating, you might want to turn on Track Changes so that way each person can see the changes everyone makes. Then choose the Collaboration command in one of two ways:

• (Macintosh) Click Tools > Collaboration

• (Windows) Click the Tools tab and click Collaboration

When a Collaboration dialog box appears, you'll have a choice between two tabs:

• Host - To post a single screenplay on the Internet for others to view and edit

• Join - To join a collaboration session

Only one person can be the host. The host generates a unique Session ID that must be shared with others so they can join. Once people join, the host can allow or deny someone access. With access, everyone can view and edit the screenplay in real-time.

When evaluating a story idea or revising an existing story, look for the two structural spines of every story:

• The initial question

• The Symbol of Hope

The initial question defines what the hero wants and is usually linked to the hero's character flaw. Basically, the initial question is whether the hero will overcome their character flaw or not.

The Symbol of Hope provides a physical path for the hero to achieve their initial question. By pursuing the Symbol of Hope, the hero learns to change and answer the initial question.

So a quick way to check the structural integrity of every story is to ask:

• Is an initial question posed and does it get answered by the end?

• Is there a Symbol of Hope that the hero constantly pursues throughout the story until saving it from the villain in the end?

Both the initial question and Symbol of Hope keep a story focused. Without the focus on constantly trying to answer the initial question and save the Symbol of Hope from the villain, stories risk losing focus and direction.

Every story is about the hero overcoming their character flaw. All conflict constantly pushes the hero into a tug-of-war between either accepting their character flaw or overcoming their character flaw.

All villains represent either an evil version of the character flaw or the opposite of the character flaw. This forces the hero to fight a villain who personifies their own character flaw.

The villain tries to keep the hero in a life where they accept their character flaw. The hero constantly struggles to overcome their character flaw.

By the end, the hero must make a final decision: either accept their character flaw or abandon it and embrace a new belief. Only by overcoming their character flaw can the hero finally defeat the villain and answer the initial question posed in the beginning of the story.

As a general rule, strive to tell a story visually as much as possible. Study silent movies to see how action alone can tell the bulk of a story where dialogue is used sparingly to provide specific details of the story.

To fix dialogue, consider doing one or more of the following:

• Cut the dialogue and replace it with visual action

• Keep the dialogue but add more visual elements around the characters

• Trim the dialogue to sharpen its focus

• Expand the dialogue to make it more memorable

Since screenplays tell stories visually, always look for ways to minimize dialogue as much as possible. When characters speak, their dialogue should be memorable and directed towards achieving a goal. This will help keep dialogue interesting.

Most stories consist of a main genre and a secondary genre. The main genre defines what type of story is being told and then secondary genre shapes how that story is told. Think of the main genre as a noun and the secondary genre as a modifying adjective.

A comedy-horror like "Ghostbusters" focuses on getting laughs through a horror story. On the other hand, a horror-comedy like "Ready Or Not" focuses on telling a horror story through comedy.

The difference is that "Ghostbusters" focuses first on comedy, so nobody ever gets hurt except in comical ways. "Ready Or Not" focuses first on horror, so people get killed in gruesome but humorous ways.

The two main keys are:

• Make sure audiences know exactly what type of story your screenplay tells (main genre) and how it tells it (secondary genre)

• Make sure your entire screenplay reflects both the main and secondary genre

If your story starts out pretending to be a romantic comedy, you can't suddenly switch to horror halfway through the story. Once you introduce the main and secondary genre of your story, you must stick to those two genres with few exceptions.

The best stories are focused and unified around answering a single initial question posed at the beginning of the story. In every scene, the initial question should get closer to being answered in one way or another. In "Die Hard," this initial question is whether the hero will reunite with his wife, so every scene is about either ending all possibility of reuniting with his wife or keeping alive the chance of reuniting with his wife.

Every scene should also bring the hero closer to getting a Symbol of Hope or losing it to the villain. Both the hero and villain fight over the Symbol of Hope so every scene either moves the Symbol of Hope closer to the hero or closer to the villain.

Finally, every scene should reflect the story's genre in some way. If a scene could be yanked out of your screenplay and plopped in a completely different screenplay, your scene is too generic. Make sure every scene is unique to your particular story.

If you can write a compelling, interesting scene, you can write a compelling, interesting screenplay. If you can't write a compelling, interesting scene, it's impossible to write a compelling, interesting screenplay.

What makes scenes interesting is when they tell a mini-story involving characters fighting over opposing goals. Conflict can mean the characters are fighting each other, but they could also like each other but trying to achieve opposing goals. By the end of a scene, something has changed in a main character's life. When each scene changes a main character's life, the collection of scenes tells an interesting story.

In general, happy characters who agree with each other make boring scenes. Scenes that lack conflict are also boring. If too many scenes are boring, your screenplay will be boring.

The two rules of every scene are:

• Grab and hold an audience's attention

• Never be boring

So make sure every scene is an interesting as possible through conflict with unique characters pursuing their own goals in different ways. Be unique. Be interesting. Above all, be fun.

Every character in your screenplay are different reflections of the hero's character flaw, which is your story's theme. The hero and ally suffer from the same or similar character flaw while the mentor knows how to teach the hero how to overcome their character flaw. The villain and the henchmen represent evil versions of the character flaw.

By making sure every character is a reflection of the same character flaw, your story can create a focused story. Every story revolves around that single character flaw (story theme). When stories ignore that character flaw, they feel disjointed and unfocused. The tighter all characters focus on the same character flaw, the more focused your story will be.

A quick way to review if your story is structured properly is to review the two halves of the story. The first half of the story should do the following:

• Introduce all the major characters

• Show the hero deceiving others on who they are

• Show the hero pursuing selfish goals

• Create a mystery of what the main conflict of the story might be

• Put the hero in mild danger

Then the second half of the story must follow through on all these ideas:

• Show how the relationships of all the major characters resolves somehow

• Show the hero admitting their deception and becoming a better person by merging their original self with their deceptive self

• Show the hero caring for others in pursuing selfless goals

• Reveal the real conflict of the story

• Raise the takes and put the hero in tremendous danger

By simply structuring the two halves of a story properly, you can increase the chances your story will work regardless of any specific details.

When you share a screenplay, you may want to add a watermark, which is text that appears in light gray diagonally across each page of a screenplay. The purpose of a watermark is to identify the screenplay in some way. That way if copies of the screenplay appear in unauthorized locations, you can identify who received the screenplay first based on the watermark.

Watermarks only appear when you either print a screenplay on paper or save a screenplay as a PDF file. By using watermarks, you can discourage people from copying your screenplay.

The most common way to share a screenplay is through a PDF file, which any computer can view. PDF files let people view a file but not edit it. The two ways to save a screenplay as a PDF file are:

• Save the entire screenplay as a PDF file

• Save one or more pages of a screenplay as a PDF file

When you save a screenplay as a PDF file, you'll have option to include a title page or colors. When you want to save selective pages of a screenplay as a PDF file, you can specify:

• Individual pages (ie. 3, 56, 81)

• Page range (ie. 39-102)

• A combination of both (ie. 20, 75, 105-119)

PDF files make it easy to share a screenplay that you can easily send by email to others.

Final Draft files are stored in files with the .fdx file extension. Since Final Draft is considered the standard for screenwriting, many programs can import Final Draft files. That means if you want to share a Final Draft file, you can just send it to someone without doing any exporting at all.

In some cases, you may need to convert a Final Draft file into another format. The most common file format is .txt (plain text). If you want to share your Beat Board with others, you can export it as a PDF file.

When you export a screenplay into a different file format, you still retain your original Final Draft file.

Thank you for taking my course in Final Draft 13. Just remember that you don't need to learn every feature of Final Draft to write a screenplay. Just learn the features you need. It's far more important to learn storytelling techniques than to learn Final Draft.

When writing a screenplay, start by writing your story out as plain text. This makes it easy to write, read, and edit. Only when you've defined your entire story as text should you write it as a screenplay. Writing a story as a screenplay should always come last. Far too many people try to make up their story as they write the screenplay, which will be far more difficult and cumbersome.

Always keep learning. Study stage plays to learn dialogue writing. Study silent movies to learn how to tell stories visually. Study storytelling techniques from other fields such as novels and oral storytellers to learn how to structure a story.

As long as you assume you can always learn more, you'll always get better over time as a screenwriter. Now go out and tell the story of your dreams.