Although I have written several small first drafts in Scrivener and exported them to FD8, I have never actually had resounding success with this process. That is to say, as things currently stand it doesn’t save me any work. It creates more.
It seems that although the formatting in Scrivener is "correct’ (I’m editing in Screenplay Final Draft mode, I inspect all the script elements and they are correct – SCENE, CHARACTER, DIALOGUE, etc) when compile and export the script to FDX and then open it in Final Draft, although the script is “shaped” correctly, all the elements are rendered as ACTION by FD. To continue working in FD, I have to manually step to every element and correct it – very exasperating.
I have tried tweaking and playing around with all the export options in the the Compile Screenplay dialogue. I never get the results I expect – that being, if I export a something marked as DIALOGUE in Scrivener I’d like it to show up marked as DIALOGUE in Final Draft, not ACTION.
I am sadly about to throw Scrivener over the board when trying to write and format Screenplays for polishing and final editing in Final Draft. It’s just NOT saving me any work write now.
However, I realize that there’s probably something I am missing or doing incorrectly, for surely this isn’t how it’s meant to be.
Thanks in advance.
–C