I’m dusting off an old play I wrote in Final Draft (FD) which I would like to revive using Scrivener, as it’s so much nicer to work in. It was actually written in a screenplay format in FD and I’d like to convert it to Stageplay UK in Scrivener. I’ve tried various things, saving it as plain text and opening it in Scriv etc but I’m having difficulty. Copying and pasting doesn’t work either. Is what I want to do even possible - can I convert a screenplay (if I get it into Scriv as a screenplay) to a stageplay without having to do a lot of reformatting?
Hmm, good point. There isn’t a direct way, but there is a workaround you can use. I’d recommend backing up first, as the conversion might not be perfect, but it’s worth a try:
In your project, first make sure that all of the script elements are recognised correctly in your screenplay mode (scene heading, dialogue etc).
Switch to “Stage Play (US)” (if you want UK formatting then it would be much more difficult) script format - you can do this in another project if you want, it doesn’t matter.
Open the script settings panel (Format > Scriptwriting > Script Settings…) and click on the “Manage…” button in the bottom-left. Select “Save to File…” and save the script settings somewhere to disk.
In the project you want to convert, make sure Screenplay format is selected so that all the elements of your script are recognised properly in the editor (as checked in (1) above).
Open the script settings panel again, click on “Manage…” again, and this time choose “Load From File…”.
Load the file you saved in step (3), so that the script settings panel gets updated with the stage play settings.
Click “OK”.
At this point, you will be presented with a “Convert” sheet. Go through each element and carefully select the corresponding elements in the stage play format that should map to the existing elements in your script (Scrivener can’t really decide this for you as it doesn’t really have any idea of the meaning of the different elements, so you need to go through and check this).
When you’re happy, click “OK”. You’ll get a warning that the action can’t be undone (which is why I recommended backing up first). Click “OK” and then check out the results.
This workaround forces the “Convert” sheet to appear when switching between formats - it normally only appears when you make changes in the script settings panel and doesn’t appear when you just switch formats in the Scriptwriting menu (which is something I need to consider).
Yes, after a bit of fiddling this worked, thank you. Is the reason why it would not work in UK play format because Character and Dialogue elements are one and the same?
Is the reason why it would not work in UK play format because Character and Dialogue elements are one and the same?