I used to make do with Word templates writing scripts (before switching to Mac!) …then I evolved to Celtx.
I’m considering buying either Final Draft or Movie Magic Screenwriter. Heard good stuff about Screenwriter, and being a student, I’m tempted to buy its Academically priced version. Was surprised to find one low-priced (129$, download-only) at the ScreenStyle web store. I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to post the link here
Would you recommend MMS over FD?
And do you know the ScreenStyle store?
*) Needless to say, contemplating making the above purchase, I had to put on hold my dreams of buying a hot-pink Kindle cover!
We are not opposed to people posting helpful links, so if you find a good deal on some software that other authors might be interested in, feel free to do so.
And of course there’s Amazon.com, where you can get the boxed version of Movie Magic Screenwriter for 159 USD, and Final Draft for 179 USD, but they won’t ship it abroad, so it’s not an option for me. But if you live in the US…
Do you need to exchange documents with Scrivener? Then go with FD, it works quite well with Scrivener. Do you need to exchange documents with collaborators? Go with whatever they are using. If none of that applies to you, go with MMS. It is better designed and more robust. IMHO.
I bought MMS a few weeks ago and I’ve been using it pretty intensively since. I love it and for my purposes could end up replacing Scrivener one day. The one thing it doesn’t do is amass lots of documents in one place, but I only tend to do that early on.
MMS has really good outlining, which works exactly how I want it to (actually quite like a template I tried to set up in Word years ago - basically, hierarchical outline mixed with bits of script. The big difference is that my Word version was an amateurishly hacked, and theirs is really slick). You can adapt it pretty much to work how you want, page count and script printing doesn’t include outline tho you can see them on the screen, and it does all the formatting and versioning stuff.
I tried out FD but for my purposes it seemed to be mostly a formatter, which given the price isn’t enough.
…then I evolved to Celtx. 
