I’ve worked with Final Draft since the days of version 6. I intend to use Scrivener exclusively for writing screenplays and want to configure application preferences and document settings for import/export using Final Draft 8.
I looked through the tutorial and searched the forums but did not find documentation on the options to consider in configuring Scrivener for FD8. Is there a resource on the Scrivener web site or forums where this has already been documented? Or perhaps this is forthcoming, because the enhanced Final Draft compatibility has been implemented before you’ve had the chance to update your tutorial?
I’ve experimented with the preferences, but would like to to make sure I’ve considered everything correctly.
General Preferences
Default Editor Width @ 510 (default) not sure if changing this matters
Import Options
[x] Use default Final Draft script element formatting for FDX export
Text Editing Preferences
Script Text Attributes
Font: Courier 12
[x] Automatically show completions
Typography
[ ] Activate typographer’s quotes
[ ] Replace double hyphens with em-dash in scriptwriting modes
[ ] Replace three periods with ellipsis
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For exporting text to Final Draft I select File > Compile Screenplay…
Content
Choose the documents I want to include (do not include Title Page?)
Document Elements: “Text” only
Export Format: Final Draft 8 (FDX)
Text Options
Leave default settings as is.
Formatting
Since I have Courier 12 selected in preferences, I do not need to override text formatting.
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For creating a new Scriptwriting document I select Text > Scriptwriting…
Should I select the Screenplay or Screenplay (Final Draft) template?
Or should I select a template I’ve created using Text > Scriptwriting > Script Settings…
Followed by Manage… Load from Final Draft .fdx or .fdxt file… ?
Perhaps I could avoid re-inventing the wheel by contacting a couple of the forum members who have posted regularly on using Scrivener with Final Draft. And ask them if perhaps they would be willing to share a copy of their file template and any settings they’ve settled on for working with Final Draft 8.
In general for working with FDX, you can just use the standard scriptwriting format (not the FD one) and that’s all you need. As long as your elements are recognised as the correct script elements in Scrivener, they should go across to FD okay. To answer more specifically though:
FDX compatibility was added about a year ago, but for the past two years I’ve been hard at work on Scrivener 2.0 in tandem with keeping 1.x updated. So 2.0 will include more help on this and its FDX import/export will be much improved. For instance, 2.0 has an Import and Split function, which can import an FDX script, break it down into scenes as separate documents in Scrivener, and associate your FD summary for each scene with the document in Scrivener as its index card synopsis. Going the other way, when you export from Scrivener 2.0 as FDX, you can define the first document as the title page and have all your index card synopses go across to FD as scene summaries. By contrast, the FDX import/export in 1.x is fairly basic, allowing you just to import and export the script itself (no title page, summaries etc).
That’s fine. Editor width has nothing to do with export options, though - it’s just a setting for viewing documents in Scrivener. The “Use default FD formatting” just means that Scrivener won’t include any special element formatting in the exported FDX file, thus forcing Final Draft to use its default formatting. You would untick this if you are using special script formatting (e.g. comic script formatting). If you just want everything to go across to FD in such a way that FD uses its bog-standard screenplay formatting, though, ticking this is fine.
Fine. The font won’t have any effect on the exported document seeing as you have ticked “Use default FD script element formatting” in the General pane, so you can use what font you wish - you may wish to change it to Courier Final Draft if you have FD installed, though, just for consistency. Automatically show completions is purely for working in Scrivener, so that’s fine.
This is all fine. Although you can leave these activated if you want and have them fixed up on output, as the Text Options of the Compile sheet allows you to override all of these and convert them to their plain-text equivalent on output.
Yep, all fine. You are right that you shouldn’t include a title page just yet - as I say, this is an improvement coming with 2.0, which will allow you to have the first document set as a title page. And you are right that you should choose only text to be exported - you don’t want titles or synopses messing up the formatting.
This is fine. You may wish to have em-dashes converted to double-hyphens, or curly quotes changed to straight quotes, although you have these turned off in the preferences anyway.
One thing to note is that you want “Separate non-folder sections with” set to “Single newlines” - you won’t want scene break characters getting inserted between elements.
Yes, generally this can be ignored for scriptwriting.
If you just want to use standard Final Draft screenplay format, then just stick to the regular Screenplay format. The Screenplay (Final Draft) template was intended for RTF export, back before I got in touch with Final Draft and they were nice enough to give me access to their file format. Now that you can export directly to FDX, there’s no need to use this. Note that, given that you have “Use default FD element formatting” set in the Preferences, it won’t matter what format you choose, really, because on export the default FD format will be used. If you turned off that preference, then Scrivener would ensure that the FDX file carried in it any formatting set here.
Also note that when you create a new text document, it will use the same mode as the currently-selected text document. So if you are working on a script document and create a new text document, the new one will be in script mode by default.
Thank you Keith…
For taking the time to reply with such detail.
Much appreciated!
Looks like I’m now good to go.
And will appreciate the enhanced compatibility with FD in 2.0.