Screenwriting on the iPhone • Part 2

Posted in Tools on Jan 6th, 2010

This is a follow-up to my first post about using Screenplay to write scripts on the iPhone. To recap, although I love the idea of a dedicated screenwriting app on the iPhone (Final Draft, can you hear me?), Screenplay fell way short of what I’m looking for.

Ironically, a general note-taking/word processing app does a much better job of handling screenwriting on the iPhone. Writeroom is not an unfamiliar name to Mac-based writers. Their ultra-simple, fullscreen word processor has been famous for years and their iPhone effort is (in my opinion) an even greater triumph.

As long as you’re willing to use the caps-lock on your iPhone, Writeroom allows a much smoother workflow than Screenplay. To begin, the iPhone’s screen doesn’t exactly have a lot of extra real estate and (unlike Screenplay) Writeroom surrenders ALL of it to writing. Compare the screenshot at the top of this post with the Screenplay one in my first post and you’ll see what I’m talking about. There’s simply no comparison between how much real estate they claim for the UI.

And, as long as you use the simple formatting reflected in the screenshot, you can import your WR file directly into Final Draft as a .txt file and go to work on it immediately. This is something that Screenplay crows loudly about being able to do – but Writeroom simply delivers.

Sure, Screenplay has a lot more bells and whistles – but when they aren’t accessible in the traditional Final Draft/Screenwriter fashion, why teach yourself a new set of skills when you can just start writing with Writeroom? There are already a million different reasons why we aren’t writing right now. Don’t let a poor interface become yet another hurdle between you and “FADE OUT”.

Writeroom @ the iTunes App Store



2 Responses to “ “Screenwriting on the iPhone • Part 2”

  1. John Mason says:
    January 8, 2010 at 10:33 pm

    Please check out our application ScriptWrite. It is a screenwriting application for the iPhone, which allows you to type your script without leaving the interface. You can export to Final Draft, and we will soon offer importing from Final Draft as well. You can see a video of it in action at http://www.scriptwriteapp.com.

    Thanks,

    John Mason

  2. Tim W. says:
    March 4, 2010 at 11:22 am

    I’ve been using Screenplay on the iPhone since around when it was released. I agree the first version wasn’t great, but I like the current version. The great thing about Screenplay, which I don’t think is true for Writeroom, is that you can export it into Final Draft. I’ve been out somewhere and written a little in Screenplay, then emailed it to myself and continued what I was doing on my home computer.

    One thing I find handy is being able to write outlines on it. I use scene headings, which organizes it well.

Leave a Reply