Several times in the past, I’ve dabbled with writing things in script/screenplay format. The basic of screenplay formatting are simple enough that you reproduce them in a Word Processor easily enough, but it always seemed like it would be useful to have a dedicated piece of software for it. Unfortunately, whenever I looked, I only found rather expensive commercial offerings. Final Draft is apparently the industry standard application, but costs $250 to buy new. Though I’m sure it has a lot of advanced features that justify the price, that’s just way too expensive for a hobbyist, who most likely only wants the basic formatting anyway. There are a few other, cheaper options, but I was always surprised I couldn’t find a decent free/open-source application.
Well, recently I ran across Trelby, in its own words “A free, multiplatform, feature-rich screenwriting program!” Having downloaded and tried it, I’m very impressed. It’s clean and simple enough that you can jump in without wading through any large manuals, but there’s still some useful advanced features, such as the ability to generate PDF reports of scenes and characters, and a 200,000 entry multi-cultural name database. Certainly, it’s all most people will need to jump in and start writing scripts. Hopefully this post will help point people with a similar need in the right direction.
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