I just wanted to say how much I'm loving the Celtx software. Last year I used regular old Microsoft Word to write my screenplay, with hotkeys for all the standard formatting - Alt-D was dialog, Alt-C was character, etc., with the appropriate "followed by": clicking Enter after a Character name started the next part as Dialog, etc. I had a separate Word document for notes. It worked pretty well. That's all I needed. Or so I thought.

Here are the reasons I love Celtx better already (after only 3 days):

1. With Celtx there's only two keys, Tab and Enter. What each does depends on where you are right now. For example if you're typing a character name, it tells you that Enter will put you in Dialog mode (I forget what Tab does right now).
2. What's more, it tells you at the bottom of the screen what each key will do, based on where you are! So you don't have to remember anything!
3. And when you're really stuck trying to do something non-standard, there's a simple drop-down where you can pick EXACTLY what you want next. I've used this once, in 8 pages.
4. When you start typing a character name, it gives you lookahead! So when I start typing "P" it knows I want either Patrice or Peter. It even preserved the choice that I had most recently used, for example "PATRICE (V.O.)" for voice-over!
5. You can record characters on individual character cards. Fill in what you know, add the rest as you go. Helps you make sure you have well-rounded characters.
6. Each scene gets its own index card. You can color-code them as to whether they are Plot A, Plot B, etc.

All of this and I've barely been using it for 3 days. Just to make sure I would know how to use it before April started, I played with it. I was comfortable after only 5 minutes. It's that good.

And, in case you're thinking of making the switch from MS Word but are afraid of losing stuff when you go to validate, I pasted last year's into Celtx in order to get the PDF for validating. I had the exact same number of pages, before and after. Your mileage may vary, but it seemed to have parsed everything properly.

If you've been curious about how newbies feel about these fancy scriptwriting tools, count this newbie in as a convert!

+1!

Everything you said, plus : character bios, scene sheets, notepad, scratchpad. I'm probably leaving a bunch of stuff out, but this software is great. I discovered it last year, but for some reason didn't use it. Dumb! This time around, I'm using it from the get-go. I can concentrate on writing instead of formatting. Another Celtx convert. Preach the Celtx word, brothers and sisters! :-))

Ditto that!

I love Celtx and this is the second year I"m using it. Took all the headache out of formatting and all I have3 to do is what I love to do best. Just plain write! The character bios are really helpful too, in keep track of all sorts of stuff and subplots.

___________________________________ Want to know what I write? Go ahead....click.... www.fictionfusion.blogspot.com

Absolutely.

I had never even heard of it before last month.
It just makes my writing flow, but that's exactly what screenwriting software is supposed to do: let you worry about plot, not about format.
It's a breeze.

I only started really writing my script yesterday and I was about to cry from all th formatting problems I had. I think it's probably the reason I'd been procrastinating, I had some notes written out on paper, but I hadn't been able to bring myself to type them up.

Today, I downloaded Celtx and I'm just amazed. I think I have something like 5 pages and I've gotten so much farther than I did yesterday when I worked on it for at least twice the amount of time. I'm starting to feel that using Celtx, Script Frenzy is definitely achievable.

Well, I'm a complete tech idiot. I love Celtx, but didn't know half of what you wrote (and I used it last year).

How do I do the color coding subplots thingie?