Just wondering how others plan to work on the same script without stepping on each other's toes.

My partner and I will be using Google Docs. We're putting each scene in its own document, and we have an outline spreadsheet where each scene summary will link to a scene document. Since they dont have templates, we'll be putting almost no focus on formatting until April is nearly over. At that point we'll move the raw text into Celtx, which seems to do a good job of auto formatting, provided things are reasonably close to the standard format.

Anyone found another option?
We tried Plotbot.com, but it seems quite buggy. In our very simple one scene test, we actually lost about half a page, and had multiple points where the server wouldn't respond for 5 or 10 minutes at a time.

I'm interested in hearing about other methods people have tried, and how successful they were. :)

Jason

I did this in a pretty low-tech way last year. We worked in a word document and just e-mailed it back and forth. We wrote different scenes, and wrote at different times, which helped a little: I'd write something, then e-mail the updated doc.

Merging scenes together was a simple matter of copy-and-paste, and there wasn't much need even for that, as we tended to work at different times (we were 8 time zones apart, which adds to the fun). I'd read through what my partner wrote and occasionally make changes, using Word's "Track Changes" feature so she could see what I'd changed and put it back if she didn't agree :)

The other benefit of e-mailing the document back and forth is you have a ready-made backup.

The only other tool was messenger - when we were both online we had long discussions about this and that (including some about where the film should go ...)

Tom

I think therefore I am pretentious.

Thanks Tom!

I think that is what we'd end up doing if we used Celtx's built in collaboration tool, since it really only allows one person to be editing at a time.
However, my friend and I are in the same time zone, so we'd likely run into some confusion there.

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Jason
Municipal liaison for Southern California
scriptfrenzy@tactorfiction.com

www.PlotBot.com works awesomely. It's pretty much the same as Google Docs, except with script formatting, and designed for writing scripts together. :)

Official link to writing software: http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/software

You could also share an account on www.Scripped.com or www.ScriptBuddy.com and edit scripts there.

I'd definitely recommend PlotBot first, then Scripped. ScriptBuddy you may want to try out, but that would be my last resort.

--------------------
cause i couldn't cry
cause i turned away
couldn't see the score
didn't know the pain
of leaving yesterday really far behind

-steve conte

I posted advice last year on colaberation through instant messager. Which works WONDERFULLY, if you plan on writing real-time. Which is basically like role-playing with script tags. Basically just invent some "Find and replace" tags and go at it. I use (p) for paragraph and that's it. We take a couple characters, use the tags for paragraphing, _s for italics and * for bold.

So, if you and your partner will be online for lengths of time and can think well on your feet, I highly recommend getting two messengers. Yahoo and MSN or something. Use one to talk about what you're typing out, and one to write the story itself, from which you'll copy and paste after you're done for the day, and put it into the base file on your computer for page counting. :)

---

INT. THE NANOWRIMO FORUMS - NOVEMBER '07
ON THE EDGE 103,000/50,000 words. WON!
(2005: Through Silver Glass 50k, WON!
2006: The Legend of Scarecrow, 100k, WON!)

Thanks for the tips everyone.
We've decided to use Celtx. We split up our outline between the two viewpoints, and each of us will write those scenes separately. I'm going to maintain the main Celtx project file, which I'll post to project central daily. My partner will email me his Celtx file whenever he makes updates, and I'll incorporate his changes (this is all necessary because Celtx project-central has no concept of only uploading certain parts of your project - it's all or nothing).
For the scenes we have that are "cross overs" between the two viewpoint characters, we will work on those either in person or via IM as Tiana recommended.

I think plotbot.com is interesting, but in the end we both just felt we'd be more productive with Celtx.

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Jason
Municipal liaison for Southern California
scriptfrenzy@tactorfiction.com