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Screenwriting Software: Closeup Review #2 |
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by Rich Wilson © 1996, 1997 All rights reserved
Deconstruction. You see this word bandied about in trendy arts magazines and college catalogs. If you ever wondered what it meant, just take a look at Dramatica, the unique "storyforming" program from Screenplay Systems. What is "storyforming?" Ah, what a good question. (In fact, just take out a dictionary right now, and keep it handy.)
A deconstructivist approach to any art form claims that previous approaches to that art form, or paradigms, were either outmoded, or at least inhibited, by the words used to describe them. For example, in screenwriting we have familiar paradigms like the three-act structure, the antagonist-protagonist conflict (white hats vs. black hats), the scene-à-faire or climax scene, and so on. The developers of Dramatica felt that these paradigms were insufficient to help an author develop a story to its "correct" form, and thus invented an intricate system of descriptive terminology that is rococo in its level of detail.
Is that bad? Not necessarily. But it surely is a mental challenge to throw out everything you know and try to adopt a new system. It also requires a major leap of faith that the new system is worth the large investment in time. Unfortunately, this review will not attempt to make that judgment for you. That is partly because one's willingness to change paradigms is a personal choice. But it is mostly because your reviewer has not had time to digest all 278 pages of the manual and all 416 pages of the accompanying textbook Dramatica: A New Theory of Story, not to mention testing the operation of the program itself! It would not be fair to readers, or to the publishers, to draw conclusions based on insufficient evidence. [*see note below]
Nevertheless, Dramatica has been out for a while, and is the subject of a lot of discussion, so I feel it's important to provide at least some preliminary impressions. This is particularly true because there is little (if anything) else to which one can compare this product.
The textbook says "Dramatica is built on the concept that the structure and dynamics of a story...represent an analogy to a single human mind dealing with a problem" which they call The Story Mind. Somehow this mind has a life of its own, and is just aching to tell itself. The text draws a parallel to Michelangelo chipping away marble to yield a sculpture that was just waiting to be revealed.
By using this illustration, the authors inadvertently point up a problem: a computer program certainly couldn't turn me into Michelangelo! There is too much about writing (or any creative activity) that calls on non-verbal, intuitive parts of the brain. These infinitely complex processes simply can't be reproduced by any computer, certainly not the average PC, regardless of software. So let's just skip past any notion that Dramatica will lead you toward a "perfect" screenplay, and instead ask: can it help?
Maybe, but here's the catch. You won't really know until you learn its terminology and buy into its paradigm. You must understand what is meant by Storyforming, and differentiate it from Storytelling; and learn new terms like Thematic Quads, Universe, Physics, Psychology, Mind, Classes, Domains, Concerns, Evaluations, Appreciations, and many more. Perhaps worse, you must learn new definitions for familiar words like Character, Emotion, and Attitude; and new words for old meanings! Instead of the time-honored technique of "foreshadowing" we have to call it Forewarning, which is defined as "the specific items or conditions that indicate the imminent approach of the Consequence." Whew.
I personally find it arbitrary and capricious to change a word just to pretend that it is a new concept, and to require the adoption of that word in order to use a software program. I also find it unfortunate that Dramatica is burdened by such requirements, because whatever value there is in the program will be inaccessible to people whose eyes glaze over at this stuff.
I did test the program on a story I'm working on, and in these limited trials there was good news and bad news. The bad news is that the program's obsessively binary approach to story development forces the writer to make either-or, black-white choices that may inhibit the kind of work one wants to do. The good news is that, after I filled in a sketchy sort of structure, the program had ideas about a type of action that the main character might perform, and this at least gave me food for thought.
It would be ironic if, after all is said and done, the program were more useful at promoting imaginative flights of fancy, rather than instilling the rigid, dogmatic approach that seems to be its intention. Anyway, Dramatica is intriguing enough to merit more testing, but until circumstances allow a lot more time to explore its quirky new world, I do not want to go on record either endorsing it or rejecting it. I certainly advise trying it first hand and seeing it in action before making a purchase commitment.
[* Note: since this was written, Screenplay Systems announced version 2.0. Its documentation and theory book were improved noticeably. You can get another opinion on Dramatica, in its newer form, in another review on this website.]
Several years ago, Cinovation, Inc. Introduced Scriptware, an interactive, WYSIWYG screenplay program for MS-DOS. It was not the only software of its kind, but at the time, it was the easiest to use. Its biggest drawbacks were its demands for memory and disk space. I wrote a complete screenplay with it on a 386 with 8MB of RAM, and ran into capacity problems as I neared the 120-page mark. On the other hand, it worked fast, and its design allowed me to work fast. I considered it a pretty good tool, all things considered.
Now, of course, the stakes and the competition have all increased, and the "game" is most often played in Windows, not DOS. So Cinovation, like its competitors, has created a Windows version. The version tested here is (at this writing) the most recent of several updates made to the program since its release in January 1996.
An important feature in this newest version is control over screen fonts. I have a 17" monitor set at 1024x768, and the default screenplay text is too small to read comfortably. But the program allows one to enlarge the onscreen text, making it easier to read without changing the actual print size. If you want to change the print font, you can do that, too.
The Windows environment allows programmers to improve many features, or add new ones that are virtually impossible in DOS, and Cinovation has used that opportunity well. The program now allows multiple scripts to be open simultaneously, with easy cutting and pasting from one to another. The first thing I did was to open a couple of full-length script files to see what would happen, and this version seems to manage memory better than the DOS version.
Most Windows programs offer "button bars" with commonly-used features that you can access with a quick click of the mouse. Scriptware's button bar makes it easy not only to perform basic file and print operations, but also to search for a specific character's dialogue, and perform other useful tasks. The button bar is highly configurable to suit the user's tastes and needs, making good use of the graphical environment.
Meanwhile, the keyboard-only commands are still fast and easy, a boon for those of us who prefer not to use the mouse for writing work. The program has tons of "smart" features that help finish entry of sluglines, transitions, and character names, with only a few keystrokes by the writer. If you somehow enter text as a transition that you meant to be a character name, you can convert it. Oddly, you can not convert any other element to a transition, though.
The feature set is mostly good, with occasional lapses. Scriptware lacks a true "undo" command, unlike most word processors. On the plus side, it uses "standard" cut-and-paste commands (Control-X, Control-C, and Control-V), which make block-editing functions very easy, especially for people familiar with other Windows software. However, Scriptware uses its own internal clipboard. That means the Windows clipboard can not be used to move text between Scriptware and other programs. While it can import files from other screenwriting programs like Collaborator, the only way to import from a word processor is to translate it to plain ASCII text first. On the other hand, its automatic file saving -- with two generations of backups (a very nice feature!) -- will help to preserve data.
NOTE 10/96: Since this article was first published, the paragraph above has been revised to correct a previous error. Originally I reported that, due to the lack of an undo feature, there was no way to recover text deleted by mistake. This is true only for things like character names or other items that can be deleted with a single keystroke. This can be annoying, but it is not catastrophic. So, please note this correction: if you mark a block of text, then press the delete key, that text can in fact be recovered using Control-V. Also, as of 10/96, Cinovation was working on adding an undo feature for a future upgrade of the program.
File size is still an issue; a typical screenplay is going to run 700-800 KB. To put this in perspective, this means you can only fit one on a standard high-density floppy. If you need to ship Scriptware files by modem, you're in for quite a wait unless you convert them to ASCII. On the other hand, if you do not need to share or transmit files, and your system has lots of capacity, this may not be a factor for you.
Not surprisingly for a new product, Scriptware for Windows still looks rough in some places, although you may discover them only by chance. Like many computers today, my new system has a CD- ROM drive that can play music while you work on the computer. I just happened to be doing this when testing Scriptware for Windows, and discovered that most commands in its File menu interfere with CD playback. I was able to restart the CD after completing each file operation, but it raises concerns about how Scriptware handles files. This anomaly should not have happened, and I was not able to recreate it in tests with a variety of other programs.
However, Cinovation has a good track record for constantly improving and upgrading their products, so I would expect the rough spots to be smoothed over as time goes on. They have a reputation for good product support, and a significant number of users who are successful screenwriters in Hollywood and elsewhere. It's too early to say that this is the "best" Windows-based screenwriting tool, but it is a good one. If you are one of the diehards still resisting a move to Windows, the features in Scriptware for Windows might be enough to change your mind.
Dramatica Screenplay Systems 818-843-6557
Scriptware for Windows Cinovation 303-786-7899
