(for Windows)
Table of Contents
- What is Final Draft?
- What’s wrong with Final Draft?
- Installation
- Writing
- Tips for improving your experience
- The Future
What is Final Draft?
Final Draft is software for writing screenplays. It’s thought of as the industry standard, although it’s by no means the only software that professional screenwriters use.
But you will be using it, because it’s a requirement of the course that certain assignments are submitted as .fdx files - Final Draft files.
What's wrong with Final Draft?
Final Draft gets the job done, but it’s also bloated and kind of buggy. It contains a lot of features that 99% of users won’t use. Many of those features are specific to film production. Forget about those. All we’re here to do is write.
The size of Final Draft makes it run somewhat slowly. The app crashes, which means that you could unexpectedly lose your work. And, unfortunately, some of its most basic features are not presented in an intuitive way (see the section on Word Count, later).
There are user guides for Final Draft, but they’re as bloated as the software itself. The breadth of features can make the software look daunting, or might make you feel like you’re not using it properly. In truth, there’s not that much that you need to know.
I think this is basically everything:
Installation
Click here to go to Final Draft’s free trial request form.
Use your Central email address in order to get a Student Trial that will last for the full length of the course.
Once you submit the form, you should receive an email (to your Central address) that looks like this:
Follow the download link in the email and use your email/password when requested. The setup instructions are straightforward; no need to repeat them here.
With that, you now have your own copy of Final Draft installed on your computer.
Pin to taskbar
Because you’ll be using this application a lot over the duration of this Masters course, I recommend that you ensure easy access to it.
Move your cursor to the very bottom of your screen, or press the Windows button on your keyboard to view the Windows taskbar.
To access Final Draft, type “Final Draft” into your search bar. Then right-click on the app.
Select “Pin to taskbar”.
Final Draft will be added to the end of your taskbar, and screenwriting can always be just a click away.
Now you’re ready to write!
Double-click the Final Draft icon to open the app.
Writing
Having opened the app, you’re now looking at Final Draft’s Graphical User Interface (GUI).
Above: the menus. Below: the blank page. Endless possibilities.
That blinking vertical line near the top left of the page indicates where the words will appear once you start typing.
I know you know that. I just needed to take a moment to tell you what that blinking vertical line is called, because it’ll come up later. It’s called the Insertion Point.
For the most part, you should be able to write your script without ever interacting with the menus above the page. This can be done with keyboard shortcuts.
Basic Shortcuts
Many of Final Draft’s keyboard shortcuts are identical to those that can be found on other word processors:
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Copy | Ctrl+C |
| Paste | Ctrl+V |
| Bold | Ctrl+B |
| Italics | Ctrl+I |
| Save | Ctrl+S |
| Find | Ctrl+F |
The more you use these shortcuts, the more instinctively you’ll use them in the future. The Ctrl key is your friend.
Script Formatting Shortcuts
The most useful aspect of Final Draft - and the reason why specialty screenwriting software exists - is its easy formatting of scripts to an industry standard.
This short scene shows what the formatting of a Final Draft script looks like:
Any scene can be properly formatted without your ever having to think about horizontal indentation, vertical spacing, or caps lock. The formatting is intuitive if you just remember the six types of lines you might need in a script: Scene Headings, Action Lines, Character Names, Parentheticals, Dialogue, and Transitions.
| Formatting Type | Color Below | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scene Heading |  |
The all-caps line that describes when/where the scene takes place. |
| Action Line |  |
A description of the visuals within a scene. |
| Character Name |  |
The all-caps character name that always precedes a line of dialogue. |
| Parenthetical |  |
A short line that adds context/color to a line of dialogue. |
| Dialogue |  |
What a character says. |
| Transition |  |
A short, all-caps line that describes how the next scene is reached. |
Below, the same scene is highlighted to show those six different types of formatting:
There’s a way of switching between these six modes using the GUI, but don’t bother. Use shortcuts!
The following chart is the most useful thing to internalize in this whole guide.
| Formatting Type | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Scene Heading | Ctrl+1 |
| Action Line | Ctrl+2 |
| Character Name | Ctrl+3 |
| Parenthetical | Ctrl+4 |
| Dialogue | Ctrl+5 |
| Transition | Ctrl+6 |
Hitting the shortcut while on an empty line will move your Insertion Point to the correct indentation on the line, and will caps lock your letters, if appropriate.
Hitting the shortcut while on a line that already contains characters will move your Insertion Point to the next line down, using the vertical spacing specific to your desired mode. It will then move your Insertion Point to the correct indentation on the line, and will caps lock your letters, if appropriate.
Note that the numbering of these shortcuts, 1-6, is in the order that you could soonest expect these lines to show up in a scene: i.e. a scene always begins with a heading, which is normally followed by an action line, then a character speaks, etc.
Final Draft is decent at inferring what mode you’ll want to be in. For example, after writing a Scene Heading, pressing Enter will put you into Action Line mode, which is probably where you want to be.
But there are times when Final Draft will get this wrong. Being able to instantly switch to your desired mode without having to go through the graphical interface will save you a ton of time, and it will help keep you in your writerly flow state.
Rare (but occasionally useful) Shortcut
There’s really only one other shortcut that I use when writing, though not often. The GUI button to perform this action is buried in menus - just use this:
| Action | Shortcut | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Dual Dialogue | Ctrl+Alt+D | If you highlight two consecutive lines of dialogue, toggling “Dual Dialogue” will place those lines side-by-side, indicating simultaneously spoken dialogue. |
Tips for improving your experience
Word Count
Our assignments all have minimum/maximum word counts, so this is is a piece of information that you’ll need to know about your script.
On normal word processors, this information is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Not so with Final Draft. You’ll have to run a report.
Reports can be found in the Tools ribbon, under Reports. Word count can be found in a “Statistics Report”.
In the Statistics Report configuration menu, simply leave the default options selected and press “OK” to run a Statistics Report.
Final Draft may take several seconds to run this report, depending on how long your script is.
Finally, you’ll get a multi-page document that looks something like this:
Note the “Number of words,” highlighted in red. This is the word count of the full script, including dialogue, action lines, character names, scene headers, parentheticals… everything.
You’ll have to run this report every time you want to know your script’s word count.
Getting back to your script
Getting back to your script is not intuitive. You’re now viewing the Statistics Report - a separate document than your script, a document which Final Draft thinks that you might care about, but which you probably don’t care about.
To get back to your script, go to the top right corner of your screen and click the small X. This is the X for the current document, as opposed to the bigger X above, which is for the whole Final Draft application.
You will be asked if you want to save the Statistics Report. Unless for some reason you do (which is rare), click “No.”
Now you’re back to your script.
Auto-Save
Final Draft likes to “crash.”
One minute, it will be working fine - the next it will be frozen, your cursor will be spinning, and then the program will close. Any unsaved progress will be lost.
Fortunately, Final Draft has an Auto-Save feature, which will ensure that your progress is periodically saved. By default this occurs every 15 minutes. But genius can occur in far less time, so this number must be reduced.
The Auto-Save setting can be found in the Tools ribbon, under Options.
This will show you the main settings for Final Draft. In the General tab, notice the Auto-Save feature.
The most frequent option that Final Draft allows is 3 minutes. Choose “3” from the dropdown options.
More frequent saves means less frequent heartbreak.
Eventually you will probably develop the subconscious tendency to hit Ctrl+S after every single line you write, but you don’t want to depend on that.
Printing
By default, a Final Draft document is laid out on a rectangular page that looks to be - but is not - the size of A4 paper. This 8.5 x 11 inch page is called “US Letter,” and its dimensions are slightly different from A4’s 8.27 x 11.7 inches.
Like the kilometer and the degree Celsius, A4 paper is non-standard in the United States. Final Draft, being a piece of American software used within an exceedingly American industry, uses the American paper dimensions.
When submitting assignments online, this difference is irrelevant, and you should leave the default option. However, if you want to print out the document, you’ll need to change the page layout to A4, otherwise the school’s computers will complain.
To change the script’s page dimensions, go to the Document ribbon, and press Page Layout.
This will show you the Page Layout options. The Paper Type setting defaults to “US Letter” but should be switched to A4 for printing on school computers.
That's It
This was a pretty short guide. Yet the above is genuinely 99% of what a screenwriting student needs to know about Final Draft.
What about all of the other features and settings that you see in the app?
They might be useful to you, sure. Most people don’t use them. Some are specific to film production - they’re the features that make the jobs of Line Producers and Script Supervisors more manageable. Some of the other features are quite silly/useless, and they were likely added in an attempt to justify some previous, overpriced software update.
The Future
Final Draft will regularly ask you whether or not you want to upgrade to their latest version of the software. An upgrade will cost money, and unless you really need any of the new features described, it probably isn’t worth the money. Ask yourself if there’s really anything you need from Final Draft beyond that which it’s already giving you.
After using Final Draft for the duration of our course, you’ll get really used to its functionality. It’s possible that this familiarity will keep you from wanting to find other, better software.
But once your Student Trial is done, you’ll need to pay Final Draft’s £200 one-time fee for further use. Given how little of the product you use, there are cheaper options:
| Software link | Strengths | Weaknesses | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Celtx | Great for pre-production tools (storyboarding, shot lists); cloud-based. | Requires subscription for full features; not as intuitive for formatting. | £12.49/month (basic plan). |
| Fade In | Affordable alternative to Final Draft; intuitive UI; supports multiple file types. | Limited templates; collaboration features need work. | £65 (one-time). |
| WriterDuet | Excellent for real-time collaboration; cloud-based; mobile-friendly. | Requires internet for some features; subscription-based. | Free (basic); £6.50/month (Pro). |
| Highland 2 | Simple, distraction-free interface; Markdown integration; affordable. | Mac-only; lacks advanced collaboration tools. | £40 (one-time). |
In my personal opinion, Final Draft’s price could be worth it, if and only if it didn’t crash as much as it does. I encourage you to explore your options.
Email me at brandon.sanchez@cssd.ac.uk if you have any questions.