Trick of the Trade
For those few faithful readers out there in cyber-space who use Final Draft to compose their great American screenplays I want to share with you a trick I learned all by my lonesome. I can claim this as my own because I have never, ever seen/heard/read anyone else describing this.
During rewrites I check and double check a whole host of items to insure my screenplay is crisp/clean/and free of misspellings. Final Draft is a great tool for writers, however, the spell checker really sucks! No offense to the good folks over at Final Draft, but it is a fact. Which brings me to a useful trick:
Save your screenplay in RTF – Rich Text Format – then open that RTF file using Microsoft Word side-by-side with your screenplay in Final Draft.
Voila!
You will find – at least this has been my experience because I am, in fact a terable speler – anywhere from eight (8) to twelve (12) misspelled words that Final Draft missed. As you uncover these words in Word, fix them in the Final Draft version.
Give it shot – what do you have to lose? And then let me know what you think and/or share some of your writing tips and tricks.
Keep Writing!
That’s a great idea! I’ll have to give this a try.
GREAT advice, Mike, thanks for sharing.
I use Final Draft, and I think you’re right. Their spell checker leaves a lot to be desired.
Wow, super impressive tip.
Tried it with my latest script and found 25 errors. Mostly grammatical errors that Final Draft doesn’t pick up.
Thanks for the tip.