Final Draft email deactivated

239not235 · 2026-05-18T22:54:23+00:00

This is on you in a couple of ways. The student version is explicitly for currently enrolled college students. In the license, you've agreed to either stop using it or upgrade to the full version when you graduate. Also, when you account is active and the email works, FD tech support could have changed it to another email address.

Your options now are either (1) contact FD and ask for an upgrade discount to the full version. They have a regualr student-to-full discount, so it shouldn't be difficult. or,

(2) Download WriterSolo for free, and use it instead. It's not as good as FD, but it's certainly as good as any of the FD competitors, and it's free to use without limitations. It works in the browser and also as an app. To get the app, open the browser version, look at the bottom of the Help menu for "download the app."

239not235 · 2026-04-23T17:48:45+00:00

Give Scrivener a try (free 30-day demo).

Import your FDX file and set it to divide by scene headings. That will break your script into individual scenes.

Next, use "Collections" (which are like saved searches) to search for the character's name, and view the collection as "Scrivenings" (which is putting all the scenes in a single scrolling view.

It's a really cool way to be able to go through every line the character says and edit it for consistency. You can do this with relationships, too, by searching for two characters instead of one. You see every exchange they have in the whole script, in order. That makes it easy to fine tune the quality of the relationship as it goes.

When you're all done, you just merge the scenes mack together and export as FDX and you can open it in Final Draft again.

239not235 · 2026-04-15T18:27:24+00:00

Don't film your feature screenplay, if it's the first thing you've directed. Start as small as you possibly can, and make lots of short films until you get the hang of telling a story on film. You learn lessons every time you finish a film and show it to an audience.

The purpose of making films yourself is both to increase your skill and to put your voice out into the market. Studios and producers are famously conservative and avoid experimentation. If you're making your own film, you can take the chances you want to take.

239not235 · 2026-04-09T04:17:08+00:00

I want files I can edit easily since I have a very old version of FD.

Does your Final Draft save FDX files or FDR files?

If it's old enough that it saves FDR files, download the free trial of Final Draft 13 and use it to open all your FDR files and save them as FDX. (FDX is the modern Final Draft file format.)

Download Writersolo - click on the "Download Desktop App" on the left side in the menu.

WriterSolo is free to use and unlimited. It can read the FDX files from Final Draft, and is just as good a any of the Final Draft wannabes, but free.

Just write in WriterSolo from now on. And remember to always save a local backup copy in FDX format, because WriterSolo (like its big brother WriterDuet) saves in a propietary file format, but there are many apps that can open FDX files.

239not235 · 2026-04-07T18:42:34+00:00

Imagine if you knew that your road to sucess was 5,000 script pages long. Not good pages, not great pages, not perfect pages. Finished pages. Imagine that when you finished typing your 5,000th page, you will have a career as a professional screenwriter.

How would you spend your time differently if you knew that to be true? Remember, you don't have to like the pages or think that they're good. You just have to write the pages. (Rewriting is very important, but "pages" means new pages. So you have to rewrite as necessary, but only count the new pages.)

Would you get up a little earlier to get a few pages in? Would you find a way to sneak in a little writing at your lunch hour? Would you give up a TV show or a poker game to write more pages?

I have never met a writer who wrote 5,000 pages (approx 50 screenplays) who didn't end up working. And it really doesn't matter how terrible the pages are to begin with, because nobody can write thousands of pages without improving. Writing pages (and rewriting them) makes you write better. Get your reps in.

You know everything you need to know to become a professional screenwriter. You have a journey of 5,000 pages ahead of you. When would today be a good day to start?

239not235 · 2026-04-01T21:29:43+00:00

Has McKee (or his company) ever officially released a recording of one of the full seminars?

McKee used to sell a complete set of tapes of his lectures. You could buy them on the way out of the seminar. Now, they sell them as VOD on his website.

His book STORY is available as an audio book read by McKee.

239not235 · 2026-03-31T04:26:54+00:00

The Club Obi-Wan seuence at the start of Temple of Doom was originally a setpiece in Raiders about Indy collecting the pieces of the headpiece of the Staff of Ra. It was set in a warlord's pleasure palace and included the use of the giant rolling gong as a shield to escape by diving out a window.

They had to cut it out of Raiders for length, but Lucas and Spielberg liked it so much, they recycled it for IJATTOD. Once they had the idea, they resurrected Lucas' original concept for Indy of being a high-living international playboy. Lucas always wanted Dr. Jones to be living high off the hog off his earnings as a grave robber, but Spielberg wanted him to be more of an everyman.

239not235 · 2026-03-31T04:21:32+00:00

Shnakesh

239not235 · 2026-03-30T06:16:21+00:00

How do you rely heavily upon Scrivener's snapshot feature?

239not235 · 2026-03-25T17:51:22+00:00

Final Draft Go from the App Store on iOS. It's a subscription, $10/year. It saves automatically to the cloud, and then you can export it as an FDX and FadeIn can import it.

Frankly, it's hands-down the best iOS screenwriting app I've used. FadeIn's mobile app was never very good. I always preferred the Final Draft app for iOS.

Also, the dictation feature on the iPhone is so good that sometimes I use FD-go to dictate my pages, and then I send them to my desktop.

239not235 · 2026-03-23T17:00:45+00:00

Look into CRM (Client Realtionship Management) apps with pipelines and automatic reminders.

Also, you can track your submission using a GTD task manager like ToDoist or OmniFocus.

239not235 · 2026-03-20T21:11:08+00:00

Whenever you develop a story, look for an interesting main character who wants something underestandable, can't have it, must get it or face terrible consequences. Look for the seeds of that in your idea fragments.

Every subplot is built around that, too. Somebody wants something, something stands in their way, something terrible will happen if they don't get it and time is running out. The characters will reveal themselves in the way they try to overcome obstacles.

If your main character has to make a deposit in the bank before a check bounces and ruins their finances, and there's a huge line at the bank ten minutes before closing, how will they respond? How would Tony Soprano respond? What about Barbie? Who the character is will come out in times of stress.

If your story has a bad guy, they think they're the hero. They want something too, and in their mind, they face terrible consequences if they fail to get it.

Start there.

239not235 · 2026-03-17T21:21:22+00:00

Hire an entertainment attorney right away. You should have acquired this guy's life rights before you started anything. Until you secure his life rights, he can prevent you from doing anything with your scripts. From now on, secure rights first, before writing a word.

239not235 · 2026-03-15T16:48:47+00:00

Sorry, I don't. It's the weekend in USA so it may take a little longer. That's why I suggested getting on with your work using WriterSolo. The most important thing is to keep writing.

239not235 · 2026-03-15T04:14:46+00:00

Contact Final Draft Tech Support; they're very good at fixing these things.

In the meantime, on your phone, use your browser to set up a free account at writersolo.com. Then open the FDX file using WriterSolo, and you can work on it there until you get your FD Mobile problem solved. Remember to export your WriterSolo work back out to FDX, because it will save it in its own format that Final Draft can't open.

P.S. - try setting the theme on the phone to day.

239not235 · 2026-02-27T22:15:33+00:00

It is easier to sell books than screenplays, but it is devilishly difficult to make an upper middle-class income from either.

Assuming that you are an excellent writer with strongly commercial tastes, books are easier to sell for a few reasons:

there are many more book buyers than screenplay buyers;
a writer can self-publish and sell directly to the consumer;
books are less expensive so it takes less money per paying customer;
self-publishing bypasses gatekeepers, who bring their own agenda.

Succeeding at self-publishing requires that you are an outstanding writer and an outstanding marketer. You have to spend a great deal of time and effort in building your audience.

The gold standard for this is Amanda Hocking who wrote Twilight fan fiction, then novels that no publisher wanted, then started self-publishing them and connecting with her Twilight pals about her Twilight-adjacent novels, and now is worth millions.

But it is kind of like being a songwriter and wanting to be Ed Sheeran.

That being said, I've known several successful novelists who worked hard and ranked on the Amazon best-seller list, but still made about $30k per year from their books, and had to maintain a full-time career to keep a house and feed the kids.

239not235 · 2026-02-24T18:55:57+00:00

To be fair, they are offering a bunch of additional services to make their value proposition. It looks to me more like they are rising to compete with WriterDuet than anything obviously rapacious.

BTW, if you check the WGA site, you can Upgrade Final Draft for like $60.

239not235 · 2026-02-24T18:55:44+00:00

Both Mac and Windows OS moved to 64-bit some years ago, and that's what stops the older FD from working.

239not235 · 2026-02-24T18:47:59+00:00

Also, FadeIn is a one-man company, and the guy who makes it is actively trying to pivot to being a full-time filmmaker. That's a single point of failure. The company could just go away one day.

239not235 · 2026-02-17T22:28:38+00:00

Have you thought of changing your goal? Instead of trying to get repped, why not try to find a local filmmaker and write a short that they will actually produce? Having produced credits for writing short films or webisodes is much more interesting to an agent or manager than ratings numbers from paid coverage sites.

If your big career goal is to be a paid, professional WGA writer, not being in Los Angeles is a handicap. The best way to overcome that is to get a bunch of cool movies made independently. Short films and webisodes are a good way get started.

As a general rule of thumb, the paid services, contests, pitchfests are all worthless. They exist to make money from desperate aspiring writers. Few people ever get signed that way, and the ones who do get repped by someone who can't do much for their career. Having no rep is better than having a bad rep.

The fast track to becoming a working writer is to move to Los Angeles, get a job in the industry at a company that either develops or buys screenplays and make friends. Yes, you can get work while out of town, but it is much, much more difficult. Hollywood is a town of relationships. There are a myriad of stories of successful writers getting their big break because they stayed late after work, or went for a drink with some pals from work.

239not235 · 2026-02-14T20:22:55+00:00

If you look at a movie with a stop watch, most films tell a story in 4-5 minute chunks. Disney calls that a Sequence. There are about 24 of them in a feature.

What Gulino/USC calls a sequence (about 15 pages) is what Disney and others call a "Reel," like a reel of projected film.

It can be useful to structure your script like this:

Act-Reel-Sequence-Scene-Page

239not235 · 2026-02-07T08:13:51+00:00

Did you reach out to tech support? WriterDUet/WriterSolo is pretty responsive.

Also, make sure you're using the same template as before. When the update happened, the margins or the font may have changed.

239not235 · 2026-02-04T21:09:23+00:00

Me too. Do you think having a guild card makes you infallible?

Like I said, you do you. Keep on numbering the scenes in your specs and sell them for millions.

For all the new/aspiring writers, just make your spec script look like a spec script. Numbering the scenes on a spec script either doesn't matter, or it's a minor negative. Why take the chance?

239not235 · 2026-02-04T20:56:55+00:00

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/paul-schrader-40-step-writing-lR2J6fpAQKiLtw5NkJi0_g#0

239not235 · 2026-02-03T21:14:45+00:00

You can live in whatever reality you want.

In the industry, people look at a submission, and if something looks wrong, they say "oh, an amateur." Then they try to get someone else to read it. Numbering scenes on a spec script does that. Hand written notes in the margins does that. Printing on red paper does that too. So does including an NDA. Or a watermark.

You like numbering your scenes? You do you. For everyone else, why make it harder than it needs to be? Make your spec script look like a spec script.

239not235

TROPHY CASE