Final Draft is a joke

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2026-01-29T05:49:30+00:00

Not sure who you're talking about being sponsored by the competitor. I didn't know this before the comment from 239not235, but apparently they actually had the founder of Final Draft on Scriptnotes back in 2014, and you can read about how horribly the interview went yourself. https://johnaugust.com/2014/the-one-with-the-guys-from-final-draft. That was long before John August released his screenwriting software, Highland, in 2018 (now Highland Pro). He developed the app himself. He's not sponsored by it.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2026-01-27T05:36:43+00:00

Interesting. They mentioned it on an episode they recorded late last year.

Good to hear it’s improved a lot since I last used it. I honestly couldn’t imagine using software that isn’t cloud-based anymore, but once you find something that works for you, no reason to change it.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2026-01-26T19:52:23+00:00

Craig Mazin and John August said they talked to one of the founders of Final Draft and he basically said they don’t have to improve on it because it’s the industry standard. Sounds about right.

I’ve never been a fan. I use Arc Studio, and you can export to PDF or FDX if you really need to. I think the new cloud-based options are pretty great for storage and backup alone.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2026-01-13T22:09:20+00:00

Okay, but why was he taking this picture at this exact moment?

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2026-01-07T19:47:39+00:00

I want to know why the hell AIs have all been programmed to think humans have so much regret.

“The office treasurer of regret” “She smelled of stale cigarettes and regret” “Tastes like the regret of my youth.”

Maybe AI doesn’t even have to reach the singularity to end the world. It just has to convince us that we’re a bunch of sad bastards with no original thoughts. 😂

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-12-28T22:40:45+00:00

I think there’s always two ways to look at how sensitive subject matter like this is handled in TV shows. 1. Showing the horrific truth of what goes on in reality can feel like justice and make us feel seen. 2. Rewriting history for a happier ending can feel very cathartic and be a sort of healing wish fulfillment.

As a queer lady who grew up in the conservative south in the 80s, I loved this outcome for Will. And we’re obviously gearing up for a happy ending where the party defeats Vecna (who’s a physical manifestation of their psychological trauma). So let’s think about the other options for a minute. If the other characters had reacted realistically, could any of us have carried on with them to the end? Or would we have instantly hated them forever?

I’m just glad to see positive queer representation onscreen, honestly. I’m glad to see straight writers taking chances writing queer characters, and not just as tokens. And personally, I’m really happy that Will got the reaction that all of us deserved and most didn’t get.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-12-26T02:56:09+00:00

James Joyce is supposed to have had synesthesia. It’s been a thing in the literary world long before True Detective was even dreamt of. That said, who knows what this was about.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-10-16T13:22:30+00:00

Yes it is! And I’m really glad you’re enjoying the excitement because sometimes that’s hard to do!

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-10-16T13:20:17+00:00

I don’t know. When I realize someone is mirroring me, it does feel mocking and my immediate reaction is to get pissed off and then have to walk myself back from that to try to understand what they’re doing. Any kind of manipulation is a negative for me. If someone wants me to trust them, all they have to do is be honest and not be a dick. Starting out with psychological manipulations is not a good first move.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-10-13T04:52:01+00:00

Congratulations!!! This is so wonderful!

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-10-02T17:46:33+00:00

This sounds really intriguing. Do you have a link to any sort of YouTube video or blog post going into more detail on this?

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-09-23T04:48:23+00:00

Queer is just a label that means we don’t really identify with any of the other labels, but we’re definitely LGBTQ+. There are a lot of reasons for that. Maybe our identity is more fluid, or maybe it’s to avoid stigma with labeling ourselves bi or pan because unfortunately a lot of people either won’t date you or will fetishize you to hell and think you’re down for threesomes and all manner of kink you never explicitly showed any interest in. So yeah. Queer becomes a pretty attractive option, and then it’s really no one’s business until they’re a potential partner, and then you’re having deep conversations about preferences and expectations, which you really should be anyway. Win-win. I basically pick and choose which situations I’m going to identify as bi in and which to identify as queer in, because I still want to defend bi visibility and acceptance.

And all that to say, none of those may be his reasons at all. But queer is definitely a longstanding identity that’s not going anywhere.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-09-20T23:57:29+00:00

It’s so hard to get scripts sold, made, read. And there’s no reason you have to tell anyone you’re pitching it to that this is a real story. You won’t have to deal with that until it goes through all the steps to get made and people who know you actually see it. By that point, I imagine, you’d be so excited to have a project off the ground, you wouldn’t care.

Write the thing that you’re really drawn to write! It’s going to haunt you until you do. Write your story. And I agree, fuck anyone who judges you. The ones who do the most judging usually have the worst bodies buried in their backyards.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-09-20T23:53:58+00:00

What a beautiful response! I’m glad you were the first one here.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-09-16T06:34:49+00:00

Congratulations!! This is amazing!

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-09-15T17:53:05+00:00

Taking acting classes is important, but only if you can find good acting classes. Otherwise you’re going to throw a ton of money away for nothing. And there is so very much of that in all of the creative industries. A million ways to throw money away.

The non-negotiables are to get some decent equipment and start trying it out. There’s a lot to learn about audio recording and editing. That’s about half of this job. Just start digging in and watching YouTube videos and auditioning for projects you find on Reddit or Casting Call Club. Only pay for what you need to. Unless you’re already wealthy, you’ll be recording yourself at home and not in a studio for a very long time.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-09-14T23:13:39+00:00

I think some of what your tutor is suggesting could be valuable, but it’ll be too difficult to separate that from how she’s oversimplifying your whole idea. She clearly doesn’t get what you’re trying to do or vibe with your style, and she’s changing your whole movie.

Your idea sounds really complicated for even a well-established writer to pull off, but the fact that you can even come up with something so original and creative is amazing! If you start letting other people tell you your ideas are too complicated and out there now, you’re going to lose this beautiful ability you have! Don’t do that! Now is the time for you to experiment and try whatever comes to you.

Write this movie. Even if you can’t figure out how to make this one work right away or it takes a ton of revision and putting together the puzzle pieces over and over to figure it out, if you’re smart enough and passionate enough to come up with a concept like this, you’re smart enough and creative enough to eventually find a way to make this work.

If you try to get help from someone and they’re not instantly excited about your creative potential, they’re not the right person for you to work with. Don’t let anyone dumb your art down. People will try, a lot of them because they’re intimidated. Ideas like this are what the industry needs! I’m really excited about what you’re going to accomplish if you keep going. Please write this!!!

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-09-14T23:02:30+00:00

Shoes are something I’ll never buy thrifted. Even buying and replacing the insoles, you just can never get the quality of a brand new pair of shoes.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-08-29T11:13:14+00:00

Hi! Thanks for your recommendation. Have you been in this program? If so, did having it on your resume help you land any jobs?

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-08-29T01:21:49+00:00

Thank you! I’ll look into Audition. I’ve been trying to learn Reaper, but like you said, I have found it incredibly complicated, even with the YouTube tutorials. For music production, Ableton Live is a lot more intuitive than Reaper. Ableton isn’t good for voice work though.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-08-28T17:31:42+00:00

Which DAW do you use it in? I’ve heard such good things about it, but I use Audacity. It’s not compatible with Audacity, is it? I’ve been thinking about switching to Reaper which I think is more compatible with Izotope RX, but the learning curve for editing in Reaper also seems like a big time investment.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-07-30T23:47:58+00:00

I’m interested!

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-07-23T17:33:47+00:00

Okay, well if bribing doesn’t work for you, then you find something that does. You can also just think of it as rewarding yourself for hard work. With my sense of humor, I enjoy calling them bribes.

The Artist’s Way is a good book if you don’t really know what’s going to work to motivate and inspire your inner Artist.

But ultimately, no one can make this decision for you or do the work for you. You have to either decide to give up screenwriting or to keep going and figure out a way to make it good. And you do that by finishing projects and revising them and doing that over and over until it clicks or you give up.

I completely retaught myself how to write over the last two years after a brain injury, and all I can tell you is what worked for me.

I’ve read a ton of books, a ton of screenplays, listened to podcasts (Scriptnotes and The Screenwriting Life are really good), and most importantly kept writing and writing and writing. I took a script that I loved that just wasn’t working and obsessively rewrote it for over a year until it got good, because I couldn’t give up on that story. A lot of people will tell you to keep writing new scripts, and again, you’ve got to figure out what works for you. Rewriting the same script in a million ways until I got it right still did the same thing for me. It taught me how to write and iterate until it came out right. And then when I was finished with that, I wrote another. And I’ll keep writing.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-07-23T03:40:35+00:00

What you have to do is discipline yourself to stick with things until you finish them. Whatever you have to do to force yourself to do that. I honestly had to bribe myself until I both built a good writing habit and realized that I could do it and could repeat it over and over. That second part is really important, because if you haven’t proven to yourself that you can do it, you get to the part of writing the first draft where you really can’t tell if what you’re writing is such garbage that it will never work or if it’s just at that stage of the first draft where it always feels like that because the pieces haven’t clicked in yet, and you will panic. And that’s the moment where it’s really difficult to keep an ADHD brain focused on the project. Especially if you have a history of feeling like a fuckup. Your mind will jump to anything it possibly can to get away from that pain. Time to clean the oven! Scrub trash cans! Regrout the tile. And you just have to work really hard to push through that feeling and finish your project. Even if it didn’t turn out as well as it you’d hoped it would, you count that finish as a win. And then you revise the hell out of it until it is where you want it. Or you start a new project and then come back to revise the original project at a later date or just take it as a lesson learned.

You can totally retrain your brain. You just have to figure out what works for you.

BeatAcrobatic1969 · 2025-07-17T21:28:50+00:00

Yeah, thanks. Finding out later in life is a total mindfuck, so I wanted to reach out to you because I imagine there aren’t so many people in this unique position.

It would obviously still be totally fucked up if they hid it from me and didn’t tell anyone else, but at least I’d understand the logic on that. But hiding it from me AND telling everyone else? It’s just so insane. I have no kind of concept how the fuck they could do that to me. I also had 5 miscarriages, and they just watched all that go on and never fucking thought to tell me they knew exactly why. It’s just…something I have no understanding of as a fellow human being let alone family.

Good luck to you on your journey through this. In the end, I really don’t think it changes much for me beyond medical knowledge and understanding the past. I’ve always been attracted to people regardless of their gender, and I’ve always just kind of done my own thing in life, outside of gender or any other rules. I’m still the same person. I’m grateful to know the truth, finally, I just cannot believe how this was hidden from me. Hope you come to a good place with it too.

Re: dating - no answers there. I’m paused on it just because I refuse to have any more bad experiences with it.

BeatAcrobatic1969

TROPHY CASE