Screenplay Markdown Progress
Sunday, August 14, 2011 at 2:31PM The response to my Screenplay Markdown post has been wonderful. It’s a bit hard to follow the progress by reading the blog page, so here’s a brief recap.
I wrote about my recently discovered joy of working with plain text and Markdown, and that I’d concluded that a simple text file would not be such a bad way to begin work on a screenplay, given that Final Draft and many other screenwriting apps do a fine job of interpolating proper formatting from imported plain text documents.
Turned out I was not the only person to consider this, and some commenters called my attention to other plain-text-to-screenplay projects (post update 1).
This led to speculation about a simple syntax that would account for the few things not supported by plain text import/export, such as emphasis, dual dialog, title pages and and centered text.
This led to me going bananas and writing up a proposal for a plain-text screenplay format called SPMD (update 2), and creating a video mockup of how an app like Byword might soft-preview your screenplay formatting while you work (update 3).
The Byword guys tweeted about the video and got some excited responses from their followers.
Kent Tessman, creator of the Fade In screenwriting software (and its iOS companion, which I just learned of), wrote a detailed reply on his own blog. Other developers have emailed me privately and shared their valuable thoughts.
This has resulted in some changes to the spec, and to some real hope on my part that SPMD might becomes something useful someday. So if you’re at all interested, please take a look at the proposal, download the sample files, and let us know your thoughts.
Reader Comments (10)
Have you experimented with Adobe Story?
It imports and does the mark up with text files pretty well, plus it gives you all the production reports and breakdowns in a simple straightforward way. More importantly, once you're in Adobe Story, you can just go off and write, and forget about formatting and mark ups, etc. The App only allows viewing, methinks. I don't think it holds your script hostage within a proprietary file, though.
Story is wonderful, as I mentioned in a comment on the OP. But until they get the mobile part working, it doesn't meet the needs addressed by SMPD. Maybe I can convince Adobe to make Story SPMD compatible!
Hi Stu
the "Sample files" zip won't open - "Invalid archive".
Is there a Final Draft file of the screenplay in the zip? So I can compare the outputs, Markdown vs Final Draft
Oops, sorry Anders — please try the link again.
But take note — there's no way to "compare the outputs" just yet, as there is no SPMD interpreter that I know of yet! Markdown itself does not parse SPMD. It's a completely separate syntax.
Thanks Stu.
Sorry I was unclear when I said "outputs", what I meant was the the files - 1. SPMD text file, 2. Farmated PDF and 3. Finaldraft file. And they where all there - Thanks.
In a first glance I se that Finaldraft use a XML format so that mean the it would be possible to program a converter and interprenter. But as far as I can se at this moment the Finaldraft file contains more information than that is possible to put in the SPMD file as the specification is at this moment.
This means that we will loos information going forth and back between Finaldraft and SPMD.
How do you se the workflow/process in this context?
I see SPMD as useful for the initial, purely creative writing phase of a screenplay. Eventually I imagine one would export to FDX and then migrate to whichever screenplay application offered the production features they required.
Dos that mean you don't want tog go back again from Finaldraft to SPMD - that would make it much simpler?
FDX to SPMD would be lossy, but useful nonetheless. SPMD to Final Draft would be near lossless (synopses and sections would come in as notes), and far more common.
I don't expect the lossiness of converting from screenwriting software (Final Draft if that's your thing) to SPMD would be much of an issue. By the time you're doing things in the software that would be lost by the conversion -- locking pages, omitting scenes, managing revisions -- I can't imagine you're going to be doing it on your phone.
Agreed.