Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Final Draft 12's Beat Board, Outline, and Script Insertion Function

 
You that follow the Moral Premise know I'm sort of a Story Structure freak. But then my Story and Script consulting clients encourage me. I have been continuously helping writers structure their screenplays, scripts, and novels since 2007... and I still enjoy it. (But then I'm being paid to do it. THANK YOU.) 

If you've rented or purchased lessons from my on-line Storycraft Training you also know how much I rely diagrams (graphic metaphors) for beating out a story and structuring it properly so it will emotionally connect with audiences. 

Over time I've come up with some fairly simply ways of beating out stories (on paper or electronic cards) and then copy-pasting the content of those cards into Final Draft for writing. It has worked well. 

Recently, Final Draft released Version 12 with an updated Beat Board, Outline, and Script Insertion Function that is very exciting. I've spent some time with it, and have begun to turn some of my recent clients onto its functionality. I'm not sure how "smooth" it works on PC's, but I'm on a Power Mac, and in my environment it has a ways to go so the operation and functionality are smooth and easy to use. But the ideas are very good, and I want to encourage writers to encourage Final Draft to keep working on this. 

So, as part of a new addition to my on-line Storycraft Training series, Lesson 11 - Visualizing Story Structure, I included a short video to introduce writers to what Final Draft is doing. You will find it below. I've used a bit of editing (Final Cut) to make this look smoother operating than it currently is, but with some encouragement I hope they get it polished. Please write Final Draft via Feedback and encourage them.

Here's the video.

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