Excerpted from Writers Digest, April 1997

"SCRIPT WIZARD"

by Chris Meeks

If you're ... conversant with Microsoft Word, adjusting margins and working with styles and other things are already familiar...I must say that Script Wizard is very easy to learn and use for writers who just want to use Microsoft Word to write draft scripts. It has built-in formats for one of the widest variety of script formats I found: feature, TV movie, stage play, sitcom, daytime soap, radio, variety, A V, storyboard, custom, etc. Some of these formats make extensive use of Word's table feature to create multicolumn scripts. The storyboard format would work for an interactive project.

The Script Wizard installation process is well documented and easy to run. It copies the Word templates for the various script formats (screenplay, tape, etc.) into the Word template area on your hard drive. You access the program by opening Word, selecting "File New" from the menu and choosing the template for the format you want to use.

The Word toolbars have been modified to include buttons for just about everything--all the line types, adding extensions to character names, numbering the script, etc. The Format Editor, where you specify the margins and format of the script line types, is very easy to use and totally point-and-click.

To add character names, select the characters menu item and click "Add Item." You are given a screen where you type the character's name and assign a key combination (usually the [CTRL] key and the first letter of the name). Thereafter, the name appears in a "speaker" box on the screen. You can put the name in the script by clicking on the name in the list, by using the key combination, or by choosing the characters pulldown menu and selecting the name on that list. This program does not include the capability to type the first letter of the name and have the full name appear.

...Once you paginate the script, Script Wizard creates a printing file and stores it on your hard disk with a name that has the first 7 letters of the name you gave it, followed by an "@" and the .doc extension. You may edit the printing file to make minor changes, but most work must he done in the working file until you make formal revisions. If you need to make revisions and generate A pages, there is a procedure for creating a revision file from the printing file.

...Script Wizard handles the first level of revision scene numbers well. However, the basic package does not mark revisions in the traditional way. Rather than marking changes with the usual "(X)" in the right margin, Script Wizard uses the built-in Word revision feature. This results in changes being marked with "I" (vertical lines) in the right margins. There is also no way to mark a changed page when more than a specified number of changes have occurred on that page. I have talked to some production companies where this is not a problem. Other people will object to changing tradition in these ways. [Recently, the vendor has provided ... a version of the package that will mark revisions with the standard (X)].

...After the first set of revisions, Script Wizard becomes less effective in scene numbering correctly. If you have enough knowledge of macros, you can do what one production staffer I know did--revise some macros and write some of your own so that the program will more exactly match the standards your company wants to use.

...If you are familiar with Microsoft Word and comfortable with some of its advanced features, and you do not need to be able to handle complex revisions, consider using Script Wizard. It will let you write your scripts in the same word processor you use for everything else, so you won't have to learn or work with two programs.