ScriptMonster.co.uk

If you read my first blog post about the free application Celtx, I was hoping that it would get feature parity with Final Draft within a year, sadly that never happened, and a few years later Final Draft (and Movie Magic) are still slightly ahead in features. Though you have to take into account Celtx does way more than simply script formatting, acting as a one stop pre-production suite, so to bemoan the slow development of the screenwriting aspect is perhaps a little unfair. Either way, slowly but surely Celtx is getting there, and I’m sure it will eventually get there, when you consider how many years it was between new versions of FD and MM.

The newest version of Celtx is out, with the biggest new feature for screenwriters probably being revision tracking.

Revision Mode can be used to lock scene numbers while editing a script. You can also track changes using colour coded edits.

• Toolbar – a new toolbar will appear when you are in the Revision Mode
• R+ Increments – ability to increment revisions with one click
• Rev Label – you can assign any name to the Revision
• Colour Edits – edits in Revision Mode can be colour coded
• Scene Numbers – nested Locked Scene numbering that supports Hollywood (A/B), Numeric (1.2.1), or create your own template.
• Scene Fixer – provides an easy way to manually fix any scene numbers
• Display Marks – choose between ‘All Marks’, ‘Current’, or ‘Hide’ to track colour edits
• Omit Scenes – omit any scene
• Reset – resets the script back to standard editing mode

Celtx might not yet be the best screenwriting application money can buy, but when you consider it is free and gets the job done just fine, it’s hard to knock it for anyone who doesn’t wanna invest £165 in an application just to write scripts.

You can read about all the new features in 2.5 here.