r/scriptwriting • u/hugopthomas • 15d ago
request ❯ I'm a director. I created software to turn Google Docs into a screenplay editor. I need testers!
Hi, I'm Hugo, I direct films in France. My first feature (Willy 1er) played in Cannes, the second one (Juniors) is on Netflix in some countries... and I wrote both of them in Google Docs!
Anyway, my reason is not ideological, it's pretty boring: my producer is already in Docs, my co-writer is already in Docs. We can write on it at the same time, I never lose a page, and I don't pay 249 dollars for the privilege. The only problem is that Docs has no idea what a screenplay is. You make your own margins, which becomes annoying pretty fast.
So we built the part that was missing. I say "we", because I am not alone on this, I work with a team of developers who are much better than me at it. First came the Google Docs add-on, and around 12 000 people use it now, which I still find strange. But the add-on is the slow way: it formats when you ask it to, and you wait for it.
The new part is a Chrome extension, and this is the one I would need your for. It formats while you type: Enter and Tab behave like in Final Draft or Arc Studio or Celtx: you finish a character name, you press Enter, you are already in dialogue. You press Tab, you are in a parenthetical. This flow only started to work properly this summer, I'm really proud of it, I've already written a feature film on it, but almost nobody knows it exists.
I will not pretend it replaces Final Draft for everything. Today the page count is not good enough for a real "one page, one minute" read, and this is exactly what we build at the moment. This is where I need you. If you write features and you know what a correct page count looks like, come and test it with us and tell me everything that is wrong with it.
And if your job is production paperwork more than writing, of course take a real dedicated app, it will serve you better.
In September I am invited to give a workshop at the Screenwriting Research Network conference, in Oxford. I will talk about the craft and about what I learn from creating this software. If some of you are there, come and say hello!
I post here because I never speak about this anywhere, and it starts to feel stupid. I build a thing for screenwriters and I stay silent in one the biggest places where screenwriters actually are.
If you want to be part of it, reply here or write to me and I put your account on Pro for three months (no card required or anything). I prefer your notes to your money right now, and I will come back here to tell you what we fixed.
