Fountain for Screenwriters

Screenwriter John August released the “Fountain” spec for writing screenplays in plain text.  In short, it’s fantastic.

Fountain is based on Markdown a syntax for formatting text documents.  I never really got into Markdown, but most if not ALL of my lightweight writing apps for the Mac or iOS support it.  

For those of you unfamiliar with screenplay format, it’s weirdly complex, with rules about a character’s name being centered and dialogue to be offset from that location (this explanation doesn’t do it justice, but suffice to say there are entire BOOKS about screenplay structure.)

The idea is that you write using Fountan’s “rules” and the output is very easily imported into professional screenwriting applications such as Final Draft.

What I find super interesting about this is that CONCEPTUALLY it addresses the need to occasionally write in screenplay format without the appropriate tools nearby, whether that’s on your phone or on a piece of paper. 

I occasionally find myself taking notes about a script on a pad of paper.  Those notes sometimes drift into specific little screenplay bits.  It was always troubling to me exactly HOW to format that work on a handwritten piece of paper.  Do I attempt to imitate screenplay structure with center formatting and what not?  The answer, it seems is NO.  Using Fountain as a guide, we now know how to universally format screenplays when not inside professional screenplay application.  Even when you’re writing on paper.

It got me thinking about OTHER professional formats (video editing…?) that could use a lightweight format for content creation.  Imagine a way of preliminarily cutting a video without needing to be inside a resource heavy video editing application…

Anyway, check out Fountain.  It’s really great.