I continue to resist the assumption that writers of screenplays need radically different tools than writers of other forms. The main issue is disconnecting the task of writing from the task of layout design which we foolishly used WYSIWYG tools to conflate decades ago. In general, a tool that allows good research tracking and cross-reference (research for non-fiction, character arcs/plotlines for fiction, blocking and scenes for scriptwriting) with something that lets the writer write without getting in the way is a much better fit, and emacs excels at this. With the bonus of I can make it do what I want it to do, at any scale of complexity. Output formatting is a job for computers, not writers.
A reason writers of screenplays feel a need for radically different tools is that layout is functional rather than merely aesthetic for most screenplay formats. Most screenwriting tools are like programmer's tools: syntax-highlighters, linters, autocompleters.
The screenplay syntax is effectively the world's weirdest Python-like whitespace oriented language form. There is so much required whitespace for very functional reasons going back more than a century in some places, and people get really upset if the margins are wrong (the screenwriting equivalent of PEP-8 isn't followed), because it breaks all sorts of conventions such as the infamous "a page of screenplay should be about a minute of screen time".
Yeah there are all sorts of things people may not consider. Like I doubt the emacs plugin can lock pages, which totally rules it out for production.
Once you’re in production you need to freeze page numbers, or you’d wind up with chaos. If the DP, producer and AD are talking about page 32, they need to know they’re talking about the same thing. Subsequent revisions just slot new pages into the script. If you add text to page 32, it doesn’t spill over to page 33 and change the numbering of the whole script. Instead you add page 32a, and every page that isn’t edited stays the same. An editor that can’t do that might be fine for personal work or first drafts, but it would never be adopted professionally.
Page locking is important, but it only happens at the very very end of the screenwriting process. I've proposed a slight addition to the Fountain syntax to allow forced page numbers on inserted page breaks, which would effectively allow page locking. Use this in conjunction with version control and you'd have everything you need for production.
I’ve used both spacemacs (in org-mode with some custom functions) and scrivener to good effect for fiction, but I’m not completely convinced for screenwriting. In a screenplay the layout isn’t design, it’s a very specific format. Final draft actually does the opposite of the complaint about WYSIWYG editors: it handles the formatting automatically and correctly, so you can just write without thinking about it. We may enjoy tinkering with editors, but the eloi just want to get work done.
The other problem is more of a social one, and I guess isn’t actually relevant for most people writing screenplays, but at the professional level you’ll be expected to use final draft, if only because everyone else does.
command, which exports to Final Draft's native format.
However, exporting functions are scheduled to be removed in the next version. When that happens, you can simply create a free account on https://writerduet.com/ to perform the conversion.
I continue to resist the assumption that writers of screenplays need radically different tools than writers of other forms. The main issue is disconnecting the task of writing from the task of layout design which we foolishly used WYSIWYG tools to conflate decades ago. In general, a tool that allows good research tracking and cross-reference (research for non-fiction, character arcs/plotlines for fiction, blocking and scenes for scriptwriting) with something that lets the writer write without getting in the way is a much better fit, and emacs excels at this. With the bonus of I can make it do what I want it to do, at any scale of complexity. Output formatting is a job for computers, not writers.