Here you can see all the different elements. Go to the ‘Format’ tab in the ribbon, find ‘Element Settings’ and a second window will spring up. Say you wanted Final Draft to automatically underline all ‘Scene Headings’ in this project. This is a quick and easy way to pre-set the styles of your elements-that way you don’t have to bother manually changing them! Here’s an example of all three alterations: Just highlight the text you want altered, then click one of the style buttons. There’s ‘Bold’, ‘Italics’ and ‘Underline’. These are the same features you would find in most other writing software. If you want to return to your screenplay you can simply press the ‘x’ or minimize button at the top right of the screen to return, and Final Draft will save that title page for when you want to export or print your project. Clicking on that will open up this page:įrom here you can create the title page of your project to the industry standard. Still in the Script Elements section is the ‘Title Page’ button.

Of course, every screenplay needs a title page, and Final Draft has got your back.

Very simple to navigate, and only gets easier the more you use it. So with all these elements, you have everything you need to write your scenes. (It also does the same with the scene headings and transitions so keep an eye out for that.) So if you have already entered a character into your scene, instead of writing out that character’s name every time they say some dialogue, Final Draft will predict it for you and give you the option to select whichever character you want. Pressing tab will often do the same thing-so play around with it!īut you can always click the elements bar to manually change from element to element.įinal Draft also does a great thing which is to predict what you are going to do. Pressing enter will change you automatically from element to element (for example, ‘Scene Heading’ to ‘Action’).

Here’s where Final Draft proves its intuitiveness. (The elements bar will also always let you know which element you are currently using.) The blank page will automatically start with the ‘Scene Heading’ so you can start right away. As you can see in the example below, the elements bar has a pre-set list of all the elements that make up a screenplay, the main few being ‘Scene Heading’, ‘Action’, ‘Character’, ‘Parenthetical’ and ‘Dialogue’. These are the main features you’ll be using to write your screenplay. If you can navigate these, you’ve pretty much mastered Final Draft. Now, once you’ve downloaded and launched the software, the 3 core tools you’ll need to use in Final Draft are: Ready to start writing your first screenplay? Or maybe just doing a school project? Final Draft is an intuitive and helpful program to use-once you know the basics.įirst you’ll need to buy and install the software, so if you need any help with that, click HERE for a comprehensive walk-through.

Final draft 9 user guide