Slugline App Reviews

RIP Final draft. A screenplay tool written by screenplay writers. Up to date. Intelligent. Sensible. Nice to sit with for hours. Good sync. No crashes. Don’t know why it’s taken so long, but at least it’s here. Wish I could get the forty bucks Final Draft iPad app tricked me out of, but at least these guys got my next forty. Five stars all round.

This is a good app however I do not understand how to use it. I kind of get it now, but I still don’t completely understand it. This is my first time writing screenplay and I don’t really know the correct format. When I read the description, it was my understanding that this app would put my writing into correct format automatically. Overall, this is a great app if you know the proper format for a movie script. If you are just starting, you may want to learn the proper format and then start to use this app.

If simplicity and accesibility is what you appreciate, this is an excellent option for screenwriting, and by far my personal favorite.

This is fantastic. Finnaly "screwdriver with you can directly screw" without using manual and clicking tens of buttons to get obvious. Final Draft is steam engine compare with this bueaty. Congratulation!

I’m a fiction writer, not a screenwriter. But I LOVE using Slugline to draft my stories. Why? Minimalism: It’s just a white page, your text, and an optional outline on the left that you can easily remove (Ctrl-3). It’s so soothing to type on an interface like this! I love to use it in full screen mode. Also, I just love the font. It’s big and bold and basic, which makes drafting so much less intimidating for some reason. Just Type: To access the key features (at least the ones that I use - see below), all you have to do is type a character or two or use a keyboard shortcut. This gives the user experience a quick, easy, and integrated feeling to it. The software seems to just slide out of the way and let you dive right into your writing. Headings: it’s so easy to block out my scenes with headings and subheadings, laying out the scene beats easily. Synopses: my favorite feature is the ability to include visually subtle synopses of each scene or scene beat right there in the text simply by typing an “=“ and then the synopsis text. Outline: Man oh man alive! Having the outline on the left side of the page is so useful. It makes it easy to just get the high level view of your story. And you can click any item to quickly navigate there. Notes: I don’t really use notes as much (yet), but I love that all you have to do to create a note, which appears right in the text (which I personally much prefer to Word’s or Scrivener’s comments, which happen outside the text), is type “[[“ and you’re writing a note. The note is then highlighted in yellow, which isn’t as nice when you want to put in a note while you’re writing your draft (pretty loud = pretty distracting), but it’s great for when you’re going back over and reviewing what you’ve written and you want to put in a note about something you want to change or add later (pretty loud = easy to find later). To boot, if you choose to include notes in your outline, you can quickly scan and jump to any note in your document. Again, I don’t use Slugline for screenwriting, just for fiction writing. The one downside is that you can’t indent. But I actually don’t mind this, because when I draft I type webstyle paragraphs anyway. But I can see how this would be a deterant for other fiction writers. Really, words cannot express the joy of using Slugline. It is truly a one-of-a-kind, amazing writing software!

I used to use Final Draft, then I started reading more into the fountain format and that got me interested in giving it a shot. I’m not sure about the other platforms, but Slugline is pretty amazing. I still do most stuff manually. I make my notes, beat cards, outlines…everything I do manually. With the outlining and comment system, I am able to put a lot of that directly onto the page. This allows me to mark out my structure, comment, omit parts of text (instead of saving, starting a new draft), and a ton of other useful, but inobtrusive, functions. The open source application, is, in my opinion, the future of screenwriting. I believe this is the best platform to learn fountain, and put it to use. Includes all the modern features you would want like Courier Prime options, PDF exports, modern approaches to writing direction are extremely simple, wonderfully done imports. I copied text directly from Final Draft, dropped it into Slugline, and had 40 pages formatted perfectly in about 15 minutes—after I had gotten the hang of the fountain language. In short, couldn’t recommend this product more and I have zero doubt fountain, and Slugline, will change some of the ways that even Final Draft approaches the UI. It’s quickly becoming a virtual spiral, for me, in it’s malleability. Buy this! Final Draft is a waste of cash, especially for you younger screenwriters!

At the earliest stage of every project, I just want to write. I don’t want to be distracted by decisions about scheduling, casting, shotlisting, etc. I want an uncluttered environment to just write. And that’s what this program is for. It’s been said before, but it’s worth stating again—the beauty of this program is its obsessive simplicity. It exists for one purpose: to write. This isn’t a catch-all writing/preproduction/scheduling/etc. program, and it’s not trying to be. And that’s exactly why it’s great. Writing in plain-text is intuitive. You learn a couple of tricks (“." to write non-standard scene headings, “>" to write a non-standard transition) and you’re good to go. PDF export is good, but could use one improvement: an export option to include comments and notes. As of right now, they are only visible to me, not the multiple other people I collaborate with who don’t use screenwriting software. Still a great program I regret ignoring before. After frustration using Celtx, Adobe Story, etc., this is the winner for me.

This is, hands down, my favorite screenwriting app. Simple, elegant, easy to use. You stop focusing on formatting and features and instead focus entirely on writing. Buy it.

This app is for WRITING Screenplays. Period. It also very conventiently allows you to Outline in a smart and seamless way. This is all you’ll need as a screenwriter. Forget the ‘extras’ of other more (way more) expensive apps. Sometimes less is more and in the case of Slugline, it REALLY is. The interface is beautiful, and neutral, the writing part is perfectly intuitive (CAPS becomes character, int turns to INT. , etc.) and having the option to later view and edit your sceenplay or scenes in any text editor (Slugline uses Fountain which is a markup language for screenplays) is another one of the reasons for never looking back. (and a good new way to collaborate) If you want to write a screenplay, look no further (Full screen mode is also very useful for concentration) and if you’re still looking into the PRODUCTION features of other apps, you can always convert your beautifully written Fountain text into another format (such as FDX) and continue on to the production part of your screenplay. But really, use this for the writing part. You won’t regret it.

Seriously, check out the preference panel. It alone is worth five stars.

I never leave reviews in the Mac App store for a reason: it takes time. Aside from that, I’m not one to get excited about a program I use. In this case, I’ll make an exception. By far, this program has blown me away at it’s simplicity, minimalistic design and ease of use. It is the definition of user intuitive. I love writing on it, which is helpful since I am writing a television series pilot using it. If you aren’t sure about paying for it, as I wasn’t at first, they have a free trial version on their website. Download it. Write with it. I guarantee you’ll consider getting it. I can’t imagine writing a script without it now. You may be forced to use FINAL DRAFT at the end of your scripts journey to television or film, but for the rest of that journey leading there, Slugline is my program of choice, bar none.

I switched from Final Draft to Highland about a year ago but I needed something more robust than Highland and Slugline really addressed my needs -WYSIWYG typing and notes/outlining. It’s also really cool to be able to omit (hide) sections without deleting them. Fantastic witing app!

I’ve experimented with just about every screenwriting program available, and I can say unequivocally that Slugline is the app I keep coming back to. It’s a full featured screenwriting program, but it doesn’t bog you down with features that will probably never use. It’s for writing, plain and simple, and it’s clean, easy to navigate interface is just about the best thing you could hope. I used to be a hardcore Final Draft user, but now Slugline coupled with Highland is how I roll.

The good: Like writing in Markdown, writing in Fountain is fabulous. If you are already in the tank on MD, you will love writing in Fountain, too. The app is beautifully executed and mostly works as advertised. The automatic formatting is great, the auto-completions for scene locations and character names are also great, and overall the app feels well built. The bad: While it displays your outline, you cannot do anything with the outline other than use it to navigate. There is no drag-and-drop reordering of scenes as in Logline, which is a pretty big oversight as it seems like an obvious feature. No character reports or dialogue review functions as with Logline or Fade In, same with location reports. In other words, it’s truly minimal. Overly so.

It’s a great app if you’re into fountain.io, probably the best. That being said, I’d love to see a nightmode in the future.

I have been using Final Draft for ten years or more. I have always found it to be clunky and some times slow and awkward and full of stuff I don’t usually need. But, there was nothing much else and it did what I needed for the most part. One day I discovered Highland and then quickly discovered Slugline after that. Slugline has some of the nice WSIWIG features of Final Draft without the overhead and annoyances. Now, when I am just starting out on something, I like Highland because I can forgo all the nonsense and just write. But, I like Slugline for a few more features when I start rewriting. Since I spent more time rewriting, I find I am using Sluglne most of the time. For the most part, I find Slugline to work as advertised. It does occasionally baffle me. I have had some odd things occur which I cannot always reproduce. I’ve sent notes to the developer and he has always responded. So, things are being worked on. I give it an “it’s good.” It’s better than FD and doesn’t have the horrific and draconian registration requirements they have. xtra 1/2 star for that!

I’ve tried/used them all - from Final Draft, Screenplay, Movie Draft, etc. etc. - this is the best app to write my scripts easily, anywhere, anytime.

I’m a screenwriter, and this is the best. Don’t look anywhere else.

Tremendous app! The answer to screenwriting is this application. Another perk of the twenty-first century! Slugline organizes and formats the script for you effortlessly. It’s format abides by standard screenplay conventions -- it takes care of spacing, indentations, page numbers, contemporary fonts, the cover page, every element of a screenplay. Worth the money if you’re serious about producing a script.

I’m required to take a scriptwriting course for my degree, and Celtx is completly online which is inconvenient and clunky, Celtx’s mac app is clunky and isin’t reviewed well because of bugs. It’s clean and does exactly what you need it to do. Believe me, it does it VERY well too. The way the Fountian screenwriting format works is ever so slightly odd to get used to, but as soon as I did a day later I realized just how easy Fountian and this app made screenwriting. All the writing is done by you, and Slugline does the formatting just by getting used to what you’re typing. If you need to scriptwrite, this app is fantastic for the price. Sure, there is the more expensive alternatives like Final Draft, etc. but this is really a steal for the price. I wasn’t gifted or paid do write this review, it’s just so efficent I decided it needs more attention.