An excerpt from the best-selling (and only) guide to script coordinating on Amazon, "Everything Sucks And I Hate Everyone: The Complete Guide To Script Coordinating".
The Pilot
"ND hilarious anecdote here."
- Pilot, Writer's Draft
Someone significantly richer than you sold a pilot, the writers’ room has convened, and you’ve just been hired.
1. Make sure everyone is on the same version of Final Draft (10, 11, or 12).
Otherwise, this will cause you headaches down the line. Some showrunners still use Final Draft 8, a program that came out over 15 years ago, is super solid, but still had some bugs they never solved before they retired it. The problem is that if you hit any snags, FD Tech Support will tell you they’ve stopped supporting FD 8 and that, if you want help, you need to upgrade.
Your showrunner should be on 10, 11, or 12. And whatever they’re on, you should be, too. The writers and any other support staff using FD should be on it. If you’re on a big network, contact their IT department and ask for their assistance using their bulk-license discount to upgrade your writers. If you’re on a small show without that kind of support, you can contact FD directly and plead for upgrades for your team – they’re usually pretty understanding about it. But everyone really needs to be on the same build to keep major problems from snowballing.
Keep everyone on the same software.
2. Make a Template
Next, what you’ll need to do is read and make a template from the pilot script that you can give to the writers, that way their scripts will visually look the same as the showrunner’s. So if the showrunner wants scene headings in bold, everyone’s scene headings are in bold. If a certain location is referred to by its initials or an acronym, again, that should be in everyone’s scripts.
To make a template, you essentially erase most of a script so that you’re dealing with a one-page FD file. It might say “ACT ONE” up top and then be blank, or it might have some style guidelines written in. I recommend starting with something that’s mostly blank.
Part of you might rebel and wonder what we just accomplished by erasing everything. But while the showrunner was writing his or her pilot, FD was recording the character names and locations used throughout the script. This way, when the writer went to type something out, SmartType would kick in and suggest the writer use the spelling that they’ve used previously. Even though it looks to the writers like you’ve given them a blank document, the program has saved the character names and locations behind the scenes and will start auto-suggesting them as the writer writes. Additionally, almost all (footnote: There are some settings that need to be applied to each script before publishing. Again, we’ll deal with these later) the margins and other unique formatting will reflect the margins used in the pilot script.
While you’re here, go ahead and turn on Mores and Continueds. You’ll find this under Document > Mores and Continueds. Check all the boxes.
This will add scene headers and dialogue footers that most studio execs love. If you turn them on now, then they should be present in every draft. If you try to add them afterwards, it can mess with the page count – so just do it now. Also, open up the title page by hitting Document > Title Page. Your writer probably wrote their initial title page here. DELETE ALL OF THIS. NOW. DO IT. When you distribute scripts, you’ll make your own title page in Word that you’ll keep updated and attach. “But then why am I deleting this?” Because when you send a draft back to your showrunner, there’s a good chance that they’ll open the title page, look at it, see you didn’t update the date, and then think you’ve failed in one of your basic SC duties. You’ll have to be on the defensive and explain that you don’t use Final Draft’s title page option, but it’ll sound like an excuse. If you delete the whole thing now, and your writer opens the title page and sees everything is gone, they’ll probably ask, “Hey, what happened to the title page?” Now, from a neutral place, you can explain that 1. You’ll make the page in Word, because 2.
Word supports graphics (in case the show has a custom logo they want in the title page), 3. Final Draft only recently started to support graphics in 11 but you’re an old soul who’s already established their best practices, and 4. There’s a lot of other information that will eventually make its way between the title page and the first page of the script, and it’s easier to format those in Word. I know, this sounds crazy. But the fact that it’s happened to me on numerous shows tells me it’s better to deal with it on Day 1. Now that you have your kickin’ 1-page FD template, send that out to the writers. Title the file something clear, like: SHOWNAME_TEMPLATEv1_DATEOFCREATION.fdx Character names will change, locations will change, and as they do, you’ll update the template and send that out to folks (we’ll deal with updating those later).
3. Make a style guide
Everyone learned to style their scripts a little differently, and it would behoove you to get started on a style guide now. Go through the pilot and start writing up things you notice that are unique to your showrunner. If this is your first show, this might be hard to spot, but some suggestions are:
Does your showrunner use one or two spaces after a period?
When a character like a SOLDIER is mentioned a second time in a scene, does your showrunner capitalize later appearances (Soldier) like it’s their name, or do they treat it like a regular noun (soldier)?
How ‘bout them ellipses (...) – does your showrunner put a space after them or does the next word immediately proceed?
If a proper noun ends with an S (ATLAS), does your showrunner use the plebian possessive (Atlas’) or do they actually follow the basic laws of apostrophe use (Atlas’s)?
If your show uses flashbacks, how does the showrunner indicate it in the scene heading?
If characters are bilingual, how does your showrunner indicate the change in language? Do they include a translation?
As the writers work on their episodes, you’ll probably get emails or calls that ask, “Hey, when we talk about the Lieutenant, do we call them LEUTENANT or LT. JOHNSON or just JOHNSON?” In theory, SmartType should have the answer, but in case it doesn’t, go back to the pilot, find the answer, and add that to your style guide.
You can email this to the writers if you want or you can keep it to yourself. I recommend just keeping it to yourself, but have it printed out and ready at hand in case someone has a question or wants it emailed.
4. Remember – your boss is the showrunner, not the English language
If your boss insists certain mistakes that violate grammar remain in the script, you need to keep those in there. If your boss insists on continuing to work in FD 8, even after they’ve been warned that it can make huge problems down the line, you’ll have to deal with those problems later.
5. Dropbox will save your ass
Sign up for Dropbox now. Sync it to your phone. Make a file for your show, then a “SCRIPTS” file, then a few subfolders for episodes. “101”, “102”, etc. Just have these ready. Also, while you’re at it, go ahead and tell Final Draft to autosave backups to your Dropbox as well. Final Draft 12 > Preferences > Auto-Save/Backup > Select New Folder (also make sure auto-backup is enabled).
TROUBLESHOOTING
Q: My boss and/or high-level writers are on an older version of FD and don’t want to/are unable to upgrade. What do I do?
A: That’s the ridiculous thing, isn’t it? Here are people paid tens of thousands per month who can’t buy a simple work computer updated with the newest version of ID and expense it against the shell company they use for their loanout.
You can approach FD to see if you can get downgrade licenses for all your writers so that they have the same version as your showrunner. (Each instance of Final Draft is a different program, so your writers won’t lose their paid version of FD if they also accept a downgrade license.) But if it’s version 8 or 9, you’re just going to have to accept there will be bumps and corruptions across the way. Being a luddite has its consequences.
Q: How do you feel about FD’s highly touted collaboration feature?
A: Awful. From what I’ve seen, the feature does exactly what it’s supposed to: it allows people to work on scripts at the same time (so long as you have one host who’s in charge of the session). But even with revision mode turned on, it’s not possible to see who made exactly what changes. Further, it creates the impression that everyone now has the master copy of the file, and if they make any changes offline once the collaboration session is closed, they won’t be shared. So it’ll put more work on you to groom in any newer changes into the master file later on. In other words, it creates more chances for the workflow to be interrupted. It’s probably great for writing teams, but for our SC purposes, we’ll avoid it.
Q: What’s with that FD version of a template?
A: In addition to .fdx files, Final Draft can also create what it currently calls template files (previously, they were called stationery files). I’m going to call it the .fdxt file so that we don’t get it confused with the “template” we discussed sending to the writers earlier. These .fdxt files contain formatting information for elements and margins, as well as the SmartType database. What’s valuable about these is that they can be applied after a draft has been written, so that if a writer used the wrong file to start writing in, you can apply this afterwards. To make a .fdxt file, open up a correct version of the script (or the pilot), then go to File > Save as Template. Give it a name you’ll remember (I like SHOWNAME_FDXT.FDXT), but don’t call it the SHOWNAME_TEMPLATE because of the potential for .fdxt/template confusion.
To apply the .fdxt to someone’s script, go to Format > Elements. Then, in the bottom left is a button that says “Apply a Template.” Press “other”, navigate to the correct file, and hit “Open.” This should correct the formatting and margins for everything – but of course, it goes without saying that you’ll still need to double check.