INT. Night. G. lies splayed across the threadbare carpet of the self-consciously low-rent apartment he always thought would be a perfect tabloid tv testament to his mean-street days after he made it big. As the contents of his tragically uninspired and disorganized head spread out from a self-inflicted hole, his last mortal glance falls on the script which had been his last chance. Sorry; poor flow, inconsistent character development. Not formatted correctly.

With enough challenges facing scriptwriters to conjure an endless stream of entertaining and trenchant fodder for beloved screen characters or trying to demonstrate genius with a sure-thing spec script, technology has provided formatting, and in some cases, creative assistance.

Most writers who contribute scripts regularly to broadcasters use some form of formatting software. There are a handful of widely used programs, most originating from California, where the relationship between scripts and silicon exists on many levels.

Script formatting software is produced as an add-on to word processing software or as a standalone program which deals with the peculiarities of writing film, tv and theater scripts, including scene headings, dialogue, character names and revisions.

Scriptor, from Screenplay Systems in beautiful downtown Burbank, is an add-on program that has been an industry standard for about 14 years. Scriptor works with Microsoft Word (ms-dos and Mac) and Word for Windows, as well as micros for Word Perfect and WordStar and has a list price of us$149.

Scriptor received a technical achievement Academy Award in 1995, and Screenplay president Stephen Greenfield says the program is used by a large number of major studio features, in part, because it works with Screenplay’s ubiquitous MovieMagic budgeting and scheduling software.

One of the popular standalone programs is Scriptware from Colorado-based Cinovation. The software is sold in an original dos version and a recently released Windows version (a Mac version is in development) and retails for us$299.

Cinovation president and Scriptware designer Steven Sashen says the package was recently named the preferred software at Universal Studios and has been used on a number of Canadian tv shows in addition to being used exclusively on several u.s. shows like Murphy Brown, Cybill and Ellen.

Sashen says he brought his background – a degree in cognitive psychology and a masters in film from Columbia – to developing the software as an intuitive tool to channel the writer’s ideas onto the page with minimal interference from formatting requirements. He adds that while formats vary by genre, they can also vary according to the preferences of production companies.

Abetted by a monitor-headed scaly little mascot, ScriptThing has become a fast-growing formatting software for the Canadian tv market. San Diego-based Script Perfection Enterprises had been developing a scriptwriting software tool since 1991, starting with an add-on system for word processing software and evolving into a standalone Thing in 1994.

Three versions of the software cater to different needs of writers. The DOS Freelance version sells for about us$149 while the Production version, at us$199, adds features for interactive media writing, production a and b pages, production breakdowns, and automatic insertion of revision marks. The Windows version includes all the features plus variable line spacing, view as index card editing and additional fonts.

ScriptThing is a staple of a number of Canadian productions and coproductions like Atlantis/Trilogy’s The Outer Limits.

Victoria James, script co-ordinator on Outer Limits, says the show began using ScriptThing at the beginning of season two and now uses the software exclusively for Outer Limits and Poltergeist. ‘It works like it was written by someone who writes scripts, the way I would have written it,’ says James.

James says the shows originally used Macintosh hardware but switched to ibm due to problems with the Final Draft Mac-based software and to avail themselves of ScriptThing software.

Writer/producer Paul Mohan, whose credits include creating and producing Taking the Falls and writer/producer on the last season of Alliance’s Due South, says he began using ScriptThing two years ago and is another enthusiastic booster.

Mohan says he initially used a program called Movie Master and was put off by its inflexibility and the requirement to save each act in a separate file. After trying a demo of ScriptThing, Mohan says he became a fan. ‘I was shocked about how quickly I got on to it and how intuitive it was.’

Mohan says the program is useful for revisions and automatically marks a and b pages after changes are made and the script is locked.

When it comes to so-called creativity, there are tools which have emerged in the last few years, like Collaborator, Plots Unlimited and Dramatica, to spur the noodling process in a variety of ways.

Greenfield says the Screenplay Dramatica program has, in the two years since it was released, become the top tool of its kind and its sales have outpaced 14 years’ worth of Scriptor sales.

‘A lot of people have suspicion about these kinds of tools.’ says Greenfield. ‘They assume that if you have a writing tool that deals with creativity it is supposed to replace or write the story for you. This is one of the obstacles we have to overcome to get writers to look at these tools.’

Dramatica Pro, which lists at us$399, is a story creation and analysis tool. The program features a query system that asks questions about the story as well as a story engine which immediately shows how changes impact all facets of the story.

‘Dramatica actually tells you something about the story that you didn’t put into it,’ says Greenfield. ‘By asking 10 or 12 questions, it can tell you basically what will happen in the story.’

Greenfield says instead of focusing on how to write snappy dialogue, or how to market your script, the program is focused on story creation. ‘It deals with the fundamental things that underline plot, character and genre. It’s a very academic type tool,’ he says. ‘It asks writers to think about what it is they’re trying to do in a story.’

A less expensive streamlined version of Dramatica, the Writer’s Dream kit, is also available for less experienced writers. Greenfield says the system has also been used in high schools as a teaching tool and is one of the first tools of its kind to be distributed in stores across the u.s.

Idea inspiration can also come in a box. Irvine, California-based Idea Fisher Systems’ Idea Fisher is a brainstorming tool which stimulates the production of great ideas.

Vancouver writer Montgomery Burt says he uses Idea Fisher for brainstorming and ‘playing around with genres.’ As an example of Idea Fisher’s compare function, Burt says if one plugged in the words ‘vampire’ and ‘western,’ the system would generate numerous common themes between the two words as well as proposing a title; in this case it was Bite the Dust.

Idea Fisher Systems also produces Writer’s Edge, an enormous thesaurus-like program containing song and movie titles, pop culture, analogies, cliches, fictional characters, historical and current events, similes, metaphors, aphorisms, euphemisms, homonyms, synonyms, abstraction/intangibles, verbs, activities/events/processes, descriptors, varieties/examples and real people.