Final Draft is described as 'Use your creative energy to focus on the content; let Final Draft take care of the style. Final Draft is the number-one selling word processor specifically designed for writing movie scripts, television episodics and stage plays' and is a Novel Authoring tool in the news & books category. There are more than 50 alternatives to Final Draft for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac, Web-based, iPhone and iPad apps. The best Final Draft alternative is Scrivener. It's not free, so if you're looking for a free alternative, you could try Manuskript or Story Architect (STARC). Other great apps like Final Draft are Fade In, Hemingway Editor, yWriter and Untold Novel.
Tailored for extensive writing, this tool offers flexible structure and organization, integrates project outlines, supports various formats, and allows reorganization through drag and drop, ensuring research materials are within reach for efficient work.
Open-source software offering a hierarchical outliner, distraction-free editor, character management, plot tools, Snowflake method support, section multi-organization, customizable writing workflows, cross-platform availability, and export to standard formats.
Manuskript is not a scriptwriting program.
M is for novels, FD is for Screenwriting
Fade In Professional Screenwriting Software is a complete application for writing motion picture screenplays, including tools for outlining, organizing, and navigating, plus extensive screenplay formatting and robust tools for managing rewrites and revisions.
Does everything Final Draft does and more for a much lower price, plus they don't charge for updates.
Less expensive than Final Draft with all of the same features, fully compatible with the .fdx format, and full Linux support.
Supports every major format. Distraction free screenwriting.
A smooth yet powerful writing experience for devoted authors. With only wanted features and native workflow it runs faster than all your previous apps combined.
yWriter is a writing tool that uses "scenes" as a unit of text and allows you to associate that text with all manner of story elements (characters, locations, items) as well as place it and rearrange it within the context of chapters.
yWriter is for novels. Final Draft is for screenplays.
Not screenplay or script writing software
Untold Novel is a fresh new approach to planning your next bestseller. It helps you keep all your notes, ideas, characters, locations, and much more organized in one convenient place.
Rayuela Editor is moderm, privacy-focused writing environment designed for long-form fiction (novels, screenplays, and theses). It bridges the gap between the structural power of Scrivener and the portability of modern web technology, wrapped in a native desktop application.
Trelby is simple, fast and elegantly laid out to make screenwriting simple. It is infinitely configurable.
It's faster and easier than Fianl Draft and has converting options to many formats.
Based on the Firefox engine, supports standards, visual storyboarding, production scheduling, publication & international languages MUI support. Free tutorials, videos & wiki are available from the site. There is a very helpful community too.
Free version for writers to get started.
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Manuskript is more for "quite complex" novels. Not really for screenplays.