I’ve been on the hunt for a good (free) tool for collaborating with another screenwriter. This week, I learned of Etherpad, an online, open-source, realtime text editor. Basically, an open source Google Docs.
Out of the box, Etherpad doesn’t have much advantage over Google Docs for screenwriting. It doesn’t have any screenwriting-specific features like autocomplete for characters’ names or scene headings.
But here’s what’s cool: Etherpad is customizable via plugins.
Could some enterprising developer write plugins that makes Etherpad into the best collaborative software for screenwriters? I think this could work!
These are the plugins that already exist that would be useful for screenwriters:
- Align
- Heading
- Markdown
- Spellcheck
- Comments page
- Desktop notifications
- Ether-o-meter (displays metrics, could be good for sprints)
- Table of contents
Someone would have to build a few screenwriting-specific plugins to make this work for Fountain. Basically the features we find in Better Fountain, which makes Visual Code Studio into a good screenwriting app.
- Smart autocomplete for recurring characters and scenes, as well as title page keys.
- Go straight to writing dialog after a parenthetical by pressing enter, while the cursor is still inside it
- Maybe a way to generate real-time previews, the way that Better Fountain does.
What do you think?
Update: Fountainize adds some of these features to Google Docs. That’s cool! But the free version of Fountainize is limited. If we could make this for Etherpad, these features could be free for all future screenwriters.