General Forum - Anyone good with Word 2007 - Page 1

Have you tried AutoCorrect? Use a character combination like #A (anything as long as it's not a combination you're likely to use in normal use) and assign it the value of your character name. I presume you'll have already used an embedded paragraph style for character names - centring and capitalising. Then all you have to do is switch to that paragraph style and hit #A return and you're laughing. You can also switch double indents so that the next line you type after the character name is automatically dialogue.

J Mark Oates
--------------------
I don't need one of those Brain Training games.
Mine can already roll over and play dead.
sprockethole.myreviewer.com

This item was edited on Wednesday, 10th March 2010, 11:28

Quote:
I presume you'll have already used an embedded paragraph style for character namesPresume nothing, although I've used word for years it's never been for anything other than letters or straight forward text with little else other than paragraphs and page breaks played around with.



Snaps

Every Third Car
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I used to be with it, but then they changed what 'it' was.
Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's 'it' seems weird and scary

Oooh what's it about?




www.soundalikes.com ~*~ glitterkat.stumbleupon.com

Dump word, find Final Draft (I think it's called... it's what my mate uses when writing scripts )

(assuming you mean movie type scripts and not dodgy website ones! Lol)

Jimbo : oÞ

"Making Teenagers depressed is like shooting fish inna barrel"

Final draft comes up at 250 dollars.
As this is a first stab at writing I'm sticking to Word. Maybe when I get close to JK's earnings I'll splash out a bit.

Quote:
Oooh what's it about?30 min comedy for either radio or TV, if they beg me I could turn out a series but it'll probably never see the light of day.
Just one of those things thats been nagging at my brain for years and at least I want to see it finished and submitted somewhere. Perhaps I could frame the rejection letter.
If it does ever get made you'll be the first to know as I'll be back on here crowing like a dog with two dicks.

Snaps

Every Third Car
--------------------------------------------------------------------


I used to be with it, but then they changed what 'it' was.
Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's 'it' seems weird and scary

FinalDraft produces non-standard files, and tbh isn't as good as Word for functionality. The only clever thing it does is after you've typed in the character name it automatically indents for dialogue, but I'm pretty sure Word'll do that with the right macro.

Although Word isn't built for scriptwriting, putting together a style sheet is fairly easy then just a case of selecting the appropriate paragraph format. There are a fair number of them available on the web - just Google "script format microsoft word" and there's apparently 14m results. The BBC website has writers' resources which include style sheets for Word.

Oh, and the BBC resource carries the correct page formatting for their slightly peculiar requirements - standard film script layout is acceptable, but the proper tv layout shows you've done your research.

J Mark Oates
--------------------
I don't need one of those Brain Training games.
Mine can already roll over and play dead.
sprockethole.myreviewer.com

This item was edited on Friday, 12th March 2010, 02:49

Thanks for the pointers Mark. I think I had something like that in some links from the class but hadn't gone right through them yet.
What I'm trying to do is get the ideas down, no matter how rough, and then sort out all the layout as I rewrite.
I was just after a quick way to name and indent which I should be able to manage with a macro or even tables I suppose.

Snaps

Every Third Car
--------------------------------------------------------------------


I used to be with it, but then they changed what 'it' was.
Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's 'it' seems weird and scary

In that case the straight autocorrect route is the best. Choose a character combination you never use, like "~" and a letter, then go into your autocorrect options and assign them by initial letter. Then all you have to do is type say ~f and when you hit space, it replaces with the name "Fred" (or whatever value you've assigned.) The only drawbackyou have to remember is that punctuation (like a full stop, comma or quote marks) confuses autocorrect. You always have to type a space, then single backspace to add your punctuation and move on.

You can always tidy up layout (centring and that kind of thing) later. Just typing left justified is good enough for stage script layout.

J Mark Oates
--------------------
I don't need one of those Brain Training games.
Mine can already roll over and play dead.
sprockethole.myreviewer.com

This item was edited on Friday, 12th March 2010, 16:39