The New Face of Screenwriting: NovaMind Introduces ScriptMapping - A Powerful Combination of Screenwriting and Mind Mapping

NovaMind Software has just released a new version of NovaMind Platinum with enhanced screenwriting functionality which can be used for all aspects of screenplay writing as well as experimental screenwriting, visual storyboarding, movie and production planning. See http://www.novamind.com/screenwriting/ for full details.

Brisbane, Australia — Writing screenplays used to be a difficult process where it was difficult to find the portion of the screenplay to edit, keeping track of the storyline could be difficult, writer’s block was common, and you really couldn’t “play with” the script to get it right.

These problems are a thing of the past with ScriptMapping - powerful screenwriting software built in to NovaMind mind mapping software. It allows the user to capture ideas easily during brainstorming sessions, and attach portions of the screenplay to different branches of the mind maps. The screenplay can be reorganized just by dragging the branches into different locations. Experimental screenwriting is now possible through the ability to disable the printing or export of the script on specific branches of the Mind Map. Visual storyboarding is accomplished by attaching images to the branches, or creating links to movies and other resources where required.

Many professionals in the live theatre, movie and TV industries already use Mind Mapping and brainstorming techniques to generate and develop story ideas and characters, and plan, organize and manage many aspects of production. These uses are also fully supported in NovaMind with the ability to add notes to the branches, hyperlink to other documents, set start and finish dates, percentage complete, durations and allocate resources.

John Brownlow, writer of the movie “Sylvia” starring Gwyneth Paltrow, said:

“I just wanted to congratulate you on starting to address the need for a truly structured screenwriting program.

As a long-standing and very disillusioned user of other screenwriting applications, I am delighted to see the way NovaMind is going. I already structure all of my scripts in NovaMind and am enormously looking forward to using the app to do much more of the work on my next script”

The screenwriting functionality in the Mac version of NovaMind Platinum has been completely rewritten over the last 6 months, and now includes the following capabilities:

• Screenplay formatting to industry standards for font, margin settings, line spacing, mores, continueds, section standards and page numbering
• Fully configurable cycling through section types on return and tab keypresses
• Automatic sentence casing of dialogues and actions
• Text completions for character names, scene headings, scene location and time, character parentheticals, and transitions
• Orphan protection of dialogs so they are not split from their character names
• Work with the whole screenplay in a single view or just one branch at a time
• Both import and export to and from Movie Magic and Final Draft
• Configurable initial section type for branches
• Configurable mores and continueds for characters and scenes, including automatic character continueds and scene number continueds
• Configurable scene numbering in the margins on both sides
• Configurable indents and capitalization for sections, as well as overall page layout settings
• Global replace of character names and scene locations
• Skip directly to the next or previous branch with script attached, or just to the next or previous branch, from within the screenwriter window
• Enable or disable script on a branch either from within the screenwriter window or on the Mind Map, or from within the print or export dialogs
• Jump directly to scenes or page numbers within the screenplay either using the mouse or by command key
• Capitalize or lower case selected text
• Scale the screenplay text for easier readability
• Ability to set the scene numbering and continuations for printing independently of the editor
• Print just a single branch, a range of scenes, or a range of pages of the script
• Ability to include mind map related text (branch titles, branch notes, attached text) in the printed or exported screenplay

The combination of screenwriting and mind mapping is totally unique to NovaMind, and provides everything you need to write and publish your screenplay directly from within NovaMind.

NovaMind has been used by some top screenwriting professionals for several years, and even with the old capabilities of the screenwriter, they have done amazing things. For example, Hector Cabello Reyes used the screenwriting capabilities of NovaMind to write the screenplay with which he won the top professional screenwriting award in Europe.

The combination of Mind Mapping and Screenwriting is a revolution in screenplay programs. It benefits the entire movie production business, allowing all the people involved to communicate better, be more flexible and creative, and produce better movies more quickly and with lower risk.

About NovaMind:

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and is rapidly gaining recognition in the Windows market. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun, and revolutionizes screenplay writing, idea generation, story development, and the entire writing and production workflow.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit http://www.novamind.com/ or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

We are pleased to announce that we have completely rewritten the screenplay module for NovaMind Platinum for Mac, based on the feedback from our screenwriter users.

Full Screenplay Editing

The new screenwriter has the entire screenplay shown all the time, with the text for the selected branch highlighted. This makes it much easier to create and work with your screenplay, and see how it is attached to the branches. When you move the cursor in your screenplay, the branch for that part of the screenplay is automatically selected. When you select a branch that has no screenwriting attached to it, a line is opened up in the screenplay so you can attach a portion of your screenplay to that branch.

All this makes it a breeze to create your screenplays.

New Control Bar

At the bottom of the window is a control bar which allows you to jump through all the branches with screenwriting text attached to them, see the page and scene numbers, change the element types, change the capitalization of the selected text, see what the next element types are when pressing Tab or Return, and zoom the screenplay for easier reading.

This gives you all the tools you need to work with your screenplay at your fingertips.

Improvements in Basic ScreenPlay Editing

We have made many improvements over the previous screenwriter in the handling of element type selection, completions, mores and continueds, copying and pasting, character and scene completions etc.

In short, the whole screenwriting functionality of NovaMind for Mac has been rewritten to match the needs of screenwriters. It is now in beta testing and will be released shortly. This is a free update for existing NovaMind 4 Platinum users.

Other New Screenwriting Features

In addition, we have many new features which make the screenwriter much more powerful and flexible. These include:

• Scene numbering in the margins
• Ability to configure how the next states on Tab and Return work
• Ability to set the line spacing, capitalization and character positioning of the different element types
• Smart widow/orphan protection of dialogue, keeping it with its scene and character information where required

The new screenwriter requires that you use MacOSX 10.5 Leopard.

This decision was first announced over a year ago, and we now have implemented based on this decision. The reason is because we use a number of new features that were only introduced in version 10.5. It will not run at all in earlier versions of Mac OS X.

Windows version coming soon

We will be introducing a Windows version of the new screenwriter in a few months, and in the meantime any screenplays you write in either the Windows or Mac version of NovaMind will be able to be read and used on the other platform.