Storyline -- Online Screenplay and Script to Story Converter / Formatter

PLEASE read the information below so you understand exactly what this program does and how it works.
This program converts Screenplays and Scripts TO "Partial Story formats".
It does NOT convert stories to scripts or screenplays.

NOTE: This program DOES NOT work on Microsoft Word .DOC or .DOCX or any other kind of word processing files (like .RTF), OR .PDF files, OR Final Draft (.FDX) or other script or screenplay document files!!

It ONLY works on SIMPLE, PLAIN TEXT Properly Formatted .TXT documents!
(see this example as a fairly decent 'standard' format: Script/Screenplay Format Example)

So, if your script or screenplay is in any of those complex file formats, it will have to FIRST be SAVED or EXPORTED as a PLAIN TEXT .TXT document using your client software, and THAT file must be the one submitted and uploaded here. (otherwise you will only get gibberish output, or an ERROR)

This "experimental" web program attempts to convert and format a PLAIN TEXT document formatted Screenplay or Script into a story format (Book, Short Story, Novelette, Novella, Novel, etc...). This greatly reduces the need to massage the text into a story format for the writer. This can reduce the work required for the writer up to 50% or better, and the tedious nature 90%+. NOTE: The program does not process Play formats.

We do not generally look at your work, so using this program is SAFE and "confidential". (that is, we will not be stealing your hard work) We usually only look at things when there is a problem, so we can fix the problem and make the program work better. PLEASE enter a valid e-mail address below so we can contact you if there is a problem and we have questions or to let you know the problem has been corrected.

This program performs this conversion by uploading and analyzing the source TEXT file and processing the various parts to do a large part of the formatting for the writer so they can then more easily massage the text into a story. The source format file must be in a minimally 'standard' screenplay/script format.
If it is not, you will get unusable output.
(see this example as a fairly decent 'standard' format: Script/Screenplay Format Example)

Although scripts and screenplays are written in the Present Tense (for action), the converted output provided is Past Tense (assumed Third Person — that is, "said" instead of "says"). However, action text is not converted to Past Tense (that sort of grammatical processing far exceeds the capabilities of this program), and Person is not affected. So writers will still have their work cut out for them, just not nearly as much.

NOTE that this program is not perfect, it will make mistakes, but it works pretty well so far. If you get output that you think it should take care of, please let me know so I can tweak it and make it better. (e-mail address below)

IMPORTANT:
The source file text MUST be indented at (away from) the left margin WITH SPACE characters, AND that indent must be LESS THAN 20 SPACEs per line. (5 to 8 to 15 nominal) Blank lines in between 'paragraphs' are important for proper parsing. (if you do not get good conversion and formatting results, you might have to massage the script/screenplay text file format a little yourself first) Actual TAB characters will be converted to five (5) SPACE characters. (Note that word processing-type programs often use Tab Setting Columns instead of SPACE characters)

Character Names and Dialogue MUST start (indent) at or past line column position 20!!
ALSO, your formatting MUST be consistent and accurate.
This program has problems dealing with non-standard, sloppy, and poorly-formatted scripts and screenplays. (make sure all of your columns line up, and you don't have character names or dialogue starting on different columns, etc.) The cleaner your source file is, the better the output will be.

The program recognizes (attempts to automatically recognize, using "intelligent logic") the standard six paragraph types:

• Scene Heading
• Shots
• Action
• Character
• Dialogue
• Parenthetical
• Transition

It then performs various operations on the text to make them story-formatted, as noted below. All line leading SPACEs are removed. (a short Processing Statistics Report is prepended to the output file so that the user can get some information about how the program is interpreting their source file — this may come in handy if there are output issues)

Scene Headings (Sluglines) are changed to upper and lower case text from their uppercase source.

Character names are changed to upper and lower case text from their uppercase source and appended to dialogue with 'said ...'. (also recognizes question marks and exclamation points for 'asked' and 'exclaimed' – and 'continued' for '(CONT'D)' items)

Dialogue is appended to make a single line unbroken 'paragraph' (section) and quoted with double quotes. (e.g.: "Hello," said John Brown.)

Parentheticals are appended to make a single line 'paragraph' (section) and are then appended after the Dialogue and Character names, separated by a comma. (e.g.: ," said John Brown, quietly.)

Transitions are changed to upper and lower case text from their uppercase source.

The output file is then made available as a temporary file that will disappear at some point, so it must be downloaded by the user. It will have a long name that includes the date and time and some random digits to make it unique, and a '.story' extension. NOTE that the output file uses Unix/Linux End-of-Line characters (LF), not Windows (CRLF) or old Mac format (CR).

Remember: The input source file MUST be a PLAIN TEXT 'ASCII' file. (NOTE: Documents containing non-ASCII extended Unicode or non-English alphabet characters may cause issues)

If your script / screenplay is in some other format, like a proprietary editor format (e.g., Final Draft .fdx), a Word document (.doc, .docx), some other word processing document format (.rtf), or a PDF document (Adobe .pdf), you will have to convert it to a TEXT file first.
(IMPORTANT: while keeping all of the script/screenplay formatting intact, as much as possible — especially indents – NOTE: The FREE Foxit PDF Reader software does a decent PDF to text conversion while more or less keeping formatting (not all programs do), like indentation, which is important — link to their website is not guaranteed to work)

If you have problems, questions, or suggestions, you can Contact the Creator at whd1802

Donnelly-House.net

Storyline

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