Others say...

"Many issues in software"
I haven't had the opportunity to work with the program to any great degree yet, but I am disturbed by the fact that as soon as I activated the program (more on that in a minute)it immediately pulled up an update that was suppose to fix a dozen problems with the software. Added to it was a list of more than a dozen "issues" that needed to be fixed but were not yet fixed (this is to their credit), several of them will cause the program to crash.
It is also important to know that to use the program you have to go online and have it activated and that you can only have three activations at a time. The program may be good (I'll soon see), but it is obviously not without its problems.

"Great! This blows away FINAL DRAFT ..."
After struggling to write stage plays with the pathetic and totally incorrect "stageplay template" in FINAL DRAFT, I noticed Movie Magic Screenwriter, which I used to use years ago, had a new version out.

After spending a couple hours on the tutorials, I have to say, they really got it right this time. The integration of flexible outlining and note-taking with the draft of your screenplay, play, novel, or whatever is superb.

Writers need to outline, take various types of notes, and draft. I'm not sure why it took so many years for a program to finally combine these functions on one screen rather than separating them, but MMS 6 is the best I've seen yet. It's also very flexible and you can show or hide any elements, as you wish.

With the new version of Final Draft said to be over a year away, I'm ready to jump ship. MMS 6 seems more stable, sensible, and convenient all around.

"It's the film/TV standard, but it's also great for fiction writing"
If you write scripts for film or TV, there's really no need for a review of this product. Screenwriter 6 is what you're going to use. There's a competing product called Final Draft, but from what I hear, writers in film and TV are now flocking to this.

But I'm here to report that Screenwriter 6 is not simply for film and TV writers. I do some script work, but I'm primarily a fiction writer. I started using Screenwriter 2000 (this program's predecessor) about a year ago, and after a couple of weeks I converted all my work-in-progress to it and never looked back. Now, with the new features in v. 6, it's even better. I'm writing short stories and a novel in Screenwriter, and having a better experience than with any other software I've tried.

For one thing, I've been waiting more than 20 years for somebody to get document outlining right. Screenwriter 6 nails it. You can see and navigate the structure of even long, complex projects quite easily -- by chapters, scenes, or any other element you choose, including notes. You can have as many types of notes as you want -- to-dos, action summaries, research queries, whatever you use notes for. You can insert bookmarks. You can see your scenes as index cards that you can drag around. You could write "War and Peace" in this thing and not get lost. That's the main reason many fiction writers will want to start using this.

But the program is also much smoother and much less obtrusive than most other writing software. It stays out of your way while you're working, yet it automatically does what you need it to do. Screenwriter is a formatting program. Fiction writers have far fewer formatting concerns than scriptwriters, but they have some, and they want to set up a manuscript and stop thinking about it. When a chapter or a section begins or ends, a certain thing should happen. It might be a page break, or some white space, or an indentation change, or whatever. With Screenwriter, it happens. You don't think about it.

In more than 20 years on the Macintosh, I've used (or at least tried) every piece of writing software on the market -- commercial, shareware, freeware. None of them was entirely satisfying. I was never really happy. Today, I'm happy. If you plan to spend a lot of your life in front of a laptop creating dramatic or narrative work of one sort or another, the price of this software (especially with the Amazon discount) is a ridiculous bargain.

Note: Screenwriter is NOT the sort of program that attempts to help you write "formula" work by suggesting story-structures, plot developments, character conflicts, story "problems," etc. The creators of Screenwriter have a program for that, called Dramatica. I don't use such things. If you want that, you can go buy it. Note also that Screenwriter is not for academic writers who need footnotes, citations, etc. For the Macintosh only, there's a great and inexpensive program for that kind of writing called Mellel.

"A Scriptwriter's Delight"
I should disclose that for nearly a year I have helped beta test-- extremely modestly--Screenwriter 6.0. I've had the privilege of observing the diligence, cleverness, and ingenuity of the developers and the dedicated, resourceful work of beta testers who've nurtured this beautiful program. The development team asked me and my fellow beta testers to post a comment on [...]...if we felt so inclined.

I do.

Screenwriter 6.0 is an enormously powerful program for not only writers of movies and stage plays, but radio plays, TV scripts, and novels. Its radically new outlining feature gives writers the ability to organize, structure and consolidate their work in ways they might never have explored without this tool. The editing commands are intuitive and easy to learn. I've written two stage plays with Screenwriter and I've never been disappointed.

Kudos to the development team. This program beats its competitors hands down.