Scrivener vs. Final Draft: Choosing the One that’s Right For You

When you’re picking a writing software, it can be hard to know which one is the best for you. You can spend hours researching and debating programs, guessing until you find one you like. If you’re like me, you get a bit anxious before making a software purchase because it feels like too permanent a decision.

Chances are, you’ve heard of either Scrivener or Final Draft. Both are available for macOS, Windows, and iOS. Personally, I use the macOS and iOS versions of both, so I don’t know if there are any differences between those versions and the Windows version.

Here are some basic similarities and differences between Scrivener and Final Draft.

Scrivener

All of my writing friends will tell you that I swear by Scrivener. I first heard of it during NaNoWriMo, but I’ve found that’s my preferred drafting software for manuscripts. I love the workflow, being able to keep all of my drafts, documents, and research for a project in one place, and exporting it into multiple formats.

I especially love the goal features for word count and page count. Scrivener lets you set a project target and a goal for each day, which is perfect for NaNo participants or people who want to make sure they’ve written a certain number of words per day. You can even enter your project goal and let Scrivener calculate the words or pages per day for you. Why might you need a page count goal? Scripts are counted by pages.

I find that Scrivener’s workflow for manuscripts is more comfortable for me. I often write scenes out of order and having the ability to place each scene in its own document allows me to move the scenes and chapters around when I’m done to make the order work better. For scripts, I like that you can write each scene in its own document and have your character lists and research open on the other side of the screen.

Exporting

In Scrivener, the option to export your file to a document readable by other software is called compiling. Some formats that it allows you to export your project as are Microsoft Word, PDF, Final Draft, epub, and Kindle’s format Mobi. This means it’s perfect for people looking to self-publish their writing.

Scrivener will only compile the documents and folders that you have told it to export. This means that you can have multiple drafts of the same WIP in one project and choose to compile only the final version.

However, even though there is a compile option in Scrivener to export for Final Draft, I’ve found that the formatting doesn’t match up completely. For me, the spacing went haywire, and many of Final Draft’s auto-formatting didn’t connect with Scrivener’s auto-script-formatting. When I tried writing scripts in Scrivener and exporting to Final Draft, I wound up reformatting inside Final Draft.

Final Draft

Final Draft is perhaps best known as being the film industry’s standard for scriptwriting. After I used it, it was easy to see why. My script practically formatted itself, allowing me to focus on the story rather than how it looked.

I didn’t have to capitalize the scene headings. Action lines switched to the scene heading format as soon as I wrote INT. or EXT. Tabbing over on a new line turned the action formatting into character formatting for dialogue.

Some editing features include flags and notes, so if someone else is reading the document, they can flag the exact spot to make changes or make a comment where needed.

There are various views beyond just the standard page view. You can also create beats for your script. There’s a Scene view, which looked similar to Scrivener’s Outline view. There are also index cards, which allow you to move the scenes around and reorder, much like Scrivener’s corkboard view.

Final Draft has some great collaboration features that allow you to work with a writing partner or partners across a network with a session ID. In collaboration mode, you must be connected to the internet. A chat box allows collaborators to communicate without leaving Final Draft.

There are other templates besides screenplays, such as graphic novels, stage plays, and text documents for manuscripts and outlines. Each template has specific formatting tied to it to auto-format.

Exporting

Final Draft’s main two save features are as a Final Draft file and PDF. This means you can’t export a manuscript to format for self-publishing. If that’s something that you’re looking to do, this probably isn’t the right program for you.

So which one is best for you?

If screenwriting isn’t your primary focus, Scrivener is awesome! If you primarily want to write scripts, I found Final Draft to be very user friendly for making your scripts look professional.

Both software have 30-day trial versions, so I highly recommend trying out both of them before you buy and seeing which one you prefer. Something that you’ll want to keep in mind is while Final Draft’s trial is 30 consecutive days, Scrivener’s trial is not, so if you don’t have the chance to use it every day, it only counts when you open the program.