Scriptwriting template in iWork 06

Question

Hi, I just installed the trial version of iWork 06. I was going through the new version of PAGES and stumble upon the new template for scriptwrithing. Since I work for a film production company, this looked like a great alternative to the very pricy MovieMagic Screenwriter.
I made few tests with one of our writer and we couldn't figure out if there is shortcuts to change the writing style from SCENE, to ACTION, to CHARACTER NAME, DIALOGUE....
The only one that works naturaly is after writing the CHARACTER NAME, by pressing Return, it goes automatically to the DIALOGUE style. This should be the same between SCENE and ACTION and we should have a shortcut from ACTION to CHARACTER NAME and also from DIALOGUE to SCENE (to go to the next scene after the dialogue is done).
Did we miss those shorcuts or this is improvement we should expect in the future? For sure, this is VERY promising and if those shorcuts exist already, I am ordering iWork right now.
Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

Hey there,
Pages can format screenplays pretty well. You can tweak it to suit your writing needs. Although you cannot assign shortcuts to script elements like in Screenwriter or Final Draft out of the box, with the help of a little AppleScript and hot key software like Keyboard Maestro you can.
A bit of script goes like this:
tell document 1 of application "Pages"
set theSelection to selection
set paragraph style of theSelection to paragraph style "SCENE HEADING"
end tell
And with Keyboard Maestro, you can assign this script to an F-key or key combo you like.
As previously noted, the one thing that a non dedicated scriptwriting app lacks is the (MORE) and (CONT'D) when a dialog breaks between two pages. For now, I keep the Dialog lines together and keep the Character Name with the following paragraph. It means that if a dialog is too long to fit the page, the whole dialog will move to the next page. It will cause a little white space at the bottom of the previous page, depending how long your dialog is.
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