COMPANY TOWN : Scripting Software : How-To Screenplay Programs Act as Coach-in-a-Computer

Imagine you know little about screenwriting, need to earn a fast couple of hundred thou, and have always fancied yourself an erudite if technically deficient screenwriter--if only you could somehow acquire the proper tools. Who would you turn to for help?

A. Your friendly bartender.

B. Your local screenwriting teacher.

C. A Venice boardwalk psychic.

D. A computer software program.

If you chose D, you made the right choice--or so the $3-million-a-year-and-growing screenwriting software industry would like you to believe.

Six years ago, the industry consisted of a single company operating out of a private home, with a bare-bones product that didn’t always work. Now there are four companies in the Southland--as well as a handful of smaller ones on the East Coast--and a battle is looming as the largest prepares to aggressively challenge its competitors.

If all this seems hard to imagine when the Writers Guild of America numbers about 7,000 members and the median income for working screenwriters is $50,000 a year, then you haven’t yet grasped the true extent of the market.

“We never figured that [Writers Guild members] were a viable market,” says Tom Sawyer, owner of the “Plots Unlimited” software. Rather, his target is the country’s estimated 4 million to 8 million would-be writers, many of whom wouldn’t mind earning the $600,000 and up that the top 5% of working screenwriters make annually, or sharing in the $568 million spent on movie and TV literary properties in 1993, the latest year for which Writers Guild figures are available.

Thus, “Plots Unlimited” is advertised in publications targeting mostly amateur writers, the ads highlighting Sawyer’s credit as writer-producer of the CBS show “Murder, She Wrote.” The software program leads the would-be writer through a series of multiple-choice questions, with each choice leading to new questions and possibilities for a plot.

Sawyer swears he sometimes uses “Plots Unlimited” as a jumping-off point for his own show. (Like its competitors, the software maps out a story but does not format the actual screenplay, which can be done manually or with another software program.)

On an advertising budget of about $4,000 a month for a full-page ad in Writer’s Digest, a leading magazine for aspiring writers, he sells a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of the $299 program.

“Collaborator,” which retails at $199, similarly claims that by guiding the user through 70 story questions, the writer will end up with a tale worth telling.

Owner Francis X. Feighan claims his largest single expense--more than $50,000 a year--is the free customer support line, a staple of all four programs. Although incoming questions are supposed to be confined to software glitches or difficulties loading the program onto a computer, many callers want to discuss plot problems or ask for introductions to an agent or a producer. In response, Feighan plans to cut the unlimited phone support to an hour per customer.

John Truby’s “Storyline Pro” evolved from his private weekend screenwriting classes, taken by an estimated 15,000 students nationwide. Truby, who works primarily as a script doctor, discovered that his students forgot two-thirds of what they’d learned within six months of class. His program, which retails for $295, is an effort to “place a story coach in the computer with the writer,” he said.

And this rough status quo--a catering to mostly Hollywood wanna-bes--is where the industry might have stayed were it not for the entry last June of Burbank-based Screenplay Systems, whose sales in a single year have captured nearly half the market.

But Stephen Greenfield, president and chief software technician, clearly regards amateur writers as a mere appetizer before the main course: His strategy is to hook the studios on his product. In five years, he predicts, Screenplay Systems’ “Dramatica Pro” will become a “mainstay” of story development departments. To make it so, Greenfield has launched a campaign that goes against conventional industry wisdom.

Hollywood professionals, he said, often don’t know how to tell a story--just look at the number of disasters that come out. Even “Jurassic Park,” one of the three highest-grossing films of all time, was structurally flawed, according to Greenfield.

Had writer Michael Crichton or director Steven Spielberg simply plugged the story into an early version of his program, they would have discovered--and easily fixed--story holes that would have rendered their film a classic in the tradition of “Gone With the Wind” or “Citizen Kane,” he said. Instead, he believes, the film’s special effects will look dated in a few years and the blockbuster movie will become yesterday’s relic.

But that’s just the warm-up for the USC film school grad and produced screenwriter. In a voice that pitches high, then breaks with excitement, Greenfield describes his plan to take on the studios.

The battle, he said, will start in the film schools, where screenwriting instructors, who often seethe at how-to programs, will be the ideal first converts.

Greenfield has gone head-to-head with leading film instructors, debating them on story form and content. Discussions have centered on how his program can help them focus on core issues such as the contrast between order and chaos--the murkily explored theme in “Jurassic Park” that is illustrated through a heroic scientist and dinosaurs run amok.

Thus far, Greenfield said, he has made a couple of high-level converts, complete with letters of endorsement. (He also introduced “Dramatica Lite” in March for beginning screenwriters, at less than half the price of “Dramatica Pro.”) After he wins the battle of the film schools, Greenfield said, the students will move on to the studios, and from there it’s only a matter of time before studio executives join the stampede.

Greenfield’s vision may seem one of unbridled chutzpah, but for two facts. First, his company employs 30 people--as many as all the other Southland screenwriting software companies combined.

Second, his other software programs are considered leaders in their respective fields--among them “Movie Magic,” a business program to help producers budget and schedule their films, and “Scriptor,” a screenplay-formatting program retailing at $150 and the only one ever to win a technical achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

With such parentage, Greenfield says, the credibility of “Dramatica” is greatly enhanced. He believes the software will hit the mainstream eventually. Even more than its competitors, “Dramatica” is promoted as a tool in writing novels, short stories and, incidentally, screenplays. Screenplay Systems even downplays the company name on promotional displays.

Sawyer is dubious. “The likelihood of [a writing] program being picked up by a chain like Egghead is almost impossible,” he said. Writing programs have a substantially more limited application than do mainstream accounting or word-processing programs and therefore do not appeal to the general market, he said.

Gabriele Meiringer, owner of the Writers’ Computer Store in West Los Angeles, is skeptical that a software program, no matter how well thought out, can teach virtually anyone how to write a good story.

“You can use ‘Dramatica’ or any other program to collect your thoughts. Then you’re looking at blank screen,” she said. “I don’t sell anything which makes that any easier.”

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The Programs

Dramatica Pro * Price: $399 * Sales: About 10,000 per year * Review: Best-selling, most advanced program, but criticized by some writers for interfering too much with the creative process. Dramatica Lite (for beginners) retails for $149.

Collaborator * Price: $199 * Sales: More than 4,000 per year * Review: Based on the Aristotelian three-act plot structure. This is the first screenwriting program and the easiest to use.

Plots Unlimited * Price: $299 * Sales: About 4,000 per year * Review: Mixes and matches 5,600 plot segments for an almost “infinite” number of stories.

Storyline Pro * Price: $295 * Sales: Figures not available * Review: Best when used with creator John Truby’s screenwriting workshops, which average $195 per weekend.

Note: Retail prices are almost always discounted.