{"id":976,"date":"2010-03-14T19:06:13","date_gmt":"2010-03-14T06:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/?p=976"},"modified":"2012-09-07T11:10:26","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T23:10:26","slug":"tools-of-the-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/tools-of-the-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"Tools of the Trade"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a montage in Commando<\/a> where Arnold Schwarzenegger packs on a few hundred pounds of munitions:<\/p>\n

\"Not-too-common<\/a><\/p>\n

(The poster neglects to show the shotgun and rocket launcher\/pod that are part of his kit. Maybe the PR elves thought it all a little overkill or something.)<\/p>\n

When it comes to writing, I haven’t been picky with my kit. All of my handwritten notes are consistent in their random ink colours – and occasional pencil – because I don’t care for my writing implement (and because I lose pens on a regular basis). As for the electronic records, they include Word, text-only, rich-text and Open Document formats – although that last one has been the standard since 2007<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago, I started playing around with Celtx<\/a> and, well, nothing has been the same ever since. I use Final Draft<\/i> now. I understand now the zeal of the convert: FD makes (screen)writing so much easier. But it’s only a tool.<\/p>\n

Commando<\/i> will always have a special place<\/a> in my heart but it’s been a quarter-century already, and in this post-Bourne<\/a> world where a rolled-up magazine is as handy in a fight as a Rambo knife, it’s no longer about suiting up for every possible situation. Save the montage for a flashback or Michael Bay homage.<\/p>\n

Use whatever you have to hand to put words on the page or screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a montage in Commando where Arnold Schwarzenegger packs on a few hundred pounds of munitions: (The poster neglects to show the shotgun and rocket launcher\/pod that are part of his kit. Maybe the PR elves thought it all a little overkill or something.) When it comes to writing, I haven’t been picky with my … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Tools of the Trade”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[135,68,136,137],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-scriptwriting","tag-celtx","tag-commando","tag-final-draft","tag-tools"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2972,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/2972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}