Screenwriting Blog | Final Draft®

Color My World

Written by Final Draft | January 19, 2018

If your eyes are starting to bleed because you’ve been staring at a stark white screen covered with little black letters all night, you pretty much have two options. The first, and your mother/spouse/roommate will agree, is go to bed already, for Pete’s sake! What’s the matter with you?!

The other option is to stare at some other -colored screen covered with little other -colored letters all night. You can easily change the “paper” and text color in Final Draft to make it a little easier on your poor eyeballs.

Go to Document > Page Layout > Colors and change the background to gray or light purple or some other muted color, and change the text to white or dark green (or leave it black). You may be pleasantly surprised at how much easier it is to keep your face in front of your monitor.

Conversely, if you’re trying to stay awake and over time you’ve built up an alarming tolerance for caffeine drinks, you might try something a little more energetic. Try a hot pink background and bright green text (California obscenity laws prevent us from including a screenshot of this combination).

It’s true that sometimes a change of scenery can do a writer a world of good and who knows, maybe a different color scheme might help you see your script a little differently.