Final Draft is one of those rare apps that completely owns its market: screenwriting.

The full version is a mainstay in just about any studio you can claim, and the desks of hopeful writers around the world. Its iPad sibling is just as essential on the go. It’s not simply a place to put words, but one that understands the needs of production – coloured pages for instance, tracking revisions, highlighting character names for easy tracking and activities like table reads, and exporting useful data, like how much a specific character speaks during the script and what all of their lines are.

While intended as a companion app, it’s got everything you need to actually write a script, as well as handy features from the desktop edition like automatically filling in of character names so that you don’t have to keep doing so, and exporting the finished work to either its own format or PDF. For the amount that you can tweak and toy and write on the fly, £15 is nothing. For comparison, the desktop version costs £160. Of course, it does have some omissions, such as the corkboard view. However, it never feels like corners have been cut, with the feature set throughout generally feeling complete. 

"An essential app for any screenwriter, worth checking out whether or not you already use Final Draft on a Mac." - Mac Format

• Excellent interface
• Fully featured
• Handles writing and production

"Sadly, it doesn’t come with a three-picture movie deal"

★★★★★

£14.99 Developer Final Draft , finaldraft.com
Works with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad Version 2.0.1

- Richard Cobbett

The Final Draft Writer is featured in the September issue of Mac Format which is on sale now!