IFH 845: The Screenwriting Software Changing How Writers Work with Guy Goldstein

Alex Ferrari 0:47
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.

Dave Bullis 1:23
My next guest is a very busy guy who graciously came down to talk to me, because I know he's got 10 million things going on, and one of the things that we're going to talk about is writer duet, which is his program. My next guest is a screenwriter, and again, a software developer, with guest Guy Goldstein, so it's my pleasure Guy. And you know, I've actually used writers duet. I actually use it right now as my primary screenwriting software. I've pretty much gotten rid of everything else, and I'm just, you know, now I'm full fledged into into wet, sorry, I almost, I almost misspoke there, but I'm full fledged into writer duet. And honestly, it is the best screenwriting software I've ever used. And honestly it's actually the one thing guy that actually held me back from actually trying it. And I'm gonna admit this was the cloud, the idea of the cloud, I'm one of those guys, because I actually, I know you're an IT guy too, and I work in IT as a day job. And I'm one of those guys that likes to have stuff on, like a flash drive, you know? And what happens is, whenever I hear stuff like the cloud, I'm always like, well, what if I'm at a coffee shop and I can't get my script, you know what I mean? And so, but like, when I started using your the whole program, I sort of realized, oh, wait, there's an actual, there's an actual, like, software that can download and that actually solves the problem.

Guy Goldstein 3:23
Yeah, and that's really important to me, because obviously when you want to write, it doesn't matter where you are, you have the idea and you need to get it out. So offline mode was a really important feature, and having desktop application seamlessly works online and offline. So if you write without an internet connection, you don't have to worry about it. As soon as you connect again to the internet, you're going to automatically get that all your changes are going to be go up to the cloud, if you have a collaborator, or if you just wrote on a different computer or different mobile device or whatever, all your changes will automatically sync as soon as they reconnect to the internet.

Dave Bullis 3:53
And and that's what really sold me on the on the program, and so so guy just to so to get started, I want to ask you know what brought you to create writer duet?

Guy Goldstein 4:02
Well, originally, the backstory is, I was a programmer for many years. I've been actor since I was about five years old. I've been sort of doing improv and writing for many years. And the first product I made for writers was actually not writer duet. It was a program called read through, and let's just say it's largely a failure, but it was a cool idea, and still is. We actually have as a plugin inside writer duet right now. What it allows you to do is have voice actors, or forecasted computer voices, perform your script online. So instead of struggling to get 20 actors in a room to do a read through, which I had done a number of times for my own writing, I allowed you just to have computer voices, if you're just listening yourself in your car just to, like, hear the script instead of seeing on paper for the 100th time, and then have actual actors performance, see if you know it connects the way you expect it to, or hoping it would, or sometimes get better than you thought it would. And then that was the original reason I got into software for writers, literally, because I wanted that product I was you. Using the computer voices when I would drive. I used to live in Santa Barbara. I would drive to La just like an hour and a half, two hours away. And so I could listen to my script, make all my notes on the voice recorder. When I got home, I would apply all those notes, and then with the full castle, and I got to, like, really hear actors. And so it was all about myself. Everything's about me, almost a theme in my life. So writer due out, really came from. Admittedly, it wasn't the story I always wish it were, which is, I had a co writer. It's not true. I did not have a co writer. No one would put up with me that long. But I was really interested in screenwriting software. I'd use Celtics when I started, then I started using File draft. And as someone who is making software for a living. There were things that I didn't like about either one, but the number one thing that was so obviously missing was the real time collaboration, and that was the entire impetus for this. It was just knowing that if you did have a co writer, and so many people do, especially in the professional range, you'll notice, I'm not saying exact numbers. Don't remember it, but a very, very high percentage of feature films in Hollywood have co writers. And when you're in TV, virtually every writers room is number of writers. They don't necessarily write all the scripts together, but they brainstorm, they collaborate on the outlines and on the structure, and then when they're doing the punch up rounds, you often have everyone throwing out jokes or having ideas and improving the script collaboratively. So realism, that was the big missing hole. That's where I started with. And then once we had the collaboration, a lot of people were switching to writer, using it as an add on on top of a final draft, or Celtics, which we are fully compatible with, where you can import their scripts and export them as well. But we didn't have all the features that you needed to make your only writing solution. So that was the sort of iterative process of getting, like, feedback from real writers who wanted it to be their only writing source to so much more convenient, but either had features that were in final draft and they liked and that was fine. I made those, or no one was doing but they just seemed like really good ideas, like the infinite revision history. So that doesn't, you know, come from anything other than a writer. So to say, hey, wouldn't be cool if I could see all my past versions of lines? And I realized we could do that super easily, or I could go back in time to a previous version of the script. And so I took notes like that and ideas like that. We're like, Yeah, we can do that. And so you could probably count 90% of the features in writer duet came from just launching a product super early, getting all that feedback from real writers and implementing all their ideas as efficiently as I could.

Dave Bullis 7:27
You know, I've actually used Celtics. I use Final Draft Do you remember Sophocles? Have you ever tried that software?

Guy Goldstein 7:33
So the funny thing about I have not tried because I don't think I can find it. I don't know if it's possible to find right now, but I actually maybe I'm pretty correct on that one, but I had a number of people say, Oh man, I remember this tournament philosophically, and apparently had a pretty good cult following field really liked it. So I don't know the backstory exactly, but I think there was a one guy kind of like me at the time now, where my company's getting a little bigger, but one guy who had made that kind of probably a similar person who just liked software for himself and for other writers.

Dave Bullis 8:00
Yeah, exactly. And what happened was he just basically sold the company to, I think, final draft, and they basically bought the company. They bought the company, and then just shuttered it. And basically, I actually, when he, I think when he sold it, he actually uploaded the code or something right to site, or something like that, and somebody, or just, basically, I think he just didn't make a big stink out of somebody uploaded a pirated copy now, because he doesn't own it anymore, and it's they're closing it down anyway. So I remember a friend of mine got gave it to me on again, here we go again with flash drives. He gave it to me on a flash drive, and he goes, here, just use this, and I use that for years. And then I found, then I use like, I kind of like, weaned in the Celtics, and then final draft. And then I did, like, I've tried, like, fade in. And also, what is that Scrivener? And I know I do that, yeah, I mean, I think

Guy Goldstein 8:49
That's a lot of front people. And it's funny, because we always, as writers should not be worried about the software we're using. Like, it's actually stupid to obsess over it when the words on the script come out the same either way. Like that's a truth. I am a person who makes software and still believes you should not obsess over it, but I believe you should use the best tools for what you're doing every day, hopefully, or a large percent of your days. And I feel like people organically just try different things because they're just kind of curious what's out there. And in the end, it doesn't really make a difference to your writing, to the results of your writing, but it makes a difference to your process, like it makes it easier to put words on paper. And if we do anything if, for example, if you're collaborating and you don't have to wait for an email from your co writer, or if you're going to you want to see man at this really funny line and writer, it has a feature where you can actually search back in time and find any version of your script with a line that maybe was removed or whatever at some point. And you're like, damn, I just can't remember what draft it's in. I want to look through my backups with writer. You just find it. And little features like that are the things that I think people not should obsess over, but should look for, because it's going to actually make their writing life better. So I got two sides to where I'm like, Yes, you should not have religious wars over what software you use. Whatever makes you happy is cool, but you should find something that actually makes your writing more effective.

Dave Bullis 10:21
Yeah, I concur. Because I know, you know, I, you and I both work in it, and I, and really, I that kind of gives us a different sort of view of software and and using it. But, you know, you get, it should be all about the writing. I agree 110% and I think that that's what sort of stops a lot of people, because they sort of, they want to obsess. I mean, I'm, for instance guy. I had a friend of mine who actually used Microsoft Word to write a screenplay. And I actually said, Are you just a glutton for passionate like I said, How would you even format that? And he actually had a method, and the method was he would know no indents for, for exposition slash action, to indents for, I think it was characters. No, I'm sorry. It was like, three in dense for, like, dialog and four in dense for, I mean, my God, I I was like, how could you possibly do this without, like, just like, throwing your laptop out the window. But, you know, and that's why I like the screenwriting software that we've seen now, because, again, with red duet, you can actually, you know it, you don't have to worry about formatting it correctly. You know what? I mean, it's all that is done for you.

Guy Goldstein 11:24
Yeah. And that's like, the goal of any, I mean, software in general, in my opinion, is, whatever you're trying to do, you should not realize you're even using software, is my goal. Like, it just happens, like you just start hitting keys and the right thing just happens as much as possible. Like, no one goes to a software not no one, but very few people go thinking, Man, do I want to spend two days learning this, like you just want to start using it, start writing. And so I think with with what we do and what we try to accomplish is making it as seamless as possible for a person who's never even written a screenplay before, like one of the early decisions we made when the first ones was almost I think everyone slash, almost everyone in the other products have a drop down menu where you select character or dialog or whatever. And of course, you have tab and enter etc shortcuts. But this drop down menu, first of all, it's a convenient to click twice, doesn't really tell you any information about what a slug line is, or seen a character, why you would use one. And so one of the first decisions you made is having big buttons for each one on the top of the script, and if you mouse over them, it actually explains, here's when you would use this, and here's what it is, and doesn't get in your way. It's not like we're wasting space, because the buttons, you know, line up really nicely and it doesn't kill you, but little things like that, just trying to make it so a new writer can jump in, or an old writer can, you know, more effectively figure out what they're trying to accomplish. Is a big part of it, just to make it easy, so you're not spending time worrying about the software.

Dave Bullis 12:52
Yeah, and that's where he's basically like, okay, look, you'll see the interface. And you're like, look, let's just get down to writing. Yeah, exactly now. And we can sort of, you know, unconsciously do this, you know, because that way you're just sort of flowing into the story. And that's something to want to ask you guy, when you're coding and you're, you know, obviously you're a programmer, Did did you find that when you're coding and you're, you're building something like writer duet? Is it similar to how you write a screenplay at the same time? So basically, when you, because I know you've written screenplays as well. So when you're sort of writing screenplays, and then also you're coding, do you notice if there's any sort of parallels to the two?

Guy Goldstein 13:29
I do a huge amount. And I don't know if this is true universally, but I see a lot of engineers, programmers, people who are pretty technical, who are interested in screenwriting, maybe more so than they'd be interested in other creative writing things, because there's a lot of technical stuff that goes into a screenplay, and not just technical and sense of production, like technical in the sense of story structure that doesn't have to be there, but tends to exist. And so as someone who with code, you know you have a very, very big vision that has to be broken apart into tractable pieces, and each of those tractable pieces has to accomplish its role. And then you say, Well, how effective they can do that? What can you make better this thing? And that's how I look at a script. Like, what is my big vision? What am I trying to accomplish? Okay, well, I'm trying to tell a story about, you know, something important to me, whatever that is. How do I want to reflect that? And then you kind of break into, well, what are the individual components? How do the components lead up to it? The ones are scenes, and how does each scene contribute to the act, or whatever the sequence? How does it affect other characters who are engaged in the story? And each storyline, like, if you're technical, each scene could be considered a function, right? And each storyline is there. Each character is a variable that kind of goes through different functions. I don't know it is not analogous exactly, but I do take that same idea of really high level structure from try to accomplish broken into really small pieces. And what I think has made me like an effective programmer and less effective writer is I like. Seeing little, tiny things. I like, Okay, I'll just make this one simple thing. I'll make this on that connect here. I like the connections between two things. So even when I'm coding, I have this like, oh man, if I make this feature, that means we can do this other thing over here. And I get really excited and like, what if we did this? And it's the same with a screenplay where, like, whoa, if this character picks up a knife in this scene, that's foreshadowing to this other moment where they're going to pick up a gun, and you're like, whatever it is. And those connections are, I think, what makes sometimes even they don't get so they get noticed by the casual viewer of a movie or person looking at the product. But that's what makes really things exciting. When they connect perfectly. Everything lines up the way you wouldn't have realized, if you're just one little part of it.

Dave Bullis 15:41
Yeah, you know, I've actually looked into coding, and, you know, when I've, I know a little bit of HTML and stuff like that, but just very little bit. And when I started getting into it, I kind of noticed that would be a parallel. The reason being, you know, it's, you have to actually, you know, there's breaks in the line, there's all sorts of stuff. And again, I'm nowhere near as good as you and programming, but I kind I could see some kind of parallel. And then when I saw writers duet, I read a duet, I'm sorry, and, you know, it's kind of, I just wanted to make sure I asked that parallel question, because I imagine there will be at some point. Because, I mean, what? You're obviously, you know you're writing code, you're taking it away. You know you're, you're almost like creating a scratch pad. You're, you know what I mean, and then you're trying to, sort of, you know, even when you go into stuff like GitHub, you know, a friend of mine who works for apples was telling me, hey, go on to GitHub. You'll see sample code. You could actually see how guys did all this stuff, and you could actually take it and and try to make your own stuff with it still, you know, it's still interesting stuff like that. And you know, that's why, again, I wouldn't have you on the show, because I think it's pretty interesting to talk about.

Guy Goldstein 16:42
Interesting to talk about. Yeah, the inspiration of most code is, in some ways, other code, right? You have an idea, you see something, one product, and you think, wow, that'd be really cool if I apply like I hear even it's funny, but I spent all my time in a programming text editor, and there are features I've implemented, or we've implemented in writer duet that either came from a text editor I was playing with I thought was cool, or personally, I'll give you example, I constantly have like something I'm editing in code, and then I have to jump somewhere else to see how it works, or I can remember how they connect, or whatever. And there's a feature we doesn't either it doesn't exist, or I just keep too stupid to find it in my text editor that I want to be implementing in writer duet for writers, because I needed so much, which was a pin drop, which is this, literally, you drop a pin in a location. You can drop as many as you want, and then I can read somewhere else and jump back to the previous location without what I actually do my text is I hit a key and I delete it, so I can press Undo and jump back there. But it's pain the neck. So with pins, is literally a feature that I just wanted myself for coding to make it easy to find. You know, maybe I have three or four locations that are all really related. So I dropped pins in each one of them to jump through them. So I have to constantly find where I was.

Dave Bullis 17:52
So what were one of the what was one of the toughest things to implement into writer duet, from boom, from, you know, having it out there and from screenwriters, obviously asking asking questions, you know, maybe asking for certain features. So what was there any that come to mind which were the toughest to implement?

Guy Goldstein 18:10
Yeah, one that we did relatively recently. And I can't say it wasn't worth it, but oh my God. What a freakin disaster the time was. We spent like, three months on what I think is actually not the most important thing we've done, which is really cool. It's hard to say it was worth three months, but you can in writer do we have have parallel columns? And we already had done dual dialog, where you could have multiple characters talking at once. We had done this fully expressive multi column layout where you could have page breaks in the middle, they got parallel pages. Didn't really matter. And so you can write parallel scenes for virtual reality. You could have different directions, where you literally had two scenes going on at once. So if your camera's looking one way, or your characters look one way, see one thing different another. And it's also good for documentaries where you do what's called audio visual layout, where you have the audio on one side and the visual on the other. And that way for like, voiceovers and things like that, you can line it up correctly, because this single, non parallel you'd have to write while video is going on, and voiceover, whatever it is. So the parallel stuff was actually super complicated. It was one of those things that, in my head it was like, oh, man, it's gonna take like, oh, man, it's gonna take like, a month. And I thought that was bad, and it was a it was brutal. But yeah, there have been a few things, I think, things that we've actually done that have been maybe the most successful and impactful, haven't been that hard. Actually. They've been things that made sense, and you can kind of think about how they'd fit. And as a programmer, and same thing for a screenwriter, I think, is you have to find things that fit into the vision pretty well, where, if you're trying to accomplish something, And I'm guilty of the opposite of this, where the bad version, where you get distracted, you think, oh, man, this would be so cool if we just one little thing, or we could do this feature, and maybe it doesn't serve the product or the screenplay, even though it's a cool idea, and you have to kill your darlings. You have to not necessarily delete features, although sometimes you do, but you have to make decisions that serve the bigger vision, instead of necessarily being the coolest thing you could do that moment or the best idea, because in the end, you could do anything in your screenplay. You could make the absolute every detail exactly the way you wanted it, every joke, every whatever. But how many years are you going to spend on that screenplay? Will you ever release it to anybody? Will you ever actually make it if you if that's your goal, which hopefully is for a lot of people. So I think you have to kind of, you know, say this, I'm trying to accomplish. This is how I'm going to get there. These are the things that fit with that vision. And mostly that doesn't turn out to be too hard, because it all kind of works together to make what you want instead of 10 different things that don't really fit.

Dave Bullis 21:06
And you know, as we talk also about all the features and stuff like that, I know, you know, writer duet 3.0 is actually launching tomorrow, which is June the first. But when this comes out, it'll be a few days after but, but June the first. Writer 3.0 is coming out. So, you know, I know there's a ton of new features coming out for it. The biggest one is the mobile app, which I am huge, huge, huge about. And I know a lot of people go, how can you write a screenplay on a phone? And I say, well, When? When? When? Most phones now the size of iPads, you know, it's kind of easy, right?

Guy Goldstein 21:37
Yeah, it's actually interesting. And so, just to clarify, we're coming out, you know, it's called the public base. Called the public beta. We've been in private beta. We're kind of let people join in tomorrow, and thereafter we'll, we'll see how long that phase goes before we got to roll out every single person. But to answer your question, like, about what it is with mobile, I don't think it's a ideal writing platform for many people, though, I should take that back, because mobile doesn't mean just phones, it means iPads, it means Android tablets, etc. So having a mobile on your on your iPad actually works pretty well. A lot of people were telling me they were using where to do it on their iPad. We're just making a better experience as an app. But for me personally, I don't think I would write an entire stream play, but I think we maybe talked about earlier or whatever. But when you have inspiration, you want to put it down somewhere. And if you could just have your screenwriting program with you, no matter where you are, and always jotting down ideas, making notes, reading scripts on your phone in just an easier way, that's, I think, the ideal use case if you, if you want to sit down there and write 200 page script, 20 page gift or whatever, on your phone. God bless. But I wouldn't do that probably.

Dave Bullis 22:46
Yeah, I find it's good though, if you ever have to actually, just like, if you're writing on your laptop, for instance, and you have to go out somewhere, and you know, you're in line somewhere, and you're like, Oh, crap, that idea, you know, and you can actually just pop open your screenplay, maybe write a line or two. The reason I like that better than doing opening something like, let's say, Evernote, is because, again, everything's in one place now, yeah, and I know I don't have, I'm sorry

Guy Goldstein 23:09
I see, yeah, everything synced up in real time, so you don't have to worry about, did you transfer that scene in? Did you lose some work or whatever?

Dave Bullis 23:15
Yeah, because then when I get home, I have to, you know, open up Evernote, make sure I find that, put it back in there. And now go, Okay, now, now we're back to where we were with that's why I like the idea of everything in one's one place. That way I'm not constantly bouncing around the different apps and stuff like that shuttle in so, and I know you were talking about, it's going into public beta. So can you talk about, like, some of the other features that are going to be, you know, seen invited duet

Guy Goldstein 23:38
Yeah. So there are a bunch. But at the high level, like the big things, one of the coolest ones, I think, is that we implemented what we're calling drafts, or branch drafts. And so the branches allow you to, first of all, you can already export an old version right into it. Anytime you go back to, like, three days ago at 4:15pm you can just find any, any version ever. But with branches, you can go back in time, and you can actually keep writing from that in the same script. So without, like necessarily opening a whole new document, having two versions of your script, you have two branches within your script. And so what this lets you do is, first of all, easily jump to any point, just see what it looks like, but also have two different ideas, and you can say, hey, well, you know what, I went off this running for last week. You didn't necessarily work though. I wanted it to. I write some other stuff, and then maybe you wind up merging it together. You can, kind of like, merge branches if you need to. Or you can have a different version that you share your script with somebody say, hey, which one do you like better without having these two manual documents that you have to deal with? You know, these branches, and what we're doing this is, that's what the current rendition, current rendition in WD three. But the system is going to actually allow you to do much more than this. So we're going to allow you to do, for example, we're calling ghost abode, where you can, for example, you have a co writer and you have an idea that isn't necessarily ready for your co writer to see, but you don't want to be writing another script. Because you want to see what they're doing all their stuff is, let's go say it ready for live. But your stuff is more private at the time, so you can go into ghost mode, where you're getting all their updates, but they're not seeing what you're doing in this branch. And then you can toggle back to the main branch and right from there, and they see it, and you can toggle back to your ghost branch. And this is actually a very common word, like I said before. We actually take ideas from the world of technology and programming. So this is basically how GitHub, common repository for programmers, works, where you have multiple versions of your code, and I'm working on a branch that is potentially buggy right now, but I'm going to make sure it works by the time I merge it with the main branch. And so along to do that in the screenplay, I think is really interesting, even for yourself, like, so you can have, you know, a producer's draft that you turn in, and then you can kind of go off and write in a different direction, and then your producer gives you notes. You're like, shoot, I haven't finished this whole other storyline. Well, I'll fix their notes now, but you don't have to have now two different copies of the script. It all automatically. Can merge anytime you want. So that's probably one of the bigger things. They also have new stuff, notifications inside the website and app itself. We have, let's see some other Oh yeah, we have a tagger. We're actually launching our own Tiger finally, which are pretty heavily requested feature. And Tiger is going to do two things. So if you're familiar with the final draft tag, it allows you to tag props, characters, etc. So you could do call sheets, and you can set up for scheduling, etc. But what we're doing is that, and we're letting you tag based on plot points. So you can have a story, B, story, etc, tag those, and then you can filter just one set of text. So you can say, hey, just show me the a story, and everything else in your script that does not match that. Tag is hidden, and you just seeing one storyline, and you edit it, it's going into the main document, but you're seeing one view. And when I said before about like you have to make sure things fit together in a vision where our vision is for screenwriting is actually, really does the branches and the tags, I think those kind of tie really well together, where you can have any any number of versions of your scripts. You can go off in any number of directions, and you can reduce any single direction to the part you're looking for, the part that you're interested in. So if you just want to see one character's dialog, you can pull up that one character style. If you want to see the scenes of characters in or the lines that have some, you know, prop and or whatever you can find whatever you're looking for and simplify your script to just those pieces. You don't have to see 120 pages all the time. You can look at three pages that are just the parts relevant to you

Dave Bullis 27:30
And see stuff like that. Is really, really cool. I also like that ghost mode, yeah, because I you know, and and the whole idea of collaboration too. I also like the idea of, even if you don't have a co writer, if I have to show it to somebody anyway, rather than email, I can just post it on there, send them a link. And you know what I mean, and I don't have to worry about, here's the here's the script, and then you know what I mean, and then you know they're gonna go, oh, I don't have Adobe Reader or whatever. I mean, it's stuff like that is, is also, I've noticed that over the years, like little things like that, but they add up. You know, it's not just one little thing, right? It's 10,000 little things said that add up to this huge amount of time. So and then again, obviously, when you're using all these different features, and then when you actually, really, are really, really getting into it. I mean, that's when, you know, you can actually, again, like we're saying, it just, you can subconsciously start doing a lot of this stuff.

Guy Goldstein 28:23
Yeah, and they know the reader was a good one in general. I we haven't done exactly the version I want for this, but we have a read only mode, which allows, you, know, me, to invite you to my script, and you can't edit it, but you can add notes. And why that's convenient versus a PDF is the notes can be done in line where they actually are relevant. So you can go through I like, well, I have no idea what's going on, or why did she say this? Or, Wow, this is really funny, or whatever you want to give and so you can put that directly in the script. And then if I have several people reading, I can see all the notes in one place. We have another future version of this plan where we're going to make it like right now, I think it's not really meant for if I'm going to send it out to 1000 people and just like, get all their feedback. Just like get all their feedback. It's not really built for that. It's more meant for maybe a producer or a few, like important people to the script we want to do eventually is that version where it essentially replaces a PDF, where I send out my script to any number of people. They can all come into the script. They can all read it. They can't necessarily see what each other, who else is there. They can, they can't see each other, people, each other's comments. They just make their own. You see the collection of everything, but it's kind of a cheap way to share your script with getting a lot of people's feedback collected to one place. That's the vision on that feature.

Dave Bullis 29:34
So, so guy, has there ever been anybody that you've that you've heard about, you've used writer duet, who's just who you've heard about, who's just been you've been blown away by, like, any, like, any, like, famous people, or anything like that, where you're like, Oh, my God, they're using, you know, my program. Who would have thought, right?

Guy Goldstein 29:50
Yeah, it happens all the time, and it's interesting exactly what he said it, because I have no reason to know. I don't look at who's using our product. Sometimes I find out because he emailed me or whatever. I'm like, That name sounds familiar. Jump into Google. Like, wait a second. So we've had that number of times. Usually it says not insulting to everyone else, but I can tell when they're professional just based on the questions they ask, like, what they're writing to me about. I'm like, okay, you know you clearly are doing something real and that look. I'm like, Yeah, you're like, a shirt runner. We just found out recently, I was at a screening conference at Pittsburgh on a panel with the creator of downward dog, which is the new ABC show, and just coincidence that we were happy to be there, I guess, together. And I mentioned from writer duet. He's like, Oh yeah, we use writer duet. And I'm like, Oh, cool. I know it. You know, would never have found that out, except he happened to be there. And so we've got some pretty big show TV shows have used us. The next Spider Man movie coming out for my upcoming was written on review action, really excited about other pre major movies have come out. But the truth is, I don't even know. Like, for all I know there are dozens or hundreds of TV shows and movies that are just using it. Like, we found out another TV show recently, I can't remember the name, even that we were talking you were trying to convince them to use it. We thought we found out they were already using it. Like, okay, let's the short conversation. So it comes off a lot, and hopefully there's a tipping point where we're no longer, we're still gonna be excited that they're using it, but we're not gonna be surprised. We're gonna be like, Yeah, of course, using it. It's just like, Final Draft really is the industry standard at this time. Like most TV shows, most feature films are written on it. We, you know, we don't think that's going to be the case at some point, hopefully in the pretty near future.

Dave Bullis 31:48
Yeah, you know. And you have a good point too, you know, the new spider movie is, is using red duet. So, you know, one of the old arguments was, Well, hey, you have to use the industry standard, which, because reason is, is because everybody can't have a different page five or a different page 20. And also, because this is what everyone uses to sort of break down the script. You know, this is what the prop department has to go through the script and find out what props, you know what I mean. And they have to break everything down. You have to bring a schedule out of this script. And as, you know, as this happens. So when, when someone, something like this new Spider Man movie is using rare duet, you know, are you ever planning on actually, just sort of making it? Also, I know this isn't about screenwriting, but making like a sort of almost like a feature that would help you with like, you know, making like day out of days and stuff like that.

Guy Goldstein 32:36
So the easy answer is no, and there's a good reason for this. Number one is, we don't really, I don't know. I don't use scheduling stuff because I'm not a good enough writer that I've been produced, but I don't feel qualified to make that software so and I actually feel like other people have done a reasonable job. I know some people who are making products like that now new versions. You actually learned about one today that I hadn't heard of before, that's doing it, apparently doing a reasonable job on the cloud. So I'm not convinced that there's a need for us to do that, and we don't want to create redundant software just because us doing it. If we can actually make something better, we're going to make it better if we can take a process that is just really not good. And the other thing is, we think there's so much more like. I don't know what other people see in the screenwriting world, but we see so many features that could be added, and so much stuff that we can do in terms of outline, in terms of structure, and they're not like, and not to be ridiculing other products, but there's some competitive screening products that will come out with things that I think are just there to have a feature with a name so you can advertise it. And I don't think actually help writers necessarily. Some might, but I want to create stuff that actually makes creativity more fluid, more engaging, more collaborative. And that's that's the stuff we're going to worry about, like the technical stuff on the scheduling and budgeting side, we just did introduce Tiger. So now you can, like, tag up your script and p3 where you can then import it into a scheduling program and go from there. But I don't know. I'm not saying this is the end, but my opinion is we're about as late in the production cycle. Want to go we want to go earlier. We want to help people in their initial creativity. Like we were just talking to one of our users at this really cool production studio in town in Austin where we are, and he was talking about how he used it to but he does not use regular action for this. He uses other products to write a pitch for his treatment, for his stuff before it goes to producers. And I was like, well, that's really interesting. Like, that's a interesting problem of, how did you construct that in a really efficient way? Because he told me, like, you might spend a week just preparing this sort of pitch material that isn't necessarily going to be used ever again. It's more just to give people the idea, then he's gonna go right. The script, like, if we could help you do the part that is artistically interesting, ie, or EG, I guess, but the character breakdowns, the plot stuff, the log lines, those are helpful as a creator, but the stuff that makes it look cool, like, visually, yeah, that's just something that anyone creative or not could kind of or not create. A writer or not. Could make what if we can help you formalize some sort of creative stuff, like, like the character breakouts, pre writing even. So, yeah, I think that's the vision. How do we help more? And then this beyond that, honestly, we're going to do stuff that goes beyond screenwriting. We're just interested in creative writing and creativity in general. Like, how can we help people have their ideas and express them faster and more efficiently in a more engaging way.

Dave Bullis 35:47
You know, one feature that I would like to pitch guy is, and this is very this is just, you know, pie in the sky taking, for what it's worth, is, I always would like to see a more involved scratch pad, yeah. And what I mean by that is, is a scratch pad that is almost like it can format, but it also it meaning it's very flexible, what it can do. And, you know, it's kind of like Futurama. There's a funny quote in Futurama, you know, there was a talk about, hey, it was great in a day, scientist invented magic. But I know it's kind of, I'm kind of, what I'm describing is like this all encompassing, but, you know, perfect thing, but, but I just wanted to say more engaging scratch pad. I remember using Scratch pads before, and, you know, I think it was honest to god Sophocles. But that's just something that that I nothing, I mean, like final draft and and fade in and and Scrivener and all those, they haven't done that anywhere near as well. And honestly, that's what an idea when a pitch to you was just a more involved scratch pad where, basically, you know, you can sort of let your ideas flow a little bit better. Because sometimes, you know, when you're actually in that script, you know, some people have a lot of like, they don't want to actually write a scene out. They rather, you know what I mean, because it almost feels permanent. And if you've doing the script, I know sometimes how, you know, how writers sometimes think it's almost like, Oh, my God, I can hit the delete button. So that's just one of the features that I would just like to see. And honestly, if you don't see a guy, believe me, I understand, but, but, but that would be cool to see.

Guy Goldstein 37:27
Well, good news for you, so go all right, yeah. So actually, one of the other features, it's, to me, it's not a huge one, but maybe it's a lot of people. Hopefully it'll be really more important than you. I realized is. So the two features, one is existing, and that's the one or will exist in w3 which is you can actually have multiple scripts, any number, in fact, open in one single document. So you have your main script editor, and then you have these little floating windows, and you can open, you know, probably there's a practical limitation of how many you want to have open, but you have any number sitting on the side, and they can be like scratch pad documents. You can put whatever you want in each one of them. You can have one where you put, like, character stuff, or you put scenes that you're not sure about. You can have one that you use for, like, just internal notes, like personal notes section, or whatever you use them for. And so you have all those scripts open in this little like draggable section that you can move around so you can structure your screen however you want. That is coming in version three, and that's fully it's a screenplay writing is the same, right? Duet, just a sort of mini version of it. And you can write, you know, either text or notes, or you can actually write full scenes with character and dialog, etc. And then the other thing, and this is the one that is to me, like the big three point whatever, 3.5 you know, whatever now you want to call it's not quite big enough for call it's not quite big enough for four, let's say. But the is a total revamp of how people do outlining and scratch patches, like maybe even more thinking of than the sort of mini editor one. And what that is to me, and this is like I got into that before, is the idea of filtering. So right now, you can construct these tags inside writer duet. You tag, this is a story, you start whatever, and you can filter out just the content you want. Well, what if you applied those filters in a sort of broad way where we say, Hey, these are outline notes, or these are scratch pad scenes, or whatever they are, and you could freely write those right inside your script, but you knew they weren't real. You knew they were just like virtual. They were tagged as sort of segregated. And maybe by default you hit those, or maybe by default you just saw those, whatever mode you were in of looking at your script, and then the outliner could filter your script. Say, Hey, just show me the outliner notes for Scene A, next one, Scene B, since C. And these are all actual, real text editors. And so the idea is you can write whatever you want freely, and you just use these tags to explain essentially what they are. Type a semantic meaning to you. It's your own thing. And then you filter in or filter out the pieces that you do or don't want. So I think that's exactly what you know. Those two things, I think, kind of combine to be what you're really looking for, which is the freedom to just put ideas down as quickly as you have them, without the feeling of now their permit, and you can dig the opposite. Another feature we call it really soon, is so when you're writing the script, you delete something, and that actually feels really permanent, as well as not with Priority vision history, you can always go back. You can say, oh, man, there's great line with tacos, and search for tacos, you find that line that's that's been deleted, but it still feels permanent. And so what we're going to do is have a feature where, like, just then, you know, within a keystroke, whatever keystroke we come up with is delete and save to, like, repository or whatever, and we'll just have that little document that's, you know, maybe visible, maybe not, but just hiding on the side that's keeping track of all this content that you were deleting, but Then you don't have to worry about it being gone. You have this other second script being created as you go with all your just ideas that were working. So I think that's what you what you're leading to. I think is what we're going for as well.

Dave Bullis 41:14
Yeah, because that is what I was going for. Because when you're writing and you're doing all this sort of thing. You're writing all these scenes out, and you're writing ideas, and you're doing this, and you're kind of, sometimes you're jumping back and forth. You kind of don't want to put a scene in there that might not fit later on, because then you're like, later on, you're like, Oh, what the hell was this thing? You know what I mean? And then it's kind of, you know, it's stuck in there. And if you again, it feels permanent. So I think with a with a more of like a flexible scratch pad, that's what I was going for. But, but, see guy, you read my mind, you know exactly what I was going to ask for.

Guy Goldstein 41:44
Yeah. I mean this, the short version is there are two things we've learned. One is being a writer ourselves, like we're all the team is five full time, two part time now, and plus two dogs, so they get to have a Lipton. So we're all like writers and filmmakers. Our programming team is all it's a creative variety of film. So because of that, we understand, like, you know, not necessarily before you have the idea, but as soon as you said it, I'm like, I know why you want that, and I don't just know the technical implementation. I kind of understand how you use it. I can think of me, oh, well, what if you do this other thing? Or I can take suggestions, because we're also super interested in listening to to users. And because of that, like not to say, you know, it's not really when anyone comes up with it, but we just sort of wait sometimes, when we hear one person suggest a feature, like a good idea, and then we just gotta wait. And then, you know, as another other person suggests the same thing, like, Huh, okay, that's interesting. And just because, in the beginning, I would just do everything, because we had pretty limited features that when I started four years ago, so I could do it all. It was just me at the time. So it's pretty easy to quickly iterate as you bigger. We don't necessarily have that liberty. We have too many users to listen to every single feature, but we just sort of track, hey, people keep asking for exactly what you're talking about, like a scratch pad and outline, or better ways to do that. And we're gonna, you know, probably have hundreds more features suggested by users over the next six months or so. And so it's just, you know, keep coming. So you got other ones, you know, anyone you and everyone listening, we're here to not necessarily solve the creative process, because I don't think that means anything, but we're here to help people be creative in a way that that works for them, whatever that means.

Dave Bullis 43:26
And, you know, and that is fantastic. And, you know, because guy we've been talking for about, you know, maybe 40 minutes, roughly, you know, is there anything that we didn't discuss that you may wanted to talk about, or anything you want to say to sort of put a period at the end of this whole conversation?

Guy Goldstein 43:39
No. I mean, ultimately, I think the thing that I want people to take away is they should find where tools, you know, make them more effective at what they're doing. If you're writing and you're happy with your writing process, I don't have a problem if you want to use Celtics or anything else or found final draft. I just think that if you're not happy with the process, the things that annoy you, if you're like, Yeah, well, it's fine, but it's not if it doesn't excite you every time you open up those regarding product, maybe that's not the right one for you. Want something that inspires you more creative and and if we don't do that, then we're not the right ones either. It's just, you know, we always want to feel to find that that perfect, perfect tool for their use.

Dave Bullis 44:19
Yeah, and again, you know, I think writer duet is a perfect tool, because, again, even guys like me who is afraid of the cloud, because, again, if I'm at somewhere and I can't download that script, but then again, you solve that with the app. And I want to give a shout out to Mike Bierman, who's actually been on the podcast before. And guy you know, you and I both know Mike. He runs the screenwriters who can actually write Facebook group. He is the one who actually got me into writer duet. And he's he was one who said, You know what? They have an app, and it actually solves all those problems.

Guy Goldstein 44:49
I gotta say, no shot to Mike. Hope he's listening. Hey, Mike. And then this is to all our users actually like we do no marketing. If you want to like Google Student learning software, we're finally. The first page now, but you'll never see an ad right now. You see an ad for writer duet, and we don't do like Facebook ads. We've tried a few, probably spent a couple 100 bucks on Facebook ads just to see what happened. And the answer was, nothing. We don't market. And the reason is, final draft is really good at marketing. Like, they've done a great job. And if I had to, like, if I could be as good as they are marketing, I would trust me. So we don't, we just sort of say, Hey, we're making what we think is the best product. And people like Mike just really got attached to it because he was using it. It helped him in some ways, and he could honestly recommend it, and he did. And that group, I don't know what the percents are, but it's pretty high. Percent of writers in that group use writer duet because, like, introduced it to them, and then they really liked it. And they would then, you know, next person who asked, Hey, you're having a problem with the screening program, or I'm just curious, what's out there, all the other members would say, Oh yeah, I use it too. And they would get excited. And, you know, it's a compliment to us, some self compliment, I guess. But it's really a testament to me how people in the screening community are willing to not only give back to us by getting their future ideas, but help each other by, to me, advertising with the best product. And I guess thank you to everyone who does that, and also please continue. That's my personal one, because in the end of the day, like writers are here to help other writers, that's why you do this podcast. I'm guessing. It's not for all the money they pay you to do it. You're just here like to help a creative community, and that's what we're here for as well.

Dave Bullis 46:31
Yeah, honestly, guy, the whole story behind this podcast is, you know, I used to do a lot of creative work, I got stifled, and right around 2014 I decided to start this podcast the for a lot of reasons, and and I'm sure all the listeners who've actually listened since episode one, which there actually are people as shocked as I am, they've actually they're probably saying, No, don't tell this whole story again. So I'll spare everybody from telling it again. But, but that was the idea, though. The the short of it is it just to do something creative and something fun. And each week, that's why I say this. This is like a film school, an audio film school, because each week I'm bringing in a different person who has an entirely different background, screenwriters, producers, directors, actors, marketing, people. I mean, you name it. I've had him on the show. I mean, I hell. I've had Cassie overs on here, who was the executive producer Dallas Buyers Club, yeah, you know? I mean, it's just like, I mean, he said, Yes, why? I have no idea. But I was like, Okay, I've had Mark bien stock, who's producer for M. Night Shyamalan stuff. I mean, it's just been, you know, I mean, and then I just been blown away by like, all the talented people, like yourself, guy who I've had on this podcast. And it is a small world too, because you both know Mike Biermann, so it's just a such a small world. It's just getting smaller.

Guy Goldstein 47:44
Yeah, writers, like writers, are so isolated sometimes, just that we don't know this from writing. You kind of get in that mode and you're lonely. Don't stay in there. And that's my biggest recommendation. They kind of find communities, find Facebook group. So there's actually right as one. There's a really good Reddit community for screenwriters where it's even if you never contribute anything. Just I go there obsessively, admittedly, and even sometimes I like see writer do add questions on there, and I just kind of wait and sometimes see if anyone else is going to answer this before I do. I just really enjoy the communities that have been formed around such an isolated activity as writing and the people are willing to give back and contribute. So hopefully everyone gets to participate in those,

Dave Bullis 48:27
Yeah, and that is a very good facebook page, too, and it's not very, very common to actually get a really awesome Facebook page where everyone's actually helping each other out. Usually, as you know, guys social media, if you have like, a Facebook page, it usually ends up in like, some kind of flame war, where it's like people fighting over absolutely nothing. And you know, because, I mean, I've seen that tons of times, you know what I mean, and that's why I've kind of stayed away for a lot of those groups. But that one group is amazing, the screen readers you can actually write, and I'll link to that in the show notes as well. But But, guy, it's been excellent having you on and we will find you out online.

Guy Goldstein 49:07
You can find us on Twitter, at writer duets, I think Facebook/writerduet, or whatever the URL is for a group. Yeah, you'll see me around. I'm pretty I'm pretty out there. So if you catch me in the Reddit forum or the screeners can actually write, you'll find me pretty fast. So don't, don't shower. Saying hi anyone out there,

Dave Bullis 49:26
And I will link to all of guys links in the show notes, as well as a link to check out my duet. Guy, Guy, Goldstein. I just want to say thank you so much for coming on.

Guy Goldstein 50:04
Yeah, thank you again for having me. It's a really blast very good.