To Buy or Not To Buy: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Script Book

Following on from my post yesterday about my favourite pick when it comes to screenwriting software (you can take a look here: http://goo.gl/P4XZpz), I have been reminded that in the not too distant future, a new Harry Potter book is being released! Be still, my beating heart!

But, don't get too excited just yet. 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts I and II' isn't going to be the type of Harry Potter book that everyone knows and loves, but instead, it is simply the released script-book-thing for the stage play of the same name. The book will be canon, and therefore I am a little torn, since I have purchased all the other Harry Potter books available; they were my childhood, and I still read them from time to time, often in the summer. Knowing that this new book will be the legitimate adventures of a post-Hogwarts, post-Voldemort Harry and his new family, including James and Albus Severus, I am naturally curious to see what JK Rowling has 'done with their future'.

But herein lies the problem. I loved the Harry Potter books, as did almost everyone I know, for Rowling's incredible writing style and imagination-expanding detailed description. This script is just that, a script, and so I wonder how friendly it will be to read, short of getting some friends together and performing the entire thing (parts I and II) in a living room. Furthermore, although Rowling's name is on it, it was co-written by Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, and I'm curious as to how much input JK actually had; I hope that she has poured just as much into this play/book as all of her others, rather than simply providing 'creative guidance'.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts I and II hasn't been released yet (and I'm currently contemplating whether to pre-order it) but this brief description can be found on the Pottermore website, the home of JK Rowling's new writings for the HP universe:

'It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.'

(https://www.pottermore.com/news/cursed-child-eighth-harry-potter-story)

I'm also slightly concerned by how mundane this plot synopsis sounds. I understand that this book is not about great struggles between immensely powerful wizards and it's not focused on the wonderfully dangerous Hogwarts castle, but even so I'm not sure Harry Potter should be reduced to starring in a family melodrama. But hey, perhaps I'm taking things too literally, and I am very ready to be proven wrong. 

Ultimately, I'm worried that if I don't like this new book, for whatever reason- whether it be formatting or the direction the characters are being taken in- it will spoil my enjoyment of the series, as the novel is 'canon', and if I had to ignore the fact it exists it will be like that fourth Indiana Jones film, the one no one can  ever talk about.

I'll probably end up pre-ordering this book anyway, but just wanted to get my blind first impressions down, early  doors, in the hopes that I'll have to redact each and every doubt after actually getting my hands on the thing, when it is released on 31st July.

Review: Screenwriting Software

I've only recently started looking for a good screenwriting program, as I wanted to find something to help me speed up the production of my uni work- formatting manually in word was a chore.

To this end, I undertook a relatively brief search into what programs were available and three in particular kept cropping up:

1/ Final Draft 

2/ Celtx

3/Trelby

Final Draft- looks like fruit loops, costs a whole lot more

Being a university student, and a first year no less, I do not have the kind of money to be splashing out on a purchase such as Final Draft. Although I have no doubt that it is a highly valuable piece of kit in the professional screenwriter's arsenal, I only wanted a free piece of software to get me going, and even after a month or so I still don't require all the bells and whistles that Final Draft can offer for creating my own short script pieces.

As for Celtx, it is a highly commendable free screenwriting package. Indeed, it is part of a larger Celtx suite including story boarding, radio script formatting, mind-mapping and several other useful creative tools. Again, my usage of these features would be fairly limited, but as they are offered for free (sort of, I'll get to that in a second) it is hard to complain. My user experience wasn't all that great to begin with. The web browser version didn't load text properly on my laptop, but I am using an older version of Windows, and therefore I'm relegated to an outdated version of Chrome. From what I can see, the page looks beautiful, and I have no doubt it will work fine on most computers. Knowing that the browser version was a bit, well, squiffy for me, I downloaded the iOS app in the hopes this would provide me with a way to write and edit on the go, and I was not disappointed. Celtx is what I use to get down basic skeletons of scripts when I'm out and about; it's funny what you can dream up when you're in a crowded, noisy space compared to what you might consider the ideal writing spot, in comfortable isolation. For me, the downside to Celtx (aside from my glitches out web browser viewing) is the so called 'freemium' model that separates features into basic and subscription only availability. Unlike what is often common with freemium products, my experience was not ruined by ads positively demanding I 'upgrade' to their full suite- ads are nowhere to be seen, and it  is only when you go to create a new project that you might realise some formats are locked. No, my qualms rest in my belief that what you see should be what you get- I'm not a fan of additional purchase models. Furthermore, all of the standard formats you will use are available in the basic, free version, so unless you are a professional, or seriously committed to creating a variety of different script styles, I see no reason to upgrade (other than to support the company that is). So recommended, but not perfect.

Celtx- Close, but no cigar.

Coming to number 3 on the list (number 3 in order of search priority, not ranked by brownie points awarded), I'd actually say that Trelby is the best screenwriting program available to newcomers, and it earns this mark of my respect for several reasons. Like final draft, and unlike Celtx, which requires an active internet connection for their browser version, Trelby is a downloadable program with a very trim file size, and can be used without being connected to the Internet. This makes it incredibly portable and handy when installed on a laptop or netbook.

Trelby is completely free with no hidden extras- though if so inclined, donations are welcomed by the developer, and they deserve it- and is certainly as fully featured as I could want. There is nothing I use on Celtx that Trelby doesn't do, and in fact nothing that Trelby doesn't do in an alltogether smarter way; this brings me to my next point.

Trelby- the smoothest screenwriting experience. Ssss.

The main reason why Trelby sits so well with me is it just so intuitive. Using the tab and enter keys, the prospective writer can change which mode they are writing in (scene heading, action, dialogue, stage directions etc.) completely fluidly and with great speed. After having used the program for a month I can't believe how comfortable it is to use. I must surely have halved the time it takes me to write a scene as I do not have to stop and click to add a new marker- as I might in Celtx. One simply has to type their heading, press enter, write their opening action, press tab, enter a character name, enter, dialogue, tab, action, enter, character and so on, and after a while this becomes second nature and no pauses for formatting are necessary. In short, Trelby is the best free, fully-featured, well-designed screenwriter I have come across. Oh, and did I mention it's free?

Final Draft: https://www.finaldraft.com/

Celtx: https://www.celtx.com/

Trelby: http://www.trelby.org/

All opinions are my own. But hey, they must be justified, otherwise, what's the point in giving them?

It's been a while

So given that I said I would not leave this blog hanging at the wayside, I seem to be doing a pretty poor job so far. It's been a very busy couple of weeks/months and every effort I have made (or at least planned to have made) has been foiled by looming deadlines and scary enrolment choices for my next year of university study.

None of these issues have gone away, and I am still very much weighed down by essays- I have one currently on the idea of the 'rhetoric of antithesis' as applied to the Moriscos of Spain and the transplanted Irish- but I desperately feel the need to post something, ANYTHING, to keep this blog alive.

So, here we are. This post serves somewhat as a prompt to get me writing again, but also it helps me to test out some new auto-posting rules which I have applied to the blog, which should help me to get things up a lot quicker. Furthermore, I can use this opportunity to shamelessly plug/ make people aware of my new twitter account, ironically to be found by the handle ' @WriterNamedMatt '. I am likely to post spontaneously and irrelevantly on this account, as I think is the norm, and hopefully this will spur me to chase up ideas with which I can write fully formed blog pieces in the future. Feel free to follow me on there.

I do have a couple of interesting ideas I want to explore at some point. Among them are the application of quantum physics to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (about as crazy as it sounds, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around my own train of thought before writing) and 'why the world needs ukulele' (which might be self evident, but I think someone should put it in words).

I have been doing a fair bit of work for my creative writing portfolio, in poetry and moreso in screenwriting as of late, so you may see snippets of that popping up every now and then. I'm planning to do some reviews of the resources that I use to help with my writing, whether educational websites, screenwriting software or places to find inspiration. Since I have exams coming up in the not too distant future, I may revisit some of my old revision sites and give a quick overview of those, which will hopefully be useful to anyone looking for good cramming corners.

Alright, signing off for now. Hopefully speak to you soon.