For several years now I’ve been building and using a LibreOffice macro package to format my plays. It helps my writing because I spend a lot less time manually formatting my plays, and a lot more time writing with a good state of flow. The key to my system is a simple markup language that allows me to quickly bang out dialog and stage directions, which can be easily formatted into my word processor’s format at any time during my writing process. I can also easily convert back from my word processor’s format to my markup language, allowing me to do plain text tricks with my play (e.g. compare between different versions) which I would otherwise be unable to do easily.
It’s still a work in progress, and there are rough edges. Moreover, I’d love to be able to write adapters for this markup language to LaTeX, RTF, and Microsoft Word. Currently I’m too strapped for time to be able to do this, however.
This is what a page of dialog from Terms of Use looks like as markup:
## CC gets up to retrieve the V-HELM, but MARTHA is quicker, and she gets it first.
/cc/ Give me that.
/m/ CC, this is an _intervention_.
/cc/ What?
/m/ I love you, and I can't let you do this to yourself any more.
/cc/ Martha, stop being ridiculous!
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/m/ I can't let you do this to _us_ any more.
/cc/ What are you gonna do with that?
/m/ You want it? Come and take it from me.
## A BEAT.
Now here is what it looks like on the page:
If you’ve spent any time writing stage plays, you will probably imagine what a time saver this can be.