Adobe Story and Standard Screenplay Format

First of all, I would like to say that I love Adobe Story.

But I’ve just been reading “The Hollywood Standard” by Christopher Riley and I noticed that there are some elements of the standard that can’t be done in Adobe Story.

1. Scene Continueds. These should be able to be turned on and off, but according to Riley are required when scene numbers are added. When a scene goes over a page break:
   1. The word (CONTINUED) should be aligned right before the page break, and:
   2. The word CONTINUED: should begin the next page, and if scene numbers are turned on should be numbered. If it is the second page break in a scene it should read “CONTINUED: (2)”, etc.
2. Numbering on both sides. Scene numbers should be able to be set to go on both sides of a scene. This is standard practice, as some people have pointed out previously.
3. Dual dialogue. This one’s a big one.
4. Shot and scene heading should never be the last thing on the page.
5. The first page of the screenplay (that is, the one after the title page), should not be numbered.
6. The ability to add multiple columns on the title page.
7. When a series of scenes in a row are omitted, only one scene heading should be included:
   118      OMITTED
   thu
   121

There’s also a couple of things that you can do, but I’d prefer to be able to automate.

1. Pages should break at the end of a sentence.
2. With things like lyrics and poetry, if a line is too long for the dialogue, it should be indented. As is stands you are not able to add a hanging indent to a paragraph, and have to do it manually by adding a line break and a couple of spaces.

Most of these – with the exception of 3 and 4 - don’t matter to me at this stage. But if I ever start working professionally I’d like to be able to continue to use Adobe Story, so I hope the Adobe staff is working to implement these options. If you can do any of these things, let me know how .