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Saturday, February 23, 2008

Zhura.com: Great (free) online Scriptwriting website




I found out about Zhura.com a few days ago from The Unknown Screenwriter's blog. As I'd just recently learned about Scripped.com from Alex Epstein's Complications Ensue blog and found it lacking, I was very curious to see if any version of an online scriptwriting software program could be viable.

Happily, I really like Zhura.com, and I'm planning on giving it a complete test-drive with a sitcom script I'm going to write with my brother (who's not a screenwriter and doesn't ever plan on buying or using Final Draft or Movie Magic). We've been tossing around this idea for a sitcom for about a year now, and Zhura.com, with it's great collaboration capabilities, will allow us to work on together (without having to involve exporting of pdfs and emailing notes).

So far, the technical people have been fantastic, responding to my suggestions and the glitches I've noticed. I look forward to seeing what they do with this.

They are competing with Scripped.com, which has since addressed some of the complaints users have had, such as auto-complete and typical tab/enter functions you find in most screenwriting programs. However, it still lags behind Zhura.com in features and ease of use. It'll be interesting to follow this battle. It'll be even more interesting to see what Final Draft and Movie Magic do to address these two challengers.

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