Good screenwriting-specific collaboration software

Question

My brother and I want to work on a screenplay together and are looking for a true real-time collaboration software that is also secure. Plotbot shows edits by all parties in real-time, but you have to trust Plotbot to safeguard your script as it lives on their server. I have tried Celtx but it wasn't true real-time. In fact, we never could figure out what series of steps finally synced the scripts. It made me nervous that text would be lost.

Has anyone had a good experience working collaboratively on a screenplay and would like to share what tools they used?

Edit: I know tools like Google Docs exist and while it has good collaboration tools, it doesn't have screenwriting-specific tools like formatting, cards, timelines etc. I am not looking for collaborative writing tools but rather collaborative screenwriting tools.

Answer 1

Since we never put anything out on a public server, aka Cloud, I don't know if Trelby is what you need or not. On the bright side, it's FREE, so no harm in taking a look to see. I've never heard of Plotbot, but have used Celtx.

The number one screenwriting software is Final Draft. It is expensive, crashes often, and not universal among platforms. For this reason, serious screenwriters are drifting away from the slow behemoth.

Trelby is fast and easy to use. No known problems with it, other than copy n paste is difficult to master, unless they fixed this since the last time I used it.

Celtx had a slight delay that became more annoying the longer I used it. But as you pointed out, it's not real time and not truly collaborative.

We use a commercial server version of something that looks like Final Draft at work, and I know several are working on the same project at the same time from all over the country. But I'm not in that department, nor do I know if the home version has the same features. The only thing I can say for certain about Final Draft is it crashes way to often. Nor do they support universal publishers platforms. For these reasons I would not fork over the high price they want for it.

I wish I could give you a better information about Trelby. Those I know who use it, rave about it, so it must be good.

VTY Dutch