Pago is a screenwriting plugin for Vim that provides a keyboard-driven environment for creating film scripts. It applies established screenplay formatting conventions while retaining the editing facilities of Vim.
The plugin understands different types of screenplay elements, allowing writers to move between scene headings, action, dialogue, character names, parentheticals and transitions without manually adjusting the layout.
Pago was inspired by Alex Lance’s screenplay.vim plugin, which provided basic support for action, character names and dialogue. Pago extends this approach with additional element types and keyboard navigation.
The project was developed by Mike Zazaian. Its original code remains available, although it has not received meaningful development for many years.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Supports the six principal screenplay element types.
- Automatically applies appropriate indentation and alignment to each element.
- Press Tab to cycle through Action, Dialogue, Parenthetical, Character and Transition elements.
- Use Backspace to move backwards through empty screenplay elements.
- Automatically insert parentheses when creating a parenthetical element.
- Remove empty parentheses when switching to another element type.
- Capitalise scene headings, character names and transitions automatically.
- Right-align transition elements and insert the required punctuation.
- Create scene headings with automatic capitalisation and highlighting.
- Cycle between INT., EXT. and INT./EXT. scene prefixes.
- Insert appropriate spacing when moving between screenplay elements.
- Display the current element type in Vim’s status bar.
- Estimate screenplay page numbers using a 56-line-per-page convention.
- Navigate between elements using cursor keys and editing shortcuts.
- Automatically reformat Action and Dialogue paragraphs when text exceeds the configured width.
- Use Vim’s normal search, editing and text-processing functionality alongside screenplay commands.
Website: www.vim.org
Support:
Developer: Mike Zazaian
License: Public Domain
Related Software
| Script Writing Tools | |
|---|---|
| Trelby | Simple, powerful, full-featured program for writing movie screenplays |
| Manuskript | Use the snowflake method to grow your ideas |
| Screenwriter-mode | A plug-in for Emacs |
| Screenplain | Plain text to readable screenplay |
| LyX | The Hollywood document class equips LyX for script writing |
| Afterwriting | Post-processing tools for Fountain screenplay |
| Story Architect | Reinventing the screenwriting software |
| obsidian-fountain | Fountain support for Obsidian |
| lottie | Fountain screenplay editor |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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