Switching from Final Draft without losing your reads

Switching screenwriting tools is not a weekend vanity project — it is a bet that your next rewrite will be easier to navigate than your last. Final Draft earned its place in production offices, and Inkwell does not pretend otherwise. The switch that works is the one that keeps the handoff honest while you learn a few new primitives: save points, draft lines, and changes you can actually read. Here is the first hour, step by step.

Start from the FDX you actually want to continue

The most common switching mistake is importing the wrong file — the one that happens to be open, not the one you mean to keep writing. In Final Draft, export the exact revision you want to carry forward as a .fdx. If you have been working in revision mode, export the specific revision you intend to continue; locked-page numbering may want a fresh save point once it lands in Plot, so pick the version whose structure you trust.

Then open Plot, start a new screenplay, and choose Final Draft (.fdx) from the Import / Export menu. Inkwell imports both FDX and Fountain and exports FDX, Fountain, and industry-formatted PDF — so nothing you bring in is trapped, and nothing you write is locked to one tool.

Name the read before the rewrite

Before you change a single word, create a save point and describe why it exists: "Imported from Final Draft — Jun 20" or "Table read draft." A save point is an immutable, named moment you can always return to — the label is the whole value. When tomorrow's pages diverge from today's, that named moment is how you see exactly what moved, scene by scene, without a folder full of _FINAL_real.fdx files pretending to be version control.

This is the habit that makes the switch pay off. In Final Draft, history is something you reconstruct from filenames and memory. In Plot, history is a sequence of moments you named on purpose — and because they are structured snapshots rather than a pile of files, the tools that read them can be precise. That precision is the entire reason to switch, so build the habit on day one.

Try the alternate ending on a draft line, not a copy

When the room wants two versions of the third act, the Final Draft instinct is "Save As" — a second file that immediately starts drifting from the first. In Plot, open a draft line instead: a parallel version of the same screenplay where you can rewrite the ending freely without touching the original. When one version wins, incorporate the scenes you want back into your main line. No reconciling two files by hand, no wondering which one has the good version of scene 14.

Export when the room asks — not before

You do not have to leave Final Draft behind the day you import. Many writers draft in Plot and export FDX or PDF only when a coordinator or a table read needs a file. Export from the same Import / Export menu: PDF for reads, FDX when a downstream system expects Final Draft's format, Fountain when your pipeline wants lossless plain text. Because the export always reflects the save point you are on, what leaves the building is never a mystery.

One honest caveat, so there are no surprises in a production office: Inkwell's full production-revision workflow — locked pages, A-pages, and the WGA revision-colour sequence tied to each pass — is on the Pro roadmap, and compare pages mark it partial until it ships. Import preserves your structure today; if your immediate need is a fully locked shooting script with colour-tracked pages, keep Final Draft in the loop for that specific handoff and switch the drafting work over first. That is the switch that actually holds: bring the writing across now, keep the production handoff honest while the rest matures.