I'd like to take my drama scripts and format them like a japanese
novel (vertical text, left-to-right). (Later I would convert it to ePub
and read it on my e-reader or iPad. But let's forget about that for now).

Does anyone know an easy way to do this?
I tried doing veritcal text and copy/pasting, but that crashes OpenOffice.

For simplicity, it's ok to leave the timestamps in there (since
it helps for referencing the actual scene).

Thanks.

What kind of ereader do you have? I know for Kindles, there's no way to do vertical text with regular text files (with the exception of Aozora Bunko books, thanks to this site: http://a2k.aill.org, but even that's a workaround, and it makes it hard to select words).

EDIT: If you just want to view text files vertically, an Aozora Bunko formated text reader should do the trick. Like TxtMiru or something...

I have a Barnes&Noble Nook Simple Touch.

It can be hacked to run the Android Market.
So all Android apps are fair game.

I also have an iPad.

I just want something that:

1)Whenever there's a newline, it starts the next sentence at the top
of the page (vertically).
2)Allows me to highlight text and add notes.
3)Reads vertically top-to-bottom right-to-left.
4)iPad app would be an added bonus, since all iOS5 apps can now access the built-in jap-jap and jap-eng dictionaries.

NOTE: @SomeCallMeChris Thanks for the correction. I meant right to left.

Ah, I don't know too much about Android or iPad apps... Usually the only apps that display text vertically (that I know of) are Aozora Bunko formated text reader apps, like Vertical Text Viewer (Android), Skybook (iPad), or iBunkoHD(iPad), but there might be an app I don't know about...

I don't have any idea how to do what you want, but... if you want it the same as other Japanese vertical text, it's top-to-bottom and right-to-left, not left-to-right. If you really want left-to-right you're going to have a lot more trouble since there's not likely to be much software that would do that with Japanese text!

Thanks guys.

Maybe I just need to figure out how to make Aozora Bunko formatted text files from
my drama scripts.

I'll check out Skybook,iBunkoHD, and TxtMiru.

As for the complexities of vertical text layout, the EPUB 3.0 standard takes care of that.
A team of Japanese engineers worked out all the details of Japanese text layout.
It appears that EPUB 3.0 may be what the Japanese book industry has decided to
adopt for e-books.

Good luck! Although I use them all the time, I don't think I've ever seen something on how to make Aozora Bunko formatted text files. It shouldn't be that hard once you learn the basic "rules" of the format though.