Screenplay

In practice

A screenplay describes only what an audience can see and hear. A novel can tell you what a character thinks; a screenplay has to show it through what they do and say. That limit shapes everything about the form: short paragraphs of present-tense action, dialogue that carries subtext, and very little description that a camera could not capture.

The format is standardized so that a page means the same thing to everyone who reads it. Courier 12-point type, fixed margins and fixed columns for each element make one page run roughly one minute of screen time. A producer can look at a 110-page script and know roughly how long the film will be; a script in a different layout loses that and reads as a beginner's.

A screenplay is also a working document that changes as a project moves forward. The spec script a writer sells or uses as a sample becomes a series of development drafts, then a shooting script with scene numbers and locked pages that the whole crew works from. The same story is written for different readers at each stage.

The elements on a page

Six elements do almost all the work: the scene heading says where and when, action says what we see, the character cue names who speaks, a bracketed direction under the cue adds a brief delivery note, dialogue is what they say, and a transition marks a cut. Everything June feels is shown through what she does and says; the page never states it.

What a screenplay contains

A scene heading, also called a slugline, opens every scene: INT. or EXT. for interior or exterior, the location, and the time of day. Action lines describe what the audience sees, in the present tense, usually in paragraphs of no more than three or four lines. A character's name is in capitals the first time they appear, often with an age.

Dialogue sits in a narrow centered column under a character cue, the speaker's name in capitals. A short instruction in brackets under the cue, which writers call a wryly, is used sparingly for a delivery note or a small action. Transitions such as CUT TO: or DISSOLVE TO: sit at the right margin, though modern spec scripts use them rarely because a new scene heading already implies a cut.

Before the first page sits a title page with the title, the writer's name and contact details. Special situations, such as montages, phone calls, flashbacks, messages on a phone screen and songs, each have their own conventions, which a reader will recognize when they are followed and stumble over when they are not.

Screenplay, script and teleplay

In everyday use, a screenplay and a script are the same thing. Script is the broader word: it covers stage plays, radio, video, advertising and film. Screenplay specifically means a script for the screen, and in the industry it most often means a feature film.

A teleplay is a screenplay for a television episode. The format is nearly identical, with differences that depend on the show: act breaks marked on the page, a teaser or cold open before the first act, and, for multi-camera sitcoms, a different layout with capitalized action and double-spaced dialogue. In Writers Guild credits, a teleplay credit is separate from the story credit for an episode.

How long a screenplay is

Most feature screenplays land between 90 and 120 pages, with comedies and horror often at the shorter end and dramas and epics at the longer end. A one-hour television drama usually runs 50 to 65 pages, and a half-hour single-camera comedy 25 to 35. Short films vary, but a short of ten minutes is about ten pages.

Page count is the first thing a reader sees, and they treat it as an estimate of the film's length and of the writer's discipline. A script far outside the usual range for its genre is not automatically rejected, but it has to earn the extra pages from the first scene.

How to start writing one

Most screenwriters start with a logline and an outline before pages: one sentence for the story, then a list of the major turns, then a scene-by-scene breakdown. Writing pages without that plan is possible, but the rewrite usually has to find the structure the outline would have found first.

Read produced screenplays in the genre you are writing, and write in software that handles the format for you, so the margins and capitals never interrupt a scene. Then finish a full draft before rewriting any part of it. A complete, flawed draft teaches you more about the story than a perfect first act.

Common questions