The Art of Screenplay Formatting

Have you ever wondered how to format a movie script?

Do you want to write a screenplay but not sure where to start…especially with all the complicated formatting stuff?

I understand why you might be intimidated. Formatting can be complicated—and rightly so—but to start out, I'm going to give you the five basic elements that you need to get started writing screenplays as soon as possible!

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Format Element 1: Slugline / Scene Heading

I'm in Final Draft, the most popular screenwriting software on the market. This is what a screenplay will look when you’re writing. The first element is called the slug line or the scene heading, and it consists of three parts:

Interior or exterior. The scene takes place either inside or it's outside. interior or exterior. It’s always going to be abbreviated like this: INT. or EXT.
Next you're going to have your actual location. Is this scene a yard? Is this in a closet? Well in this case, this is in a ballroom, so we say INT. BALLROOM.
Then is it DAY or NIGHT? Now, a lot of you might think, “what if it needs to be dusk, or it needs to be sunrise, or it needs to be afternoon?” Slow down—the only reason you would put something other than day or night is if it's actually going to be relevant to the scene and the story that you're telling. If not, it's just DAY or it's NIGHT.

Format Element 2: Action Line / Scene Description

This next part is your action lines, or your scene description. This is going to be written kind of like regular sentences describing what's happening on screen, what we can see as the audience.

In here (for the most part) you'll notice that this is not really like a novel, where you've got a lot of descriptions of what’s going on inside someone’s head; instead, it's just trying to give you the bare bones of what you need to set the scene.

Instead of “we can hear music and see lights” it’s just “lights and music glare.” It's in third-person present tense. If that just made you more confused, then check out this article where I cover more about the grammar of screenwriting.

Format Element 3: Character

The next thing we're going to talk about is your character. If this was the beginning of the screenplay, then the first time you see a character, you're going to put their name in the action line in ALL CAPS and probably put their age like this (27). But, if this was not the first time that we're seeing Allison, and we already know who Allison is, then we don't have to do that again for her.

When you actually have your character speaking, you're going to put their name in ALL CAPS and centered. Your screenplay formatting software will do that for you, usually by just hitting the tab key.

Now that you've got your character in the scene, let’s show that character speaking!

SCREENPLAY FORMATTING 101: Get the basics on how to properly format a screenplay and start writing today!

Format Element 4: Dialogue

Dialog—what your character says out loud—is always going to be centered on the page and in a sort of left-aligned column with these margins. The reason it's set up this way is so that you can easily skim through and at a glance tell who’s speaking and what they're saying.

This is another reason why I really recommend that you get real screenplay formatting software instead of trying to format in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

That’s going to be a huge headache. Don't do that.

Legit screenwriting software makes it effortless to write in this type of basic formatting that readers, producers, and executives are used to reading quickly.

Format Element 5: Wrylies / Parentheticals

This is called a wrylie or a parenthetical. You don't want to overuse these. I've seen a ton of beginners will put a lot of emotion words in here, like (creepily) or (gesturing excitedly with both hands).

However, that's something that the actors and the director will come up with based on the context and subtext of of the scene. You don't want to put these emotions in here unless it's something that is otherwise unclear. Other examples could include (sarcastically) or (shouting).

For this example, you can see this is something that needs to be specified because the line wouldn’t necessarily have to be whispered but it changes the tone if it is.

Summary of Basic Script Formatting

Those are the main formatting elements for a screenplay:

Sluglines that tell us where and when the scene is occurring.
Action lines that tell us (in third person, present tense) what's happening.
Characters showing who’s speaking when.
Dialogue to tell they're saying.
Occasionally, in order to clarify what's happening, you might have a Wrylie.

Now you've got the five basic format parts that you need to get started writing in professional screenplay format!

Need more tips on formatting? Download this free guide called the Screenplay Format Checklist! It's got a list of 21 things that you need to make sure you've done in your screenplay before you send it out to a reader or to a producer. Make sure that your screenplay gets a fair shake, because if the formatting looks off, then they're going to judge the script before they even read it.

Download the free checklist and make sure your screenplay formatting is ship-shape.

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