Writing your first screenplay can be a daunting task if you aren’t already trained in the film industry. Whether you are writing an original script or trying to adapt your own novel, there are specific rules and creative adaptations that need to be made in order to nail the format and deliver a story built for the screen. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the basics of screenwriting so you can launch into telling your story for this medium.

Before you begin writing, make sure you take the time to read a lot of scripts and familiarize yourself with the new medium. Writers have likely read hundreds, if not thousands, of books before they start writing their own, however, if you live outside the film world, odds are you’ve never read a screenplay. So before you get caught up in formatting and technique, be sure to immerse yourself in the world of screenwriting.

Format

Unlike novel or memoir writing, screenwriting is a much leaner approach to storytelling. Not only will you be writing less, but rather than lavish descriptions and interior character reflections, all of your narrative devices will be focused on action, with a much bigger emphasis on things like dialogue and scene-setting descriptions.

A standard script is going to be 90 – 120 pages. Each page tends to reflect one minute of “on-camera” time.

The industry standard font used is 12-point Courier, single spaced.

Your margins should be as follows: Left margin: 1.5 inches, Right margin: 1 inch, Top and bottom margins: 1 inch

The rigidity around these specific formatting is crucial in the film industry as it reflects on the length of the film and gives specific directives for each scene. For a shorter film like a comedy or an indie project, 90 minutes should be the aim. For a drama or action film, a screenwriter may trend closer to 120 minutes (or a 120-page script), though the aim should always be to focus on concise and minimalist storytelling.

A screenplay has very specific headers and notations to indicate different elements of the film.

Each scene needs a heading written in ALL CAPS to indicate three things:

  • Interior or Exterior
  • Location
  • Time of Day

These are short descriptors that indicate the setting. For example: EXT. NEW YORK CITY STREET – NIGHT

Here’s an example of what that looks like in the opening scene of Barbie:

Photo credit: Scriptreaderpro.com (Go to this site to download screenplays, Pro tip: download scripts for movies you know well so you can internalize the script directions and how that translates on screen, then also read scripts for movies you aren’t familiar with, to see what you craft in your mind. Then go watch the movie to see how you did!)

The next step is creating the Action Lines. These are one to two sentences about what is taking place in the scene. These shouldn’t be overly flowery or descriptive, just a direct breakdown of what’s taking place.

For example, [Character] wakes up in bed, turns her face away from the sunlight and picks up her phone to start scrolling.

From there, Dialogue is laid out. The character’s name is centered and placed in ALL CAPS. Then the line of dialogue is delivered on the next line. Dialogue should be quick and short to deliver the line in as few words as possible.

In this sample from Inside Out, you can see dialogue represented as both a voice over (V.O.) and in real-time.

Finally, parentheses can sometimes be used to provide slight additional information in dialogue like that the character is whispering or yelling. This should be used sparingly as those sorts of cues will likely be determined on set, but if it is essential to the tone and clarity of the script, include it.

While all of this formatting detail might feel like a big shift for anyone who has never written a screenplay before, there are tools that can help aid in the process. Software like Final Draft, Celtx, and Trelby can help assist new screenwriters.

Story Structure

Once you have cleared the hurdle of the unusual and precise formatting structure, then you start getting back into the basics of storytelling. Like with a novel, a three-act structure is a perfectly suitable arc for a script. Your introduction to the world and characters and the inciting incident will occur in the first 1 – 25 pages. Rising action and conflict and the midway twist will occur within pages 26 – 85. And the climax, resolution and tying up of loose ends will take place in 86 – 120 pages. All of that should feel familiar in the sense that the basic anatomy of a story transcends the medium.

Economy of Storytelling

Where it differs is in how you tell each of those parts of the story.

Instead of interior thoughts, slowly interwoven scenes of dialogue, flashbacks and multiple POVs, the story has to be told through ever-increasing action scenes that condense (and have the opportunity to convey) a whole lot in a short amount of time.

Here’s an example:

In a novel, we might open on a scene where a mom is sitting in the chaos of a busy household on Christmas in paragraphs worth of description where her interior thoughts dwell on the smell of the garbage in the kitchen her husband forgot to take out, and watching paper getting ripped and discarded as she thinks to herself about how she’ll have to clean that up later despite her back hurting from being up all night wrapping. She may think about how her coffee has gone cold and how the baby needs a diaper change, but would scream if she tore him away from his new toy.

In a screenplay, however, it may be little more than a line or two describing the scene: The mother sits on the couch, a look of dissociation on her face as the kids scream and rip at presents and her husband flips through his phone.

It will be up to the actors and directors to capture in a few seconds what a novelist might pour over for a full page.  No frills, no prose in the screenplay, and yet, we can still see the scene and understand the tone.

Visuals vs. Words

As you’ve certainly gleaned by now, screenwriters tell stories through visuals and dialogue. Novelists tell them through words.

No one in a movie is talking about how their crush has jet black hair and bushy eyebrows and a wide frame. We just see the actor and know it to be true. The way that is conveyed through a screenplay is in visual cues, not wrapped into dialogue or in an voice over representing someone’s thoughts (there are exceptions to everything, think Mean Girls where Cady’s imagination is running away from her for an example).

To get more granular, if someone is heartbroken over a breakup, they aren’t going to have them sitting somewhere thinking about all the good memories. Instead, the character may be on the floor pajamas in the middle of day, going through a box of keepsakes while drinking wine from a coffee cup and crying.

It’s all about taking the words and turning them into visuals.

The Rigidity of Screenwriting

Novels have a lot of room to be experimental and drift from the typical three-act path. Movies don’t have the same liberty. It’s not to say that there isn’t experimentation in film (or structure in books), but for the most part, straying from the path is going to be a hard sell. Scripts are formulaic for a reason. A lot of people are involved in bringing a film to life and so there has to be that familiarity everyone can rally around.

Each scene has to have a purpose and that includes action, conflict and an advancement in the plot. If your scene isn’t doing that, it needs to be retooled or released.

Dialogue also needs to be more carefully constructed. An actor shouldn’t ramble on for a minutes-long monologue. The information and emotion you are trying to convey should be done in as few words as possible, but this doesn’t mean less complicated writing. Sometimes, the hardest writing is that which does not allow for a single extra syllable.

Pacing will be improved by hyper focusing on the above elements. The less “extra” in a scene or an exchange, the better the pacing. And the better the pacing, the more likely you are to keep a viewer engaged.

Point of view is also going to be less of a construct in a script than it is in a novel. You still need one, but every character has a fuller purpose on screen than they might in a book. You may still be centralized around a particular character’s journey, but everyone in a scene is going to feel more like their own autonomous being rather than a version of them viewed through the lens of the MC.

In a book, there are often subplots layered within the overarching narrative, but a screenplay is going to be lot more linear. If a book is about a mother daughter relationship, there may be offshoots about her job, her dating life, her friendships. That interwoven storytelling is much more effective on the page. In a script, you’ll want to focus on a primary plot because deviation from that will feel like a tangent and could throw a movie off course leaving it feel unfocused and meandering.

An example of this would be in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where Hermione has a subplot where she’s fighting for the rights of house elves. While a noble exploration of social justice and a deepening of her character in the book, this was completely omitted from the book as it did not move the story along in terms of Harry Potter’s ultimate goal to defeat Voldemort and save the wizarding world.

In short, books tend to focus on deepening everything. They delve further into characters, they linger on dialogue, they have a very confined point of view. Movies, on the other hand, focus solely on what’s necessary to move the plot forward. There isn’t room to contemplate or marinate on a theme or idea. Action is the name of the game because there is such a short window to tell the story in. (Though we are focusing on film particularly in this article, it’s worth noting that while television aims for scarcity too in its own way, the longer format allows for more time to spent the way it might be in books.)

Plausibility and Budget

Now that we’ve covered the basics of writing a screenplay, there are additional factors you might want to consider before diving in. The beauty of books is that we can imagine any kind of wild world we want. There are no limitations other than our own imaginations.With a movie, you have to be more practical and business-minded.

Setting: If you are trying to sell a script, you can’t have the story take place in ten different locations across the globe. That isn’t feasible from a financial or production standpoint.  Furthermore, if you are building a fantastical world, consider what it would take to construct it and if that’s how you’d want it represented. If most of your setting doesn’t exist in reality (think of the hyper futuristic, off-planet cities in later iterations of Star Wars) then it’s likely that a lot of your world would have to be constructed using CGI. Similar considerations should be made for historical pieces. Is your screenplay set in 1800s era London? What will that require from a set (or CGI) perspective? Should there be sweeping shots of the entire city from two centuries before? Or can you make it tight scenes located inside of a house that would be more easily constructed?

Cast: When we watch a movie, it’s hard to appreciate all the elements we disregard as backdrop. Hundreds of soldiers in a battle scene. Students filling a classroom. Fans in a sports stadiums. But these are all things a director/producer are going to have to think about. This can even be brought down to scale. If you’re telling a story about a family, is there enough room on the page for the family to contain six siblings? Will each of them get enough screen time to validate their existence? Or would a family of three siblings get the same message across and allow more room for character development? If you choose to go for a bigger cast, know that the (potentially) seconds where a character is on the screen has to land a punch. Think of all the characters in Home Alone. Kevin and the “Wet Bandits” get the most screen time, but nobody forgets Buzz or Fuller or Uncle Frank. Go back and watch the movie. I bet you don’t clock some of those memorable side characters on screen for even a full minute in the entire course of the movie. Anything is possible, but if you’re making choices that go against the grain in Hollywood, they have to be made with extreme intentionality and a keen eye for detail.

Action: What are your characters doing in the script? And what will it take to bring that to life on screen? It’s one thing to have a couple sitting in a park arguing, it’s another thing to have them go on a skiing trip. What work would go into bringing a scene to life? Is it easier to film a couple getting into a fight on a ski lift or sitting in the snow after the male lead crashes? Think about what is required for the action that is taking place. When it comes to even bigger elements like a plane crash, for example, does your film require that we see the actual crash? Or can there be a shot of the character terrified sitting on the plane while he experiences turbulence, the screen goes black, and we return to the character bloodied on the ground with destruction all around him?

Tell the story you want to tell, but when you are trying to sell a script to Hollywood, they are going to be thinking about who they need to hire and what they have to create to make this story come to life. And if it involves dozens of actors requiring training and choreography, massive amounts of CGI and pyrotechnics, a whole host of extras and an ensemble cast, you’re going to have a hard time selling the script (especially with no track record to lean on). No one can come out the gate with a script deserving of Michael Bay or Christopher Nolan. Try first to write a small story, one you could almost imagine filming yourself on an iPhone. You can still deliver a movie of tremendous depth, but you may need to hold back the flash until you’re further down the road. Watching indie films could help give you an idea of how excellent storytelling can be done on screen with a tight budget in mind.

As you dive into the wonderful world of screenwriting, know that your storyteller muscles will be tested in an entirely new way in this medium. Though you may be writing less words, you are having to do so with a lot more factors to consider. The collaboration of producing a movie is its strength and its challenge. Editing and getting eyes on your work before you try to sell anything will be crucial to your development as it is in novel writing. Take the time to be a beginner and enjoy the excuse to watch A LOT of movies… for research, of course.