The page

Why the format exists

A script is a working document. The director, the actors and the person planning the shoot all read it for different things. A shared layout lets each of them find their part quickly.

Format is also a clock. One page in standard layout plays for about one minute on screen. It is a rough guide: a page of fast talk runs shorter, and a page of action can run longer.

The parts of a page

A scene heading, also called a slugline, opens every scene. It says inside or outside (INT. or EXT.), the place, and the time of day, as in INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT. It tells the crew where to be and what light to expect.

Action lines follow, in the present tense. Then comes a character cue: the speaker's name in capitals above the speech, so an actor can find their lines at a glance.

A parenthetical sits under the cue in brackets and gives a brief note on how the line is said, or to whom. Use it rarely. The dialogue goes below it.

A transition such as CUT TO: sits at the right and marks a change of scene. Most scripts need very few, because a new slugline already means a cut.

Why Courier 12

Courier is a typewriter face. Every letter has the same width, so every page holds about the same amount of text. That keeps the page a minute guide steady from one script to the next.

A script in another font may look nicer, but nobody can judge its length from its page count.

Let the tool lay it out

You do not need to set margins by hand. Take One reads plain text written in Fountain, a simple way of typing a screenplay, and lays the page out for you.

Start a line with INT. or EXT. and it becomes a slugline. Type a name in capitals with a speech under it and it becomes dialogue. You think about the scene, and the page takes care of itself.

When a format question comes up, David Trottier's The Screenwriter's Bible is a reliable place to look.