Screenwriting Format

One of the most important things you have to learn about writing a screenplay is formatting it correctly. The problem is that producers see so many screenplays each day that they actually look for an excuse to reject them even before they are even 10 pages into reading your hard work.

If you make any mistakes in formatting, especially early on within the first 10 pages, your screenplay will be tossed into the trash bin like so many others.

The three major parts of a screenplay are the scene headings, narrative description and dialogue.

In my experience the best way to master the syntax of these 3 basic parts of a screen are to read as many screenplays as you can and the rest will come naturally.

The #1 mistake I made in my early screenplays was to mix scene headings and narrative descriptions together.  The key thing to remember is that the Scene headings only consist of the the camera location (EXT for external and INT for internal), the scene location and whether its DAY or NIGHT and that's all.

As far as the Narrative description or action, that easy.  You just description the action in lower case under the Scene heading and never combine this with the scene heading.  Describe the action that is going on, any sound that may be happening or visual images.

The dialog as far as formatting is the easy part. Just the person name and underneath what they are saying, etc. The person's name should always be in caps. When mentioning a new character in any screenplay, the first time his/her name is mentioned that name should always be in caps.

Over time the formatting of a good screenplay will become second nature to you and of course its always a great idea to invest in some kind of a screenwriting formatting tool and there are several available. This is a much better idea than trying to format your screenplay perfectly using something like Microsoft Word and using the tool will save you a lot of time and frustration.


So what is the best screenwriting software?

One of the best products out there for formatting a screenplay correctly and this is the one that I have used successfully to write all 3 of my screenplays is called
FIRST DRAFT
I highly recommend this product.