How to Format a Script: The Complete Guide to Screenplay Format

Here's the open secret about screenplay format: nobody in the film industry thinks it's hard. It's a small set of conventions — where the margins sit, when to capitalize, how dialogue stacks under a name — that exist so everyone from the reader to the line producer can look at a page and know exactly what they're seeing.

Which is why format matters more than it seems like it should. A script that looks wrong announces, before a single line is read, that the writer hasn't done the homework — and readers with a stack of a hundred scripts use that as a filter, fairly or not. Format won't get you a yes. It absolutely can get you a no.

The good news: all of it is learnable, most of it in an afternoon, and this guide covers all of it — the page itself, every element with examples, spec script versus shooting script, the mistakes readers actually flag, and the places where the rules bend.

The Page: Courier, Margins, and the One-Minute Rule

Screenplays are written in 12-point Courier— the typewriter font — and it isn't nostalgia. Courier is monospaced, so every properly formatted page holds roughly the same amount of story, which produces the industry's most useful rule of thumb: one page equals about one minute of screen time. A 110-page script is a roughly 110-minute film. Producers budget with that math and readers judge pacing with it; swap in a proportional font and the math breaks, which is why the wrong font is the fastest way to look like an outsider.

The physical page is US Letter with a 1.5-inch left margin (room for the brads that bind a printed script) and 1-inch margins on the right, top, and bottom. Page numbers go in the top right corner, followed by a period, starting on page 2 — the first script page and the title page are never numbered.

Within those margins, each element lives at its own indent. You never need to memorize these numbers — every piece of screenwriting software handles them — but seeing them once demystifies the page:

That's the whole physical system. Everything else is knowing what each element does.

The Elements of Screenplay Format

Every screenplay is built from a handful of repeating elements. Here's a properly formatted page with most of them in play — then we'll take them one at a time:

Scene Headings

A scene heading — you'll also hear slugline — starts every scene and answers three questions in a fixed order: inside or outside, where, and what time of day. All caps, on its own line.

INT. means interior, EXT. exterior. The location comes next, then a hyphen, then almost always just DAY or NIGHT — resist DUSK, LATER THAT SAME EVENING, or 4:47 AM unless the story turns on it. And keep location names consistent to the letter: MAYA'S APARTMENT and MAYA'S PLACE read as two different sets.

Action Lines

Action (also called description) is everything the audience sees and hears, written in present tense, always. Not “Maya walked in” — “Maya walks in.” Film happens now.

The craft of action lines is leanness. Describe only what the camera can capture: behavior, not backstory; what a character does, not what she secretly feels. Keep paragraphs to three or four lines, then break — white space is how a page signals pace, and a wall of dense description reads slow no matter what it says.

Two capitalization conventions: a character's name goes in ALL CAPS in the action the first time they appear (that's how casting finds every speaking part), and many writers cap significant sounds — the GUNSHOT, the JINGLE. The first is standard; the second is a style choice. Use it sparingly or not at all, but consistently.

Character Cues

A character cue is the name in caps above dialogue, telling us who's speaking. Once a character has a cue name, it never changes — if she's MAYA on page 3, she isn't DR. REYES on page 60, even after the promotion. Readers track characters by their cues.

Dialogue

Dialogue sits in a narrower column under the cue — normal sentence case, no quotation marks, no italics. The format does no work here on purpose: the words have to carry everything.

Parentheticals

A parenthetical (old-timers say wryly, after its most abused inhabitant) sits between the cue and the dialogue and directs how a line is delivered or what accompanies it:

Use them sparingly — when the delivery is genuinely counter to the words (saying “I'm fine” while bleeding), or to clarify who a line is aimed at. A parenthetical on every speech is a writer who doesn't trust the dialogue. Acting choices belong to actors.

Extensions: V.O. and O.S.

An extension is a note in parentheses on the same line as the character cue, telling us where the voice is coming from:

(V.O.) — voice-over — is a voice from outside the scene entirely: narration, the far side of a phone call, an inner monologue. (O.S.) — off-screen — is a character present in the scene's space but not in frame, like Danny calling from the next room. You'll also see (CONT'D) when the same character keeps speaking across an interruption or a page break; most software adds it for you.

Transitions

Transitions — CUT TO:, DISSOLVE TO:, SMASH CUT TO: — sit against the right margin and describe how one scene hands off to the next. The modern advice: mostly skip them. A new scene heading already implies a cut, so CUT TO: between every scene is noise. Save them for the rare moment the style of the cut is the point.

The Title Page

One page, mostly empty, and the emptiness is correct. The title sits centered, a third of the way down, in plain Courier — no artwork, no fancy fonts. Below it, “written by,” then your name. Contact information goes in the bottom left corner.

Leave off draft numbers, dates, copyright notices, and WGA registration numbers — they add nothing a buyer needs and quietly signal anxiety. The confident title page says almost nothing.

Spec Script vs. Shooting Script

Now the distinction that explains most of the “but I saw it in a real screenplay” confusion. A spec script is written to be read — to sell the story to a producer, a contest judge, an agent. A shooting script is a production document, prepared after a script sells, and it carries machinery a spec must not. Almost every screenplay you can download and study is a shooting script, because those are the versions that get published. Imitate their storytelling, not their scaffolding. In a spec:

• No scene numbers. Numbering scenes is the production's job — it feeds the schedule and the breakdown sheets that turn a script into a shoot. In a spec it reads as a writer playing producer.
• No camera directions. CLOSE ON, ANGLE ON, WE PAN — the director's territory. If a close-up matters, imply it: “The battery compartment is empty” can only be a close-up, and you never had to say so.
• No production clutter. No CONTINUEDs at page breaks, no draft colors, no scene-by-scene dates.

A spec script's only job is to disappear, leaving nothing on the page but the movie.

The Mistakes Readers Actually Flag

Ask people who read scripts for a living what breaks the spell, and the same short list comes back every time:

• The wrong font. Anything but 12-point Courier says the writer hasn't read scripts — and breaks the page-a-minute math besides.
• Walls of action. Six-line, eight-line paragraphs of description. Readers skim them, which means readers miss things, which means your best moment dies unread in the middle of a block.
• Unfilmable lines. “Maya remembers the summer her father left.” A camera cannot photograph a memory. If we can't see it or hear it, it can't be in the action.
• Directing from the page. Camera angles, music cues, casting suggestions. Every one is a reminder that you're reading a document instead of watching a movie.
• Parenthetical addiction. (beat) (smiling) (angrily) on every line, doing work the dialogue should do.
• The wrong length. Feature specs live roughly between 90 and 120 pages. A 140-page first feature isn't evidence of ambition to a reader; it's evidence of no rewriting.

Notice what's not on the list: nobody ever passed on a script because a parenthetical sat an eighth of an inch off. Readers flag patterns that make reading harder, not micrometer violations. Get the patterns right and the micrometers take care of themselves — especially if your software is handling the indents.

When the Rules Bend

Read enough produced screenplays and you'll catch professionals breaking half of this guide — bold scene headings, “we see” in the action, sentence fragments, a defiant CUT TO: exactly where it isn't needed. The rules aren't fake; they're a baseline, and baselines are what make deviation legible. When an established writer underlines a line of action, the reader trusts it's a choice, because everything around it is immaculate. When a first script gets the margins wrong and bolds things and caps random words, nothing reads as style — the whole page reads as noise.

So bend where voice lives: the rhythm of your action lines, the occasional cap for a sound that matters, a one-word paragraph that lands like a cut. Don't bend the load-bearing walls — Courier, the margins, present tense, a spec free of production clutter. That's the difference between an accent and an error.

Format Is the Floor, Not the Ceiling

Here's the perspective to leave with: perfect format is table stakes, and that's liberating. The part of screenwriting that looks most intimidating from the outside is the only part with clear right answers — and you now know them. Everything above the floor — the story, the characters, the lines people quote — has no ruleset, which is exactly why it deserves your energy. Let software carry the margins so your attention stays there. ScriptFlo does that carrying for $30/month, one plan with everything included (and its AI works as a coach on your pages, never a ghostwriter writing them); the 14-day free trial is enough time to format your first thirty pages without once thinking about an indent. If you're still choosing your tools, our guide to Final Draft alternatives compares the field honestly.

The format is learned. Go write the movie.