Making Sense of Screenplay Format

Today's spec script is written in "master scenes" using four elements:

1. THE SLUGLINE: Almost all sluglines begin with INT. or EXT. for interior or exterior respectively. There are very few exceptions. One is SUPER, a slugline put before language superimposed on the screen, such as a place or date: SUPER: "Three years later"

Another is INTERCUT, used for a phone conversation after the location of each party is established with prior sluglines.

If you write all your scenes with sluglines beginning with INT. or EXT., you are on the right track. Location and time follow: INT. JOE'S HOUSE - BEDROOM - NIGHT. Always use FULL sluglines and always use day or night unless a special time of day is dramatically essential, i.e. two lovers watching the sun rise: EXT. BEACH - SUNRISE.

2. THE ACTION ELEMENT: Write, cleanly and crisply, what the audience sees on the screen. Do not write action in parentheses after a character name, i.e. GEORGE (lighting a cigarette), which has fallen out of fashion. Cap a character name on introduction only.

Here, in the action element, is where most beginning writers over-write; I'll have much more to say about writing action in a future column. One more thing: write in small paragraphs, no more than four or five lines per paragraph, then double-spacing to the next paragraph. In fact, by isolating action and images in their own paragraphs, the writer suggests visual emphases in the story, the only remaining way a writer can contribute to direction.

3. CHARACTER NAME: Always in caps, tabbed toward the center of the page. Be consistent. Don't call a character JOE here and MR. JONES there.

4. DIALOGUE: Tabbed between the left margin (where sluglines and action are) and the character name margin. Writing dialogue is an art in itself, and a future column will be focused on it. Beginning writers also over-write dialogue, making scenes slow, chatty and "play-like." Remember, people don't talk as formally as they write. Your dialogue should reflect the personality of each character.

By Charles Deemer, March 1, 2001.