SCREENPLAY ELEMENTS
by Don Swaim

A screenplay is a blueprint for filmmakers rather than having the more "finished" look of a manuscript for a piece of fiction or creative non-fiction. This is why it looks more like an archiac typewriter blunder rather than today's format for a short story. (Aside: there is no logical reason for a screenplay's font to resemble a typewriter's output of twenty or twenty-five years ago other than custom, and it will pass.) Typing errors, misspellings, and incorrect grammar weigh against a screenwriter just as much as a fiction writer.

Screenplays ultimately published for mass consumption in book form often look different from an actual screenplay. Eliza Kazan's America America, published by Stein & Day in 1961, is an example.

The standard film length is 100 minutes, which translates to approximately 120 pages of script. The pages must be numbered. Scenes are usually numbered too, but not in the example below.

The first part of a screenplay is usually:

FADE IN (in caps flush left)

Below that is in information line in regular letters. It contains:

INT or EXT in caps for interior of exterior shot. As well as DAY or NIGHT. Then where the scene takes place, usually one word in caps: BEDROOM, BACKYARD, etc.

Then a description of the SHOT (or scene) with directions such as CLOSE SHOT, MEDIUM SHOT, FULL SHOT. The instructions are in caps but the actual description is in standard type, flush left.

If there's noise or music in the scene they're also indicated in caps.

Each scene is numbered to the left.

When an actor appears his or her name is in caps in centered in the page. Below the name, where needed, is a description of the actor's mood in parenthesis: angry, laughing

And below that is the actor's (or narrator's) dialogue, not in caps, also centered with wide margins on either side.

Here's a sample of the first page of the shooting script from Stranger than Fiction by Zach Helm, a decidedly litetary movie starring Will Farrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Maggy Gyllenhall, and Queen Latifa. Notice that it incorporates all of the elements cited above. Where it states "narrator V.O." it refers to an unseen narrator describing the action (voice over).

There will be other items in the script, but these are the basics.

Once one sees and understand this basic layout reading a screenplay is relatively easy and fast as there's little or no description of internal motivation. But the same good story-telling rules apply to screenwriting just as much to regular fiction.

PO Box 1232
Doylestown, PA 18901