"If you want to be a professional writer, your work should look as if it were written by a professional."
--Richard Krevolin, Screenwriting from the Soul
We want to structure the story behind our concept, The First Lady is kidnapped and held for ransom by terrorists.
Forest people, on the other hand, are apt to give little or no conscious thought to structure at this early part of the writing process. This is not to say that structure does not concern them (though many claim it doesn't) but that structure appears later in the process and often less consciously than how it appears to a tree person. For forest people, structure comes naturally as the grammar of storytelling -- or it better. If it doesn't, they will find themselves becoming more like tree people in order to give their stories more dramatic order and power.
One reason screenplay structure is so important is that three-act organization can be found even in the scripts of forest people who deny using it. There are successful Hollywood writers who do not embrace the three-act paradigm you will learn here. They deny its importance. At the same time, when we analyze their own scripts, we can see the three-act paradigm at work. Where does it come from? Clearly not through conscious planning. This, it seems to me, is the best argument that the paradigm is something basic to storytelling in our culture, so that even those who deny using it, even those who abhor mention of it, end up telling stories that model the three-act paradigm (or whatever other name we call it -- remember, what we really are talking about, as you'll learn in detail later, is a story with dramatic movement and a beginning, a middle, and an end).
The three-act paradigm, in other words, works. Wherever it appears in the writing process, when we use it as a tool to analyze how stories are told, how their dramatic moments are ordered, we see its influence everywhere. This is more than enough reason to master it.
Stories begin in the "ordinary" world of the main character, or protagonist, and move into the "extra-ordinary" world of the story. The extra-ordinary world is extraordinary because, in the experience of the protagonist, the world is new and different and challenging. The transition from the ordinary into the extraordinary world is what defines the end of the "beginning" of the story (act one, the set up) and the beginning of the "middle" of the story (act two, the arena for conflict). This transition is one of the first things you should think about, tree and forest person alike.
For example, in E.T. the ordinary world is Eliot's homelife. He's a lonely boy without a father in the home, ignored by his older brother. The extra-ordinary world is the world he makes by luring E.T. home, creating a secret (from mom) world in which he has an alien friend. In The Graduate, the ordinary world is a world in which Benjamin is bored and without ambition. The extraordinary world is the world he creates by having an affair with Mrs. Robinson. Note that protagonists participate in the creation of the extraordinary world -- this participation is an action they take, called the call to action, that moves us into the story.
This is how the structure of setting up a story works, moving your main character from the ordinary world of his usual experience into the extra-ordinary world of the story. I explore structure in more detail in the links below.
Dramatic structure is about organization -- but what is it that is being organized? In a word, conflict. Not random conflict but a highly focused kind of conflict, centering on your main character, his or her goal (what is s/he after?), and whatever it is that stands in the way of this goal (or goals). Conflict is the essence of dramatic storytelling, as writers have known for a long time. Here's how David Morrell, the novelist who created the Rambo character, puts it:
"As far as I'm concerned, in the abstract there's only one plot, and it goes like this: A person or group or entity (an animal or an alien, whatever) wants something. Perhaps it's to survive a blizzard, to get married, to dominate the world, or to save a child trapped in a fire, whatever. Another person or group or entity (nature, for example, or a destructive inner self) throws up every barrier imaginable to stop that goal from being achieved." [REF]
Dramatic structure, then, is about the organization of conflict in your story. Use the links below for much more detail about structure.
Beginning screenwriters are right to be concerned about correct screenplay format, even though they often worry too much about format and too little about more important things, such as concept and structure. Screenplay format, in fact, is pretty straight-forward - except for one thing.
Format is always changing.
For example, it is useful to look at old formats that were once in fashion but are considered taboo today. These older formats included camera angles and other visual concerns that by today's sensibilities are considered the concern of the director, not the writer.
Today's format is a more general "master scene approach" to film storytelling, in which most often only the basic visual locations of the scene are included in the script.
You also should know, if you don't already, that screenplay software is on the market that formats your script correctly as you write. Every serious screenwriter should own such a program. If you can't afford it, there also are add-ons and templates for your word processing program that will format a screenplay. Nonetheless, I'm going to go over the rudiments of format in some detail because they are important.
Spec scripts v. shooting scripts.
(Cyber Film School column, Making Sense of Screenplay Format)
(Cyber Film School column, Making Scripts Vertical)
FADE IN: INT. CHARLES' OFFICE - NIGHT CHARLES, 50s, sits at a computer. Looking over his shoulder is JOHN, 20s, one of his students. CHARLES This format stuff isn't as hard as you think it is. There are a few simple rules, and all you have to do is follow them. JOHN What are the rules? CHARLES For most of your writing, you'll be using only four format elements. Watch the computer screen. John moves in closer as Charles begins typing at the keyboard. The following appears ON THE COMPUTER SCREEN: "THIS IS WHERE A SLUGLINE GOES" "This is where an action line goes." "CHARACTER NAME HERE" "Dialogue here." Charles stops typing and looks at John. CHARLES See how easy it is?
You usually don't need more than four format elements in your screenplay to tell the story with a professional look:
Following INT. or EXT., the place is identified: for example, INT. BEDROOM. If we need to first establish a broader context, it might look like this: INT. JOE'S HOUSE - BEDROOM. We move from the general to the specific here - for example, we do not write INT. BEDROOM - JOE'S HOUSE.
Following the location of place, time of day is indicated, almost always either DAY or NIGHT.
So a full slugline would like like: INT. JOE'S HOUSE - BEDROOM - NIGHT. After we have established that we are in Joe's House, subsequent sluglines can drop this broader location of place. So a sequence of scenes might look like:
INT. JOE'S HOUSE - BEDROOM - NIGHT
INT. DINING ROOM - NIGHT
INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT
EXT. BACK PORCH - NIGHT
Some writers drop the DAY or NIGHT once it has been established in the sequence of scenes, but I recommend always having a time designation with each slugline.
Sluglines are flush with your left margin. Recommended indentation is 17 spaces.
As far as format is concerned, the important thing to remember about the action element is that you need to surround action with lots of white space. Let me demonstrate what I mean.
Consider this action description, from Aliens, written by James Cameron:
EXT. COLONY COMPLEX The town is a cluster of bunkerlike metal and concrete buildings connected by conduits. Neon signs throw garish colors across the vaultlike walls, advertising bars and other businesses. It looks like a sodden cross between the Krupps munitions works and a truckstop casino in the Nevada boondocks. Huge-wheeled tractors crawl toadlike in the rutted "street" and vanish down rampways to underground garages. ANGLE ON THE CONTROL BLOCK, the largest structure. It resembles vaguely the superstructure of an aircraft carrier, a flying bridge. VISIBLE across a half kilometer of barren heath, b.g., is the massive complex of the nearest ATMOSPHERE PROCESSOR, looking like a power plant bred with an active volcano. Its fiery glow pulses in the low cloud cover like a steel mill.
Now compare this with:
EXT. COLONY COMPLEX The town is a cluster of bunkerlike metal and concrete buildings connected by conduits. Neon signs throw garish colors across the vaultlike walls, advertising bars and other businesses. It looks like a sodden cross between the Krupps munitions works and a truckstop casino in the Nevada boondocks. Huge-wheeled tractors crawl toadlike in the rutted "street" and vanish down rampways to underground garages. ANGLE ON THE CONTROL BLOCK the largest structure. It resembles vaguely the superstructure of an aircraft carrier...a flying bridge. VISIBLE across a half kilometer of barren heath, b.g., is the massive complex of the nearest ATMOSPHERE PROCESSOR, looking like a power plant bred with an active volcano. Its fiery glow pulses in the low cloud cover like a steel mill.
The second version, as Cameron wrote it, is much easier to read because the white space breaks up the action. In fact, you can break up the action even more than this. A writer friend, who has sold action/adventure scripts to Columbia, will not write an action section greater than five lines before starting a new paragraph, and he prefers to keep his action paragraphs at three lines and under. (Note: ANGLE ON is dropped from current format style because, in fact, it is redundant. If you write "The Control Block is the largest structure," the mere fact that you give this its own paragraph is enough to emphasize it visually, that you are "angling on" it. ANGLE ON is an example of removing all references to the camera in the contemporary spec script.)
A producer once showed me the the white space test. He picked up an unread script and started flipping the pages quickly, looking at the rush of print go by. "Not enough white space," he said - and tossed the script in the pile to be rejected, unread.
There's a very practical reason to have lots of white space in the action area of your script. Screenplays are not so much read as skimmed, at least in your first "reading" - which may be your only one. Why skimmed?
Imagine being a reader for a studio or production company! On your desk are 100 scripts about which you must reach a decision sooner rather than later - are they to be rejected or "read" a second time, more carefully? So in the first place, you only have your first five or ten pages to "hook" the reader into your story; and second, if you don't have lots of white space, your script physically will not be easy to read in a rush (i.e. "skimmed"), another point against you.
This is not an easy adventure you're embarking on! You need to learn these little things before you pack into the mountains for that long climb.
When character names appear in the action element, they are capitalized the first time they appear and then written normally, with only the first letter capitalized. I'll talk about character descriptions later.
Finally, the action area picked up one additional burden in present format: descriptions that used to be put in parentheticals, which now are out of fashion. For example:
JOE (angrily) Damn it, that's not right!
Joe slams a book down on the desk. JOE Damn it, that's not right!
In other words, show emotion in an action, not in a parenthetical.
Standard tab settings for format are:
Use a 12-point Courier font.
Bind the script using two brads. Punch three holes in the script but only two in the cardstock, it will work fine.On the title page, use a very simple format like this, centered, about 2/5 down the page from the top:
NAME OF SCREENPLAY by Your NameNear the bottom, flush left or flush right, put your address and phone number or the name, address and phone number of your agent.That's it. No fancy colors, no WGA number on the script, no illustrations, no colored paper.
Double space and write your first slugline. Note the following spaces between elements:
- single space between character and dialogue; within action paragraph; within dialogue paragraph.
- double space at end of action paragraph or element (to another action paragraph, or new element such as character or slugline); at end of dialogue; at end of slugline.
- optional triple space (instead of double space) before each new slugline.
SERIES OF SHOTS - JOHN AND MARY AT THE BEACH (A) They build sand castles. (B) They fly a kite. (C) They race to the water. (D) They swim and have a water fight.
INT. JOE'S HOUSE - CELLAR - NIGHT (FLASHBACK)
INT. OFFICE - DAY Joe opens his mail. INSERT - A LETTER A huge red heart is drawn on an otherwise blank sheet of paper. Below it we see the words "I love you!" No signature. BACK TO SCENE Joe smells the letter and smiles. A better way to do this today is in the action area. You would write the same as above, without the sluglines "INSERT..." and "BACK TO SCENE." Inserts, in other words, are out of fashion.
EXT. WASHINGTON D.C. - DAY The famous landmarks rise majestically under a bright sun.
INTERCUT PHONE CONVERSATION - JOE'S BEDROOM/MARY'S BEDROOM JOE Did I wake you? MARY That's all right. (etc. until:) BACK TO SCENE Sometimes you can do this more efficiently within the context of the story this way: INT. JOE'S BEDROOM - NIGHT Joe dials a number. INT. MARY'S BEDROOM - NIGHT She answers the phone. INTERCUT [and the conversation as before]
INT. TOM'S HOUSE - LIVING ROOM - NIGHT Tom is watching television. INT. TOM'S HOUSE - LIVING ROOM - NIGHT - LATER And still watching TV an hour later.
Here "an hour" is not a significant measure of time -- we really just mean "later." But if it is, then the audience must know this, and the second slugline above becomes:
SUPER ON SCREEN "An hour later" INT. TOM'S HOUSE - LIVING ROOM - NIGHT He is still watching television.
"SUPER" is short for superimposed and we use it when we put "writing" on the screen. Both SUPER and the more complete SUPER ON SCREEN are used.
JOE I'm not done here! (MORE) ------- page break ------------------ JOE (cont'd) You also have a lousy sense of humor.
JOE You couldn't tell a joke if your life depended on it. FRANK (overlapping) I don't have to take this.
JOE Honey, would you bring in the wine? MARY (O.S.) Red or white?
Some writers use O.C. for "off camera." Generally O.S. is for film and O.C. for television.
EXT. LOS ANGELES - FREEWAY - DAY Bumper-to-bumper traffic on a sweltering, smoggy day. JOE (V.O.) They call it the City of Angels. The Chamber of Commerce will tell you how the sun's always shining and you can pick fruit off the trees right in your own backyard.
This should cover the great majority of format situations you'll encounter. When in doubt, use common sense and the above examples as a guideline to the spirit of format today.
It is actually much easier to format a screenplay than it used to be. Today no specialized knowledge of camera angles is necessary. Producers are much more interested in the story you have to tell, and format has evolved into a simple "master scene" approach that permits you to tell your story as directly as possible.
Writing for sitcoms and other specialized TV shows is beyond the scope of this course. Your best source of information for this is the Internet.
See the software area for more about special tools for screenwriters.
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