How to Write a Screenplay

What a screenplay is

A screenplay is a blueprint for a film. It tells the director, cast, and crew what they will see and hear, laid out in a rigid format so anyone on a production can read it at a glance. One page of properly formatted script is roughly one minute of screen time.

You don't need to memorize the format rules. Scene Forges applies them automatically as you type. Your job is the story.

The elements you'll use

Every screenplay is built from the same repeating parts:

• Scene Heading (slug line): INT. KITCHEN - DAY tells us where and when.
• Action: what the camera sees and hears. Keep it visual and brief.
• Character: the name of who speaks, in ALL CAPS.
• Parenthetical: (quietly) how a line is delivered. Use sparingly.
• Dialogue: what the character says.
• Transition: CUT TO: how one scene moves to the next.

The three-act shape

Most screenplays follow three acts. Act 1 (roughly pages 1 to 25) sets up the world and ends when the hero commits to the story. Act 2, the longest part, piles on obstacles until the lowest point. Act 3 is the climax and the new normal.

Your first page

Start with FADE IN: then a scene heading. Describe what we see. Introduce a character in ALL CAPS the first time they appear. Give them something to do. Press Enter, Tab to Character, type a name, press Enter, and write the line.

That's a scene. Repeat for 90 to 110 pages and you have a feature.

Common mistakes

• Writing what a character thinks instead of what the camera sees.
• Long action paragraphs. Three or four lines is plenty.
• Too many parentheticals. Trust the dialogue.
• Forgetting that a new scene only starts with a new scene heading.

Ready to write?

Open Scene Forges and start writing. The formatting handles itself. You can export a clean PDF whenever you're ready, no watermark, no page limit.