screenplay format | Cyber Film School

5. Script Evaluation & Feedback

Evaluating your own screenplay depends on the quality of questions you ask yourself, making the difference between pulling the plug or moving forward.

Contributed By Glen Berry, Edited by Stavros C. Stavrides

Important Concepts

• Wait until the script is ready
• Know yourself
• Writing is re-writing

As we toil through the lonely landscape of the screenwriter, we often discover that translating certain concepts into viable, exciting stories is not easy. Certain ideas we come up with simply do not translate well into film – not immediately. They require more thought and more background work.

Some aspects of the idea are compelling, but other parts wanting. The solution is to invest time, exercise patience, and persist. Keep working toward solutions that make your idea work. Sometimes it just takes time to find creative inspiration, to find the right key that unlocks the creative puzzle that’s been trading your mind.

Be Patient

Do not let those around you pressure you into moving to pre-production with an idea that you feel is half-baked. Instead, pitch it to people you trust, talk through it, and ask for feedback.

You will know when you are ready to move forward. Sometimes, though, we don’t have the luxury of waiting – projects most often have deadlines. That means working with limitations and constraints.

As you get more practiced, the quality of the questions you ask yourself can make the difference between pulling the plug or moving forward.

What To Look For

Begin looking for the central idea. Does your script fully express a central idea, or is it reading like a short lead-in to a yet unwritten longer piece?

This is an easy pitfall to fall into if you are writing a short script. If your short cannot clearly articulate that idea, at least to yourself, you do not have a script worth producing.

This post is a support article for the chapter “Screenwriting” in
Cyber Film School’s Multi-Touch Filmmaking Textbook

Evaluation Structure

Applying an evaluation structure will help you find what it is you are trying to say. It is a method of introspection that helps the writer look inside themselves and see what it is they want to express. An evaluation includes a study of:

Conflict and Resolution
Main Character’s Motivation
Depth of character
Formatting: balance between Action and dialogue
Visually clear action that aids the reader in visualizing the film the action

When you read your or someone else’s script, look to see what the story’s conflict and resolution say about their idea.

You can also read your main character’s motivations and arc through the story and make an evaluation of the script. Is the character real, believable, and three-dimensional? If the character is unbelievable and one-dimensional, does it fit well with their concept? If you can’t get a handle on the character and why they do the things that they do in the story, chances are the writer doesn’t understand the character either.

Remember to watch formatting and the balance of dialogue vs. action. Is it told cinematically through action or does it depend on heavy dialogue like a stage play? Has the writer considered that this script will actually need to be shot? Is it written in such a way as to communicate clearly the vision of the film so every member of the crew can envision it, especially the producer, director, and actors?

Answering these questions helps shape your script. Showing your script to others, like pitching an initial concept, is part of the feedback loop that can help guide you in finding answers to problems with your project.

How to Handle Feedback

Knowing what feedback to incorporate and what feedback to ignore is a valuable skill for the writer to develop.

Too many times, writers ignore helpful feedback – they don’t want to hear the problems with their work. But those problems get amplified down the production line and a smart producer will task a pass on a flawed script.

Other writers tend to incorporate all the feedback they get and lose some of their own spark and conviction that gave life to the project at its inception.

Incorporating all feedback will lead to a weak and watered-down script. In the film business, every person has their own take on the material, so a good writer must be able to find some balance and work with notes that enhance the work.

Know yourself. Do not take feedback personally, but do listen and consider their words carefully. If you are eager to get direction from others, you need to incorporate their suggestions, if sometimes reluctantly.

Writing Is Rewriting

Remember: writing is rewriting. Get the first draft down on the page so you have something to work with, but consider it a paper-maché sculpture.

It’s only a sketch that you will adapt and change and mold into its final form. No one puts words on paper perfectly the first time, especially not a script. Write a draft, get feedback, and rewrite. Work on it until it is flawless.

You’ll never please everybody but if you are demanding of yourself and your idea, you will know when it is done.

If you get so stuck with an idea that you don’t know how it will work and none of the feedback you get is leading you in the direction that is going to improve it, scrapping the idea and starting over is always an option.

If the concept is important to you, you will come back to it. The answer to making it work may come to you in a dream three years from now.

If you cannot make it work now, you can make it work later. Ramming your head against a wall isn’t going to solve anything. Set it aside and come back to it.

In the meantime, strike out a new idea that flows better onto the page. Your second script will be better than your first script, your third better than your second, and so on. The important thing is to write and get them done.

Summary

• Do not allow your script to go to production until all of the problems have been addressed.

• You have to know yourself, know what feedback to incorporate, and what feedback to reject.

• No one puts words onto paper flawlessly the first time. Be hard on your idea and work through every aspect until it is perfect.

<<<PREVIOUS
SCREENPLAY FORMATTING
The critical importance of a properly formatted screenplay,
and pitfalls to avoid.

Making Sense of Screenplay Format

Contributed By Charles Deemer, edited by Stavros C. Stavrides

If you are a student of screenwriting and not confused by screenplay format, then you haven’t been paying attention. Conflicting information is everywhere. This is unfortunate because, in fact, the preferred format for the contemporary spec screenplay is straightforward and easy to understand. But today’s format took years to get there.

The Origins of Confusion

Then why the confusion? For three major reasons: first, screenplay format has evolved in major ways over the years; second, established writers tend to use whatever older format with which they learned the craft; and finally, published screenplays are shooting scripts, not spec scripts, which contain significant format differences.

Someone should write a book on the evolution of screenplay format. It’s a fascinating subject. I remember looking into screenwriting in the 1960s and quickly abandoned it because the screenplay format was filled with technical jargon that I was too lazy to learn.

Terms like “TWO SHOT” and “DOLLY SHOT” and other camera direction in screenplay writing was everywhere. In those days, the screenwriter contributed to directing the film by including in the script precise directions for how the camera would shoot the scene.

However, directors went ahead and did what they wanted to do, regardless of “in script” direction, so format change was inevitable in order to make the screenplay a more clean and efficient “blueprint for a movie.”

Directors, not writers, were going to direct the film and the format was destined to change to reflect this reality. The scripted scenes were subsequently written and read in a master scene format with very few if any, camera or editing cues.

However, there are interesting hacks that experienced screenwriters use to “direct without directing” by using white space to break down the action into several beats, as if each action is one visual setup. More about this in our article Writing Screen Action – Part Two.

Taking Power from the Writer

Therefore, the evolution of format has been in the direction of removing directorial power from the screenwriter. This process was gradual. After specific camera directions dropped out of the accepted format, general directions replaced them.

Instead of technical terms like “DOLLY SHOT,” writers would describe the same thing in more general language: “the CAMERA MOVES along with them as they walk down the street.”

Later, in the eighties, new fashionable terms came into place that suggested how a scene would be shot. ANGLE ON became a popular slugline and sometimes the name of the character would become a slugline, suggesting the same thing.

This post is a support article for the “Screenwriting” chapter in Cyber Film School’s Multi-Touch Filmmaking Textbook

Today’s ‘Master Scene’ Script

This process continued to evolve until all references to the camera were removed from the spec script. 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 in the 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.

SUMMARY

Here is the style as seen in the best contemporary spec screenplays today:

Crisp visual writing (what do we see on the screen, in general terms?) in simple sentences,
in short paragraphs, with no mention of the camera,
and without directing the actors or usurping the duties of the costume designer, set designer, cinematographer, etc.,
with dialogue scenes that are short and snappy.

Remember, a screenplay is not a literary document. It is a blueprint for a movie.

Make it lean and easy to read — in fact, easy to skim because all screenplays are skimmed or read over very quickly before they can reach the next plateau to be read more carefully.

In “VERTICAL WRITING FOR AN EASIER READ”, we explore formatting that allows for a more efficient read.

If a brilliant script isn’t an easy read, it will never make the first cut. The purpose of format today is to make reading easier than it ever was. If you write in master scenes, you will accomplish this.

4. Screenplay Formatting

The Screenplay is the blueprint for the entire production and every department and every person on the shoot relies on it as a guide and instruction manual for the story that is being told.

Contributed By Glen Berry, Edited by Stavros C. Stavrides

Important Concepts

Format Your Script Properly
Script Writing Apps Help
Scripts are comprised of Three Main Parts
Do Not Direct From Your Keyboard

The Script as Blueprint

Screenplays have a very specific format and for good reason. The script is the blueprint for the entire production and every department and every person on the shoot relies on it as a guide and instruction manual for the story that is being told.

An entire list of rules of thumb can be extrapolated from the screenplay. One page of script equals one minute of the finished film. One page of script equals one hour of work editing to reach a rough cut. Many productions aim to shoot four pages of script in one day. The list goes on and on.

All of this depends on the script being properly formatted, however. Professionals working in this industry have a zero-tolerance policy for badly formatted scripts. Experienced script readers can flip through the entire script in a second by fanning the pages and tell whether it is formatted correctly or not.

Forgetting simple things like putting a period at the end of your page numbers is enough to get your script rejected. If you don’t know how to do something like that, or you didn’t bother to research it, the inference is that you won’t know how to create a “smart” screenplay and know nothing about the business.

Not only is applying proper formatting critical to all later stages of the production, but it is also critical to even get your script read by anyone experienced in the industry. Not knowing to format is a fatal amateur mistake.

The “Rules”

Script formatting is dictated by the Writer’s Guild of America.

However, in the words of Einstein: “Never memorize what you can look up in books.” Or even better yet, never memorize formatting rules if you can get software that will automatically apply them for you.

That said, scriptwriting programs will not make you a better writer. They won’t make your concepts any good. They will improve your speed at writing if you already know what you want to write. They will also force you to conform to formatting rules, provided you know what they are.

This post is reformatted from a section of the “Screenwriting” chapter in Cyber Film School’s Multi-Touch Filmmaking Textbook

Final Draft is the industry standard in Hollywood. Many of the scripts that we receive are in Final Draft format or PDF. Final Draft can generate a PDF file. Whatever your choice of software, keep in mind that there are only three main components to the screenplay:

Scene Heading
Dialogue
Action, or ‘Scene Description’

Scene Heading

The scene heading denotes a change in time or space and usually consists of three parts: Interior or Exterior notation (INT/EXT). The location (OCEAN BEACH) and the time of day if it is an exterior (DAY or NIGHT). Like so:

EXT. SHAWANAGA SHORELINE – DAY

Action (Scene Description)

Action does not simply mean people running or shooting at each other. Action is anything that is not dialogue. The action could read like this:

Boy Francis touches the water and turns around. He arrives back to Louise weak, out of breath, and near collapse. Louise stands him to his feet, checks him over, and looks him in the eye to see if he is OK.

A layperson would not describe this scene as an ‘action scene’, but it is in fact comprised of all action and no dialogue.

The more action you have in your script, the more visual it will be in its storytelling style and the more cinematic it will be.

Dialogue

Dialogue denotes the speaker and the spoken line. Although dialogue is very often a critical component of story development, if you do not balance dialogue with action, you will end up with a piece that is more theatrical.

If your script is almost entirely dialogue, why not make it into a stage play? Movies are a visual medium, you ought to tell your story with images.

Here is a great article on the history of the screenplay format
‘MAKING SENSE OF THE SCREENPLAY FORMAT‘

Why the Courier Font?

The industry standard font for screenplays in Courier is 12-point. Yeah, we know, it resembles the typewriter front from the pre-digital era, but some things never change. Maybe it makes it readable. Maybe it’s tradition. Get back to us if you have an explanation.

Summary

If you do not follow proper script formatting guidelines, you are sinking your ship before you even get it in the water.
Scriptwriting programs will help you with speed and help you adhere to formatting guidelines; they will not make you a better writer.
Leave the acting to the actors. Do not include parentheticals, notations on emotion, or any actions that do not directly advance the plot.

NEXT>>>
SCRIPT EVALUATION
Evaluating your script, taking feedback,
and the importance of re-writing.

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CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
Character – protagonists, antagonists, anti-heroes,
and their relationships to the story.