Contents

Know more about this
(or any other) subject?

Show off your know-how at Quamut Wiki.

Learn more with these titles from Barnes & Noble

Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

The Screenwriter's Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script

Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

The Name Book

Find your voice in film.

You don’t have to be a major Hollywood player to write a successful screenplay. As long as you can convey your story in the right format and get your script into the right hands, it could one day hit a theater near you. Learn to:

Pinpoint your idea, your setting, and the type of film you want to make
Create effective characters, dialogue, plotlines, and other essential elements
Revise and finalize your screenplay, copyright it, and find an agent

Screenwriting Basics

A screenplay, also known as a script, is the blueprint for a movie. A screenwriter writes a screenplay to tell a specific story—one that he or she can imagine visually—and typically has the end goal of seeing it made into a film.

The screenplay is one of the most important steps in the movie-making process. As the old adage goes, you can make a bad movie from a good script, but you can’t make a good movie from a bad script. Every movie begins with words on a page.

Structure of a Screenplay

Though screenplays may differ wildly in style and form, most of them adhere to a set of specific structural guidelines. The paradigm used in this guide was originally put forth by screenwriting guru Syd Field, author of the acclaimed book Screenplay: The Fountain of Screenwriting.

Three-Act Structure

Screenplays are divided into three basic parts:

Beginning: The writer sets up the story.
Middle: The writer builds up the conflict in the story.
End: The writer brings the conflict to a climax, after which the conflict is resolved.

128 pages = 2 hours and 8 minutes

The movie industry uses a general rule of thumb that one page of a screenplay equals about one minute of screen time. For financial reasons, most movie studios aim for movies to last an average of 2 hours and 8 minutes. Based on this standard, your screenplay should be no more than 128 pages long. In fact, a good rule of thumb is:

Act I should be 30 pages
Act II should be 60 pages
Act III should be 30 pages

Elements of a Story

The main purpose of a screenplay is to tell a story. The essential elements that comprise a good story are:

A vivid setting: Where the story takes place
Complex characters: The people who inhabit the world that you create
Dynamic dialogue: What your characters say to one another
Actions that matter: What your characters do
A plot that moves: The events of the story and how they are linked to one another
Conflict with consequences: The tension of the story, usually a result of obstacles standing in the way of what the characters want

What Makes Screenplays Different?

Screenplays are unique to the movie industry and shouldn’t be confused with novels or plays. Before you start writing a screenplay, make sure your story fits the appropriate form. The table below illustrates a few ways that screenwriting is different than other forms of writing.

Screenplays . . .	Novels . . .	Plays . . .
Exist for the screen	Exist for the page	Exist for the stage
Tell a story through images	Tell a story through words— readers create their own images	Tell a story through words and gestures
Let viewers perceive characters’ thoughts through things that characters do, say, and see	Let readers get inside characters’ heads and know their thoughts	Let readers understand characters’ thoughts through monologues and dialogues
Allow stories to jump through time and space in an instant, and must establish tone visually	Establish changes in setting and tone through descriptions, which are sometimes lengthy	Occur in real time in the physical arena of the stage; lighting, music, and props establish setting and tone

The primary characteristic that separates movies from novels and plays is that movies are a visual medium. If you plan to write a screenplay, you must learn to tell a story through pictures.

The Stages of Writing a Screenplay

The screenwriting process can be broken into two stages:

Preparation: This stage includes researching your subject, fleshing out your idea, and designing the story structure. It’s the stage in which the bulk of your work takes place. Preparing to write a screenplay requires the same kind of forethought as outlining a research paper. During the preparation stage, you map out the entire plot of your story.
Execution: This stage accounts for the actual writing process, from first drafts to revisions to the final product. During this stage, you must pay attention to dialogue, formatting, and word choice.

Acknowledgments & Disclaimer

Next:
How to Come Up with an Idea for Your Screenplay

Download & Print this Quamut to Go

Complete 6-page Quamut to Go PDF only $2.95

Add Quamut to cart

What's a Quamut?

Creating Your Independent Film Script

Replacement-for-how-to-get-feedback-on-y.postit

How to Get Feedback on Your Script