SCRIPT FORMAT 2: SCENE HEADINGS

WHAT’S THE PURPOSE OF A SCENE HEADING?

The purpose of a scene heading is to very quickly orient your reader to the physical space in which your scene takes place, or at least where it starts. While you can and should describe your scene further in the narrative description portion of the script, the scene heading should lay the framework for the physical space as quickly and concisely as possible, so that by the end of the scene heading the reader has already started to form a mental visual of the scene.

WHAT DOES A SCENE HEADING LOOK LIKE?

Full scene headings have at least three parts, but there might be more. We’ll first look at the three most conventional parts of the scene heading - the camera location, scene location, and time of day - before looking at the other, less common parts that you’ll see from time to time.

While the majority of the script will be sentence format - narrative description and dialogue - the scene heading should *not* be a complete sentence, but rather the appropriate abbreviation, noun(s), and description of time.

Superficially, scene headings should be in ALL CAPS. Visually, this helps scene headings to stand out when looking at a script. Some writers put their scene headings in bold, as well. 

THE PARTS OF A SCENE HEADING

INT. / EXT. (Camera Location)

The first part of the full scene heading is whether the scene is INTerior or EXTerior, and is written as INT. or EXT., respectively. Most of the time, it will be obvious which of these your scene should start with. Is the scene inside or outside? 

You could implement your own rule on the matter, such as whether there is a roof over your characters, or whether there are four walls surrounding the scene. These rules are imperfect, though, as the most iffy locations fall into different categories with the different rules.

Some iffy locations include a gazebo (has a roof, but no walls), convertible (has ‘walls’, but no roof), or an open garage (has a roof, but only three walls, and is directly connected to the outside). For locations such as these, go with whatever makes the most sense to you within the context of the scene, especially considering the following.

This part of the scene heading is sometimes referred to as ‘Camera Location’. While that name seems like it would only belong in a shooting script, the name implies a way in which we, as writers, can ‘direct’ the reader’s mental projection of our story. If the scene is two characters in a car, whether we use INT. or EXT. implies whether we’re inside the car with the characters (INT.), looking at them through the windshield (EXT.), shooting through one of the side windows (EXT.), or something else entirely.

Another example: Let’s say we’re writing a horror film where we want the camera to seem voyeuristic. The characters who are speaking in the scene are in a bedroom, but we want to show them through the open window, implying the POV (point-of-view) of our creep or psychopath. We start the scene with EXT. because our camera is outside, and we’re watching the interaction through the bedroom window. Fun, huh?

The conventional punctuation following INT. / EXT. is a period, since the three letters are an abbreviation.

SCENE LOCATION

The next part of the full scene heading is the location, or scene location. As I mentioned in the overview article, this is often the hardest part of the scene heading. The reason being is that you want the location to be as informative as possible while also being concise. Your location, ideally, will be one to two words, and I would recommend no more than three.

‘THE BRIDGE OVER BY JASON’S HOUSE’ is too long for a scene heading. Instead, just write ‘BRIDGE’ or ‘UNDER THE BRIDGE’, and then in the narrative description you can remind us that it’s the bridge by Jason’s house, assuming the reader (viewer) would know such a thing. The most important thing is that, by the end of the scene heading, the reader is already mentally visualizing that the scene takes place on, under, or near a bridge.

Additionally, your choice of nouns should be thought out, if you want it to be efficient in painting an accurate mental visual with just a few words. If you’re only using one scene location descriptor (more on that below), it’s not very informative to go with something like ‘HOUSE’ when you could be more specific, such as ‘KITCHEN’ or ‘LIVING ROOM’.

Conventionally, a hyphen follows the scene location, before the time of day.

TIME OF DAY

Time of day is simply when your scene takes place. The universally accepted options here are DAY or NIGHT, which is pretty straightforward. Is there sunshine?

Most writers like to be a bit more specific, however, and other options are used, such as DAWN, DUSK, MORNING, EVENING, NOON, etc. As mentioned in the format overview, however, these descriptors aren’t universally accepted in the greater industry, and occasionally will be used as an arbitrary reason to disqualify a script from a contest or festival. Again, I don’t agree with this idea, and think you should use whatever time of day you think most accurately describes when your scene is set.

Occasionally, a time of day descriptor wouldn’t be included, as it might not be applicable or relevant. This is where I would usually pause for students to offer their insight as to when this might be the case.

Any guesses?

One of the more common instances is when the scene is set in space. Day and night are concepts that really sort of rely on, you know, being on a planet that rotates. So, if you’re not on a planet that rotates, and the sun doesn’t ‘rise’ and ‘set’, then day and night probably aren’t relevant descriptors to when your scene is happening. 

Some writers, however, will still use day or night to signify the general activities going on in the scene, such as whether the astronauts (or whoever) are actively working (day), as opposed to resting (night). 

If your scene is set in space, and you choose not to include a time of day, then you could instead put ‘SPACE’, or just omit that portion of the scene heading altogether. In which case, your scene heading might look like this: INT. SPACE STATION

Another kind of location in which similar logic is applied is when your scene is set in some sort of bunker or base that is underground or otherwise cut off from any visual cues as to what the actual time of day is.

OTHERS

There are a few other pieces of scene heading that appear from time to time that assist in painting a more specific picture for the reader. These include the secondary location, LATER, CONTINUOUS, YEAR, and FLASHBACK/DREAM.

SECONDARY LOCATION

First, there’s the secondary location. This one is pretty simple, because it works just like the scene location, but it’s a second descriptor that helps narrow our scene down to a more specific location. This is used most often to describe a more specific location within a HOUSE or other building, such as a specific room or section of the house, but can be used in many other ways.

A secondary location will come after the main scene location in the scene heading, and will be separated by a hyphen, comma, or slash, depending on the writer.

LATER

LATER goes into the time of day position of the scene, and simply implies that time has passed in that same location. In the final film or video, LATER is often visually represented through a dissolve or jump cut, usually on either the full scene or with a tighter shot on something like a clock.

Here’s a common example: 

INT. OFFICE - NIGHT

In this scene, the character sits down at their desk, and prepares for a long night of work or studying.

INT. OFFICE - LATER

It’s revealed that the character has fallen asleep on top of their books.

Again, that’s one of the most common uses of that technique, but it’s one that simply illustrates the use of LATER.

CONTINUOUS

Continuous also goes in the place of the time of day, and operates opposite of LATER. With CONTINUOUS, the location is changing, but narrative time is continuing directly from the previous scene heading. It’s important to note that the use of CONTINUOUS almost always means that we’re in the same scene as before. 

This is commonly used when a character is changing locations, but we want to be clear with the reader that it’s a continuation of narrative time, and we’re not jumping ahead or anything. Examples might include when a character is moving through rooms in a house, or when they’re leaving the house, and the narrative camera moves outside with them. 

It’s also helpful in clarifying situations which might not be as visually obvious. Perhaps there are developments happening in more than one location at once, and we are jumping from action to action.

YEAR OR PERIOD

Clarity should be your highest priority as a screenwriter, so if you’re writing a period piece, you should also include a YEAR or DECADE in your first scene heading, at least.

So, let’s say my film takes place in 1988, my scene heading might look like this:

EXT. MOUNTAIN HIGHWAY - NIGHT - 1988

Format-wise, you could put the year after a hyphen, as I just did, or put it in parentheses, like this:

EXT. MOUNTAIN HIGHWAY - NIGHT (1988)

You could also just specify a general time period, such as 1980’s.

Some writers hold off until the narrative description to reveal that their story is set in the past, but it’s easy enough to just put in the scene heading, and can help to sooner orient the reader into our story. For instance:

EXT. NEW YORK THEATER - NIGHT

Compared to:

EXT. NEW YORK THEATER - NIGHT (1931)

That little addition on the end of the scene heading does a lot to affect the mental visual we’re constructing as we read the scene heading, and does so quicker than establishing the time period in the narrative description. 

FLASHBACK OR DREAM

Likewise, you might include FLASHBACK or DREAM in the scene heading for clarity’s sake. Oftentimes, these sorts of scenes are visually different from the present reality of the rest of the narrative anyways, so it’s only fair to indicate to the reader as much.

FLASHBACKs should probably always be indicated as such, but sometimes you might not want to include DREAM or NIGHTMARE in the scene heading. Oftentimes, when a scene is a dream, the viewer doesn’t know it’s a dream until some unsettling or too-good-to-be-true moment. In these cases, I would omit DREAM from the scene heading, as it ruins the drama for the reader. In general, you should try to keep your reader and viewer on equal understanding with what’s going on in your narrative.

Format-wise, these would be treated in much the same way as a year or time period. Examples: 

INT. INDUSTRIAL FACTORY - NIGHT (NIGHTMARE)

EXT. POND - DAY - FLASHBACK

SUBHEADINGS

Subheadings are a type of scene heading where part or most of the scene heading is missing. Slowing down the reader with a full scene heading is counterintuitive, if a subheading is sufficient in giving us the information we need to know. Subheadings help keep us oriented within a scene as characters or the camera moves around, while also keeping the script flowing.

If your overall scene takes place in a house, you might use subheadings that are simply the various areas of the house, such as KITCHEN, BATHROOM, LIVING ROOM, etc.

Generally, a subheading will just be a scene location, but writers have found many uses for what could be lumped into subheadings. LATER can be used as a subheading, considering it already implies that there’s no change in location, and the LATER itself is just a change of time. Occasionally, character names could be used as subheadings, especially if they occupy different spaces within a scene.

Some scripts use subheadings liberally in place of full scene headings, such as Nightcrawler and The Big Lebowski. 

IN SHORT

Scene headings are meant to help us understand where we are in the story, in the shortest and most efficient way possible. They aren’t the only way in which we understand our scenes, however. Narrative description allows us to be more detailed and articulate in describing our scenic spaces. We’ll cover this in much more depth in Script Format 3: Narrative Description.