SCRIPT FORMAT 5: (sort of) ADVANCED FORMATTING

We’ve covered the basics of formatting, from scene headings to narrative description to character headings and dialogue. What follows below are odds and ends. A hodgepodge of techniques that you might see used in scripts, or want to use in your scripts.

BEAT

While it’s hardly advanced formatting, one little convention that is misused almost as often as it appears is ‘beat’. 

Like most things that confuse us, the term beat can actually mean a few things. 

Beat might mean the gist of a scene or exchange. This use of the term gives us the ‘beat sheet’, which is a summary of the scenes of a film or play, where each scene is summarized in a sentence or two.

Beat can also mean the smallest measurable action in a scene. This use of the word is most relevant to actors and comedians. 

From that use, though, we get to beat’s most common use in screenplays, which is to represent a slight pause in action or dialogue. The use of the term basically means there’s a void in the action, or simply an inaction. Writers will use the term in narrative description to signify the passing of a moment, or in dialogue to indicate a pause.

Note that any use of the term beat in dialogue should be as a parenthetical, which breaks up the dialogue block; don’t write it within dialogue.

While this is something that is found frequently in screenplays, it’s a bit of a lazy word. Wouldn’t it be better to fill that paused moment with detail or emotion? 

Rather than using beat in narrative description, write another sentence of scene description, describe the look on a character’s face, or detail the markings on an object.

Rather than using it in dialogue, why not describe the character’s expression, tone, or action?

TEXT ON-SCREEN

In the narrative description article, we covered the basics of how to use the SUPER tool to put simple text on-screen, especially text that informs us of the location, year, or change of time from a previous scene. 

But what about larger amounts of text? Well, it depends.

SUPER-SIZED

If you simply wanted to put a lot of text on-screen, you still might use the SUPER tool, but in a slightly different way. 

For short text, you could write SUPER, followed by a colon, then quotations, your text, and an end-quotations. That would all be on a single line of narrative description. Like this:

SUPER: “1994”

For longer text, however, you could, and probably should use dialogue formatting. Following the colon, you would change to dialogue format, use quotations, write out all of your text that would appear on-screen, then use end-quotations. This puts all of your text closer together on the page, making it look more cohesive, and differentiating it from the rest of your narrative description. This helps it to stand out as something important, which, considering it’s a bunch of text on-screen, it should be.

Big blocks of text to begin a film has long been a trope of the sci-fi genre, since it’s a genre that typically skips several decades into the future, and the viewers need to be caught up on how we got to that reality. It’s also frequently found in the fantasy genre, but rarely in others.

THE SCROLL

We’ve all seen Star Wars, right? If you haven’t, you probably should, if for no other reason to understand the cultural phenomenon that has rooted itself into the hearts and minds of most people of the world over the last 40-something years.

Even if you haven’t seen it, I’d bet you’re familiar with the Star Wars crawl, or scroll. The massive words moving across the screen like a fleet of star cruisers. Star Wars didn’t invent the scroll, but it’s become synonymous with it.

If you, for whatever reason, wanted to use a scroll in your own writing, you would treat it in much the same way that you would a big block of text, but rather than using SUPER, you would use SCROLL.

So, you’d type SCROLL, followed by a colon, then switch to dialogue formatting, use a quotation mark, type the body of your text, use another quotation mark, and that’s it! You’ve just created massive moving text in the minds of all who read it (and understand the format).

LETTERS, NEWSPAPERS, + SCREENS

While you shouldn’t have the viewer reading an entire letter, if you want them to read a bit of text that is shown in the frame, you could use the INSERT tool, or just make it clear in your script. 

To use the INSERT tool, just write something that sets up the text, like:

INSERT - THE LETTER, WHICH READS: “…“

At that point, it’s pretty similar to a SUPER. If it’s a small amount of text, you could just put it in quotations marks after the colon. If it’s a larger amount of text, then perhaps you should format the text in the dialogue block.

However you choose to do it, be careful about the amount of text on-screen. Time how long it takes you to read it. If it’s more than a few seconds, you’ll probably want to find a way to shorten that text, or to condense the way it’s presented to the audience. Most of the time, you could just show us a bit to get the idea, then have a character summarize the rest through dialogue.

The example I’ve used is a bit of an exception. This letter from Ned to Steve in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) is significant to their relationship, and the full reading of the letter comes at one of the most dramatic (tear-jerking) parts of the film.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Believe it or not, but not everyone speaks English. If your script features a character speaking another language, there are a few ways you could handle it. All of which are pretty intuitive.

Let’s say my character speaks Welsh. I, unfortunately, cannot speak Welsh, but even if I could, I wouldn’t want to write Welsh in my script. Why? Because only a Welsh speaker could read it, and that’s pretty narrowing for my script’s audience.

Instead, I’ll use a parenthetical (wryly) to indicate the language they’re speaking, and then write their dialogue in English. Like this:

JOE
(in Welsh)
Good evening!

Imagine this, and think of how it sounds, and looks, on-screen. 

Did you imagine that there would be subtitles? You probably did. This is because the subtitles are implied. We’re accustomed to people and characters showing up in stories and documentaries who don’t speak English, and it’s only a moment after they start speaking that you realize they’re speaking another language, and the subtitles appear on the screen. We’re so used to it that we don’t give it a second thought.

If a character speaks another language for the duration of a scene, or perhaps consistently throughout the story, then you could just write in the characterization of that character, when they first appear, that they speak in that language. That way you don’t have to write a parenthetical every time they speak.

Of course you run the risk of the reader forgetting that they’re speaking another language midway through your script, but it probably won’t matter. If it does, then perhaps it’s worth writing their language in the parenthetical every time. That’s your choice to make. 

ON THE TV

It’s pretty common for televisions to show up in our stories. Luckily, how we handle formatting what we see and hear on the TV is pretty straightforward. 

If we’re simply seeing what’s happening on the television, then you could treat the TV as an area of the scene, and use a subheading. Something to the effect of: 

ON THE TV

Then you would simply use narrative description to describe what we’re seeing and hearing. Afterwards, you might write BACK TO SCENE as a subheading to indicate to the reader that we’re no longer on the television.

If there’s someone speaking, such as a news anchor or host, you would write their dialogue just like any other character, but you would specify that their voice is coming from the TV, with a modifier in the character heading, a la VO or OS. It might look something like this:

LATE NIGHT HOST (ON TV)

MONTAGE

I’m not sure why exactly, but a lot of beginning writers really want to write montages. Not that there’s anything wrong with a good montage, but they’re not something that you should probably include in every script.

If you’re a bit unsure what a montage is, it’s a sequence in a story that’s focused on a particular concept or activity, with each shot usually jumping in location or time. It’s more about a simple concept or idea, so the order of shots in a montage doesn’t totally matter.

There are a few ways to format a montage, but clarity should be a priority. The simplest, easiest, and clearest way to format a montage is to label it as such, name it, and then describe the separate shots in a bullet point-type of list. It might look like this:

MONTAGE - GARDEN-GROWN HAPPINESS

-- A tiller churns the soil.

-- A seed packet rips open.

-- The Gardener pokes the seed into the soil.

-- A small spade packs the dirt on top.

-- Rain falls onto the garden.

-- A seedling dances out of the soil.

-- A watering can pours crystal clear water.

-- Vines crawl up the trellis.

-- The sun shines overhead, bright and warm.

-- The Gardener picks a hanging cucumber.

If your montage changes locations, you can include a scene heading before the shot description. You don’t have to include a full scene heading, though; you could use a subheading, just as long as we understand what we’re seeing.

While some montages are their own ‘scene’, many interject into a larger scene. If the latter, use BACK TO SCENE after the montage to bring us back into the pre-montage scene.

SERIES OF SHOTS

A series of shots is almost exactly like a montage. The biggest difference between the two is that a montage is one central concept, whereas a series of shots has a chronology, and usually some sort of climax. In other words, the order of the shots doesn’t really matter in a montage, but it does in a series of shots. 

If you’re not sure which one you’re writing, change around the order of your shots. If the sequence doesn’t work the way you wanted it to, then it’s probably a series of shots. 

My montage example is arguably a series of shots, if you think of it like a single sequence of actions, rather than something that’s repeated.

Frankly, these terms are often used synonymously, and if you always used the label ‘MONTAGE’, you’d be fine.

FLASHBACK

If you’re writing an entire scene that’s a flashback, you’d probably indicate it as such in the scene heading, but what about a momentary flashback? This is the truest sense of the word: when something triggers a flashback to an earlier part of the narrative, reminding us of what we’ve seen or heard or revealing something we haven’t yet seen.

In cases like this, you would write the word FLASHBACK, followed by a hyphen, and a title for your flashback (much in the same way you title a montage or series of shots).  It might look like this:

FLASHBACK - HIDING FROM THE COPS

Hit return, and then use narrative description to briefly describe or remind us of the content of the flashback. And be sure to bring us BACK TO SCENE when your flashback is over.

If your flashback is something we haven’t seen before, and is something that would take more than a few lines to describe, you should probably create a new scene heading for it. 

TALKING ABOUT PHONES

While it’s becoming rarer for people to actually talk on the phone, the convention is still alive and well in most things we watch. It’s simply more dramatic and satisfying than watching two characters text back and forth, even if the latter is increasingly more realistic.

How to handle the formatting for a phone conversation is up to you, but here are some of the most common ways to go about it.

ONE-SIDED

In this technique, we only see and hear one side of the phone conversation. We see the character on their phone, and we hear what they say with pauses in between while the other person (presumably) talks.

This way is perfectly fine, but be careful that your one character isn’t saying way too much. If they start each line by summarizing what the other person just said, then we’re over-writing the character’s dialogue. If it’s that important for us to hear the other side, then go with one of the other techniques.

This technique doesn’t require any special formatting to work.

HEAR BOTH ENDS

In this technique, we still only see the one character on the phone, but we hear both characters on the call.

The benefit of this technique is that we get to hear both sides of the conversation, so we’re not missing any information. It also (hopefully) takes out our desire to over-write the one character’s dialogue. 

With this technique, you would simply write the unseen person’s dialogue in a dialogue block, per usual, but with the character heading that includes (V.O.). Remember that (V.O.) is used pretty much anytime we hear a person, but they aren’t physically present in the scene. This includes when we hear them talking over the phone.

INTERCUT

With an intercut technique, we can see and hear the characters on both sides of the call. Essentially, we need to establish the locations of both characters first. You might do this through conventional scene headings as the call is initiated, then use a heading that looks like this:

INTERCUT - PHONE CONVERSATION

If the characters are just standing and talking, then you can proceed to just write their back-and-forth dialogue. If there are actions happening on either end, then consider using subheadings to take us from place to place.

Another way is to establish the characters’ locations in the intercut heading, like this:

INTERCUT - DAN AT THE BEACH / BOB AT THE DOCK

This way can get a bit confusing, though, if there’s much action in either location that you want us to see. You’ll have to resort to using subheadings to show us what’s going on in either location.

No matter how you do it, the intercut technique can be a bit tricky to write and follow. If I really want to write an intercut, I go the long way by establishing both scene headings, then using subheadings to take us back and forth.

SIMULTANEOUS DIALOGUE

If, for whatever reason, you have several characters speaking at the same time, you’ll have to consider your options for simultaneous dialogue.

If the characters are saying the exact same thing, at the same time, you can efficiently describe this through a joint character heading. Basically, write both character names in the character heading. This is probably enough, but if you really want to make it clear, you could also include a parenthetical that reads something like (together) or (simultaneously). It might look something like this:

BARB AND TAM

(simultaneously)

If the characters are speaking at the same time, but saying different things, there are a couple of things you might do. 

The first might be to write the character headings and dialogue sequentially on the page, but under the latter character’s dialogue, include a parenthetical that reads (overlapping) or (simultaneously). Something to let us know that they’re speaking at the same time.

Another trick you could do is to write the dialogue side-by-side. Most screenwriting software allow you to write dual dialogue, which puts character headings and dialogue blocks beside each other on the page. 

Personally, I think having characters say different things at the same time is annoying. Really annoying. But if I wanted to include that annoying thing in my script, I would write it in the narrative description instead. This is pretty much the only time I would summarize dialogue in narrative description. Why? Because the viewer almost certainly will be unable to sort and understand what’s being said, so why should the reader be able to clearly read the chaos on the page? 

(Yes, I do love It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which frequently has characters shouting over each other, but it’s repeatedly pointed out how annoying and frustrating it is, which is part of the humor. Also, the characters are usually just shouting obscenities at each other, so the dialogue is of no substance or importance.)

SPELLING IN DIALOGUE

If your character is spelling a name or word out loud, you might feel the need to phonetically spell out the letters they’re speaking. No need. Just spell out the word they’re spelling, but with hyphens between each letter. This applies even if your character is misspelling a word. For instance:

      DR. JONES
It pains me when people spell definitely D-E-F-I-A-N-T-L-Y.

MAKE IT YOUR OWN, for everyone.

As I’ve said many times before, much of what we’ve covered is simple convention, and most of it is broken frequently by writers from all walks of life and experience levels. So, if something we’ve covered in these handful of articles doesn’t sit well with you, then do it differently. Simple as that. 

The only thing that I ask, and surely all future readers of your scripts would ask, is that you write clearly.

Make it so that we can understand and ‘see’ your story with our mind’s eye. Proofread your scripts again and again. Have your screenwriter friends read them; to check for errors, but also to get feedback. Have your non-screenwriter friends read your scripts, too, and ask them if they were ever confused. The last thing you want is for a reader to get confused when reading the story that you’ve put a lot of thought and effort into.

Clarity over convention. Every time.