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Formatting A Script

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19 views

Formatting A Script

Uploaded by

DeanSmith
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Formatting a script

There are many different templates for formatting a script, and, to certain extent, it’s a
good idea to mix and match a bit to work out what’s best for you.

On a technical note, if you have advanced Microsoft Word skills, you can customise
Word to format a script the way you want it, by setting up a series of headings, and
shortcuts for those headings.

Even if you’re not IT minded, it’s important to find a consistent, clear formatting
style, in order to make a scriptreader’s experience of your script as trouble-free as
possible. It can be frustrating for a reader if the print is tiny, cramped, or illegible.
You should always type your script, and set your font no smaller than 12pt.

Although some theatres ask for scripts to be double-spaced, this isn’t always
necessary. However, you should ensure there is at least a single-space between each
new speech/stage direction/scene. You should always number your pages. You
should make sure that scene headings, character names, dialogue, and stage
directions are distinctly represented.

The most conventional form of formatting – and the form (roughly) used by
publishers Faber and Methuen, works as follows:

Scene 1

Stage directions begin on a new line, and are italicised. When introducing a new
character, like Character A, it is customary to de-italicise, and, if you like,
embolden. Subsequent uses of Character A within the stage directions should simply
be de-italicised. Leave a space between stage directions and dialogue.

Character A: Character names should be in bold, and followed by a tab. Dialogue is


represented by ‘Normal’ type, and can flow onto the next line. If you wish to include
a stage direction within a speech - perhaps to indicate the manner in which the
character speaks - you can do so in italics, within parentheses (eg Angrily). However,
you should only do this where it is absolutely necessary – the nature of an actor’s
delivery should be obvious from the writing, and the first thing many directors do is
go through a script crossing out needless stage directions!
Before beginning a new speech, make sure you leave a space.

Character B: Then speaks. Sometimes, a tense dramatic moment may lead to a…

Pause

Before the characters continue their speech. A pause can be a lengthy silence, while a

Beat

represents a shorter dramatic moment – a silent beat in the rhythm of the dialogue.
_____________

Within your body text, remember that dialogue can be formatted in prose or broken
up into lines, (or both), and that the way you lineate dialogue can affect, or suggest,
the way it is to be spoken and received. You can see the different effects this can have
in David Greig’s Outlying Islands, where prose is used…

Robert: We’ll survey the burrows first, find out where they are. Take a few days to get the
feel of the night-flighting. Then we’ll take photographs. No point wasting flash.

…And then lineated

John: I’m bushed.


Arm hurts.
Up since half-six.
Famished.
Billeted in a mud cave half underground1

______________

It is customary these days to accompany your text with an elaborate ‘Author’s note’,
which describes the ways in which punctuation has been specially used to denote a
particular effect in the dialogue. The Note in David Edgar’s Prisoner’s Dilemma is a
concise example:

A dash ( - ) means that a character is interrupted. A slash ( / ) means that the next
character to speak starts speaking at that point (what follows the slash need not be
completed, it is there to indicate a character’s train of thought). Ellipses (…) indicate
that a character has interrupted him or herself.

Caryl Churchill, famously, started this trend, and it’s worth having a look at Top
Girls, or Serious Money for page-long itemisations of pyrotechnical punctuation.

1
David Grieg, Outlying Islands, Faber 2002, p 24

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