How To Write A Movie Script (Complete Guide For Beginners)

if you're just starting out writing screenplays then the first thing you need to understand is that a screenplay is not a novel keep in mind when you're writing your script you always want to focus on showing instead of telling the main difference between writing a novel and a screenplay is that when you write a novel the prose is very detailed it has to paint a picture for the reader and usually does that with a lot of aesthetic details when you write a screenplay though it's important that you ask yourself often if the story is visually adaptable to be on film or a movie now before we start to write our screenplay the first thing we're going to want to do is come up with a cool idea or a concept when we're making our movie we want to think of the finished product as like a beautiful mansion that we either want to show off to the world or we want to sell for a lot of money the screenplay is going to be the blueprints the foundation of everything before we even get to the screenplay or the blueprints of everything we want to have an idea of what everything's going to look like how it's going to feel so let's start with baby steps get a pencil and some paper and write down in one or two sentences what your movie or your idea is about within those one or two sentences you want to make sure that you define who the hero or protagonist is what his or her goal is and who the villain or antagonist or antagonistic force that's standing in that main character's way from achieving their goal once you've finished this you've essentially created what's called a log line or an elevator pitch i've got a whole separate video on how to do this and refine this to the point where you can use it in a pitch and use it as a marketing tool in order to sell your screenplay but later for that right now we just want to get our rough idea down in one or two sentences so that we have a basis on which to build our foundation on after you've written your log line if you're still unclear on what your story is about or the events that are going to happen and in which sequence they're going to happen then you might want to consider writing either an outline or a treatment so you might ask what is a story treatment think of your story treatment as your first sketch it's only going to be about two to five pages but it can be as long or as short as you want it to be the purpose of this is just to get your thoughts down on paper so you can establish how the events in your story are going to flow you can include snippets of dialogue if you come up with that along the way but don't forget the idea here is just to keep your main focus on writing an overall summary of what your movie is about it's not a scene by seeing story summary that you're writing here either you only focus on a few of your main characters and the key events that take place in your story since all great screenplays have a beginning middle and an end you're going to start by writing one page double space that focuses on each act in a typical three act structure film the first act you'll focus on setting up the story getting the audience's attention and introducing your main characters the second act is going to be the middle part and this is where you're going to complicate your protagonists situation and elevate all of the conflict around them until it reaches a crisis point finally in your third act you'll focus on resolving that conflict and hopefully giving us a satisfying ending if this isn't your style or you think that this is a lot of work or you want to just kind of jump right into it you may want to consider writing an outline instead an outline is just going to be where you can get into the specifics of what kind of scenes will happen at certain points of your story even though a screenplay is considered to be the blueprint of a movie before it's produced you can think of an outline as just the blueprint of the screenplay if that makes sense writing an outline can be as simple as just writing at one and then kind of adding bulleted lists of events that happen for each scene do the same for act two and act three and when you're done you'll have your outline this is a great way to have a bird's-eye view of each scene that happens in your story an old tactic that's still useful is writing each scene of your movie on index cards so that you can easily move them around as you see fit all right cool so i know that was kind of a lot to take in and we haven't even started on page one of our screenplay but rome wasn't built in a day when you look at how screenplays are written you're gonna notice that it's typically written in a certain type of format it's got courier font set to size 12. it's got one and a half inch margins on the left side of the page one inch margins on the right top and bottom of the page and there's a few other caveats that i'll have written out in the blog link below in the description but for the most part you don't have to worry about any of this if you just get screenwriting software so your next question might be well what's the best screenwriting software to get and the best answer for that question is gonna be whichever one you can afford seriously as long as it has the ability to convert your script to a pdf format you're in good shape now when you get on a level where you are working with producers and you're going to be switching screenplays back and forth and they need the actual working file in order to make adjustments and that type of thing then you're probably going to want to go with final draft because that's what most industry professionals and producers use on a day-to-day basis but for now just get what you can afford there's even some free software out there if you look generally speaking your screenplay is going to be about 90 to 110 pages give or take just kind of based on whatever the genre is and what type of story you're trying to tell in either case the beginning is going to be typically about five percent of the story the middle is going to be about fifty percent and then the end is going to be about twenty five percent again i'm referencing the basic three act structure here if we want to break a screenplay down and i mean really drill down screenplays are broken down into acts acts are broken down into sequences sequences are broken down into scenes and scenes are broken down into beats when we write a basic scene it's going to consist of three main parts the scene heading the description or action lines and the dialog the scene heading scene headings are also known as slug lines they explain the when and the where to the reader whenever you write them make sure it's in all capital letters and is included each time the story moves to a different location for example ext dot coffee shop dash morning means that we're looking at the exterior location of a coffee shop in this example ext means exterior location the next part describes the general location and morning is the time of day so from this basic scene heading it's pretty obvious that the camera is outside of the coffee shop if the scene were taking place inside the coffee shop then you would type int for interior in the prefix instead of ext sometimes the action moves back and forth through a doorway or an opening so in this scenario with the coffee shop let's say your character is standing at the doorway and the action takes place between the exterior and the interior in that particular situation you would just type something like ext slash int so that the reader knows that the action is taking place both outside and inside the location so all in all you have three parts of a scene heading you have the location of the camera which is represented by int or ext then you have the location of the actual scene which is the place of where everything is happening and the third part is going to be the time of day which is day or night a couple of things to keep in mind when you're writing your scene headings make sure that you kind of stick to maybe two or three words when you're describing the locations it's not a hard rule but you don't really need to be super specific and at the same time you don't have to be super generic either but just right enough so the reader or director can get the picture of where the location is happening also when you're describing the time of day try to stay away from terms like dusk dawn late afternoon early evening high noon gloomy abstract stuff like that that makes it hard for someone to picture actually what time of day it is unless it's super critical to the story just keep it to the basics day or night is cool now occasionally the word same is used to indicate that the scene takes place at the same time or just after the previous scene an example of this would be if i were to write something like int dot joey's garage dash day and then i wrote my scene out and then the very next scene i wrote something like int dot sarah's kitchen dash sane so now when the reader gets to the sarah's kitchen scene they know that this is actually taking place at the same time as the previous scene in joy's garage the word continuous is used for a similar purpose it's used to kind of show the continuity between two different scenes and there's also the word later which will kind of describe a passage of time between two different scenes so everything we just learned is called a master scene heading that's because it identifies the master or primary location of the scene but what if you have a secondary location within that particular scene such as the living room of a house well you don't have to write that entire scene over the way i just described it a secondary scene heading is written in a more shorthand format and sometimes it's considered a mini slug so for example if you had a scene heading that was spelled out int dot house dash day and then you wrote out your action lines and some dialogue and say the character moved into the living room then you would just simply type out living room in all caps and then hit return and then you would type out everything that happens within the living room from there if the character went into the kitchen you could simply just type something like in the kitchen or moves into the kitchen in all caps so this comes in handy especially when you're writing out action sequences or you just want to save some space as long as you remember that the master scene is the primary location and the secondary headings go within the master scene once you change the camera placement though to an exterior location or to another location that's just not part of the master location then you need to create a whole new master scene heading if you have a scene that takes place in a certain time period then another way you can write your scene heading is to type something like ext dot eiffel tower dash morning dash winner comma 1925 so this type of scene heading is good for like a dream or possibly a flashback or just setting the scene in the tone for a very specific time it's not just the eiffel tower here it's the eiffel tower in a specific season and a certain type of year so it gives the reader a good visual of how the eiffel tower might have looked back in that time period versus current times since i mentioned flashbacks let's talk about a couple of different ways on how you can write those as well in addition to the way i just explained it you would probably want to add a dash and then the word flashback at the end of that particular scene heading a second way to write flashbacks is to simply type out the word flashback dash and then what the actual flashback is then you want to hit enter and then type out the actual flashback when you're finished typing out the flashback within about four or five lines just go ahead and type out the word back to present day or back to scene a third way to write flashbacks is to write the scene heading as you normally would and then put flashback in parenthesis type out your scene and then at the end make sure that you put something like back to present day or back to scene this is good for when you have several different types of scenes that are flashbacks that way when the reader is reading your script they know exactly where they are in the timeline of your story like anything else make sure you don't overdo it with the flashbacks you can see how that can become really confusing if you have about 50 different flashbacks within your story it's hard to keep up with the timeline of your story and it takes away from everything that's happening when you write a flashback just make sure that there's some type of good payoff the last two things i want to cover about secondary headings is montages and what's called a series of shots a montage is just a compilation of short scenes or moments it's basically going to be a sequence of shots that express the same or similar idea such as a passage of time or some type of stream of consciousness there's no real hard and fast rule on how these montages are formatted but there's general expectations on how people are used to seeing them either way you'd probably just write something like montage dash kenny and diane running through the park and then from there you would just hit enter and then type out something like dash dash kenny and diane run through the park holding hands period once they stop diane surprises kenny with a kiss on the cheek period space then do like a dash dash which is a different shot and then you could type something like kenny and diane share a hot dog together period then let's do another space to add another shot dash dash kenny gets down on one knee kama pulls out a ring and diane gasps enjoy period we can see she says yes and then he stands and they hug and kiss in front of a small crowd period now of course you would end the montage by just typing something like in montage or back to scene and then from there you would just type out your scene heading and get back to your story when you're doing a series of shots it's pretty much the same thing it's just a lot more concise you could type something like series of shots and then do a space and you can either use like a dash or you can use a letter like a um kind of like a bulleted list and then just list shots like kenny runs through the park with diane next shot could be b or a dash and it could say something like diane kisses kenny on the cheek the next one could be kenny proposes to diane in front of a small crowd and then you could just end the scene the same way you do a montage by typing in scene or back to scene so the difference between the two is that a montage is just a little bit more in detail whereas a series of shots is kind of like a bulleted list of just single camera shots alright so that pretty much covers everything you need to know about how to create a primary scene heading and a secondary scene heading the next thing you need to learn in order to create a full scene is how to write action lines aka descriptions and also how to write dialogue for your characters so make sure to check out the next chapter that you know how to write a scene heading let's talk about the description so once again screenplays and television scripts are made up of three parts the scene headings the descriptions aka action lines and the dialogue so the narrative description or action lines are always going to be written in present tense and that's because when we're looking at a movie we're looking at it in present tense we're watching things as they're actually happening when you write these out make sure that you double space between the paragraphs and you don't need to indent anything the idea here is to keep your action lines nice and lean you want to probably keep things to about three to four lines it's not a hard rule but this is a good way to kind of show brevity remember we're not writing a novel here and we want to make sure that the pacing in the story moves the reader along and everything's nice and tight big blocks of text are the quickest way to turn a reader off and make sure that someone doesn't actually make it all the way through your script as a general rule of thumb you want to think of each paragraph per beat of action or image as a individual camera shot remember we're not writing a novel so you need to be very visual whenever you write anything within these action lines do not write anything that we cannot physically see that means if you have a character who has a certain type of thought or is feeling a certain way you need to figure out a way to write that visually so that we can see what's happening when a producer or director is reading your script they don't know how to film something where john feels sick that leaves a lot up to interpretation you need to physically show what john is doing that lets the reader know that he's sick is he vomiting is he turning green or is he sweating very hard something that shows a visual state also keep in mind when you're writing your action lines or the description you want to do three things you want to make sure that you are describing your characters when we first meet them for the first time you also want to make sure that you somehow describe the location so we have a sense of what this uh bar or coffee shop is like are there anything uh particular that is standing out that we need to pay attention to that's critical to the story um and you need to also describe everything that's happening within the particular scene as an action which is why they call it action lines now i know i mentioned brevity earlier in terms of when we write our action lines out but there's a fine balancing act here because you need to make things nice and evocative the action lines are going to be what also really engages the reader so a lot of scripts suffer from being underwritten and it's hard for the reader to kind of clearly visualize what's going on you want to make sure that this is written in an engaging way that it is very clear and it visualizes everything that's happening and the person overall has a clear understanding of what's going on the way you're going to really achieve this is by using clever action verbs you're not going to use the typical progressive forms of written passive voice instead you're gonna use more of an active voice so instead of writing a basic action beat like brian enters the bar you're gonna spruce it up with a more creative action verb choice so let's see something like brian pimps into the bar with a kangal hat or brian strides into the bar with confidence you can see how the last two options show a lot more character than just someone simply entering a bar always remember your thesaurus is your best friend so let's take a look at one of my favorite scripts and movies by the way which is logan this is a good example of some very effective action lines throughout throughout the script in my opinion uh keep in mind whenever you're writing your action lines in your screenplay you're going to be doing a few different things you're going to be creating an atmosphere at times you're also going to be directing the camera without giving a whole bunch of different camera angles and we'll get to that in a second but you'll also be conveying the character of your characters within the story you'll be conveying the character through their actions and the things that they do within the action lines you'll also be directing the performances of the actors as well so you'll be describing the types of things they do the way they do it we'll get to that right now so right here we have a good example of how this uh script is very visual and you'll notice again they don't write anything in their action lines that can't be filmed it opens up with a big shot of a billboard here and then it kind of uh goes to again we talked about this in my previous video as far as how to create a scene heading where outside it's a vacant lot the time of day is night and it's kind of setting the atmosphere here by letting you know that the colored light from the billboard flickers over a bullet riddle sign route 85 u.s border el paso texas so right off the bat we know that we're not in the best or safest part of town beneath the sun is a long black limousine to me this uh kind of symbolizes or hints at that maybe this is a camera panning down from the side to this uh black limousine so that it right there is a good example of kind of directing the camera without giving camera angles so you'll notice that this is in all caps because the writer wants your attention to be drawn to this long black limousine it's important we'll see why also remember that each action line represents a camera shot so this line is a camera shot this is a separate camera shot this is a camera shot this is a camera shot so we go from this sign which has bullets riddled over it we then we kind of pan down or cut to a long black limousine then we go to this next action line that basically describes a van again this is in all caps they want you to pay attention to this a van passes by blasting music and basically uh you know it goes off off screen which we see here os means off screen a squeal of tires off screen so this is another thing this is representing the sound so normally you'll whenever there's sound effects or anything that we want to kind of happen that we want it to be noticeable then we'll put sounds in all caps as well and os by the way again it mentioned means it happened off screen so basically we're looking at the highway whole bunch of cars go by this van goes by then we hear the tire squeal and it kind of pulls back into frame and we see that five bangers gangbangers get out and check the black limo then it goes to a another shot where you can see where they're kind of checking the limo doors looking in the windows it's tenants so they can't see inside now we uh go to inside the limo again int means interior this is the location which is the limo and we have the time of day instead of having day or night they put saying so again same means that this is actually happening at the same time all of this is happening so this scene that we're about to read is happening simultaneously as all of this is happening so this uh is basically describing logan and it's um got a close-up on his face the reason i say that this is probably a close-up once again kind of directing the camera is that they put a sleeping man's face ratchets into frame so they've hinted at the fact that this is possibly a camera close-up shot where we can see his eyes opening and that they're red so um normally when we describe a character for the first time it goes uh you know they'll be like a very interesting setup that describes and shows how you know what the character is like through uh possibly things that they're wearing or their demeanor or their description physical description but with this movie everybody knows who wolverine is at least the fans do so they're only going to describe his state in this particular uh movie which is he's typically in shape physical um and just ready to beat anybody's ass and they drop of a dime but here he's older and he's clutching the tequila bottle so they're hinted the fact that he is out of shape and not in his uh best of um abilities so again um i won't go through this whole script but we can kind of uh see how some of the things that i've pointed out as far as like things that are written in all caps again this is a sign or or not a sound but we see a booted leg steps out um again this is kind of hitting the round that this shot is only focuses on focusing on the uh the leg that's stepping out of the limo and um it goes on and on but um this is just a good example right off the bat i've kind of showed you several different things that they've done on page one they kind of direct the camera conveys character and also directs the uh performances of some of the actors alright now we know how to create action lines so if you've watched the previous video then you also know how to create a scene heading as well the next thing that we'll be covering is how to write dialogue in the previous two videos we mentioned how a screenplay is made up of three different parts the scene headings the descriptions or action lines and dialogue in this video we're going to talk about how to format and write dialogue so whenever you're writing your dialogue in a screenplay keep in mind that it's always written underneath the character that's speaking it the dialogue section itself has three different parts to it the character caption the actor's direction and the character's actual speech so the character's name or caption is sometimes called the character q it's gonna be in all caps and it's gonna be the same throughout the entire script if your character's name is frank but another character in the screenplay calls them by a nickname like porkchop or snoopy then you're still going to refer to that character as frank in the character cue the only time you will put the character's nickname in the character cube is if every character in the screenplay refers to that character by that nickname below the character's name is where you'll type the actor's direction this is always written in parentheticals the purpose of the actor's direction gives the reader some type of clue as to the subtext or the attitude of the character keep in mind that you should use these sparingly don't overdo it you don't want to get in the habit of telling the actors how they should be acting the context of the description line should be clear enough that they already know what their motivation is when it comes to the character's actual speech this is pretty straightforward if you're using any type of screenwriting software then you don't need to worry about formatting normally you're going to want to stay away from big blocks of text unless your character is given an actual speech like on a forum or a panel in a scene or something like that as you're writing your screenplay just keep in mind that you always want to focus on showing and not telling i said it before and i'll say it again screenwriting is a visual medium so unlike novels we're gonna show as much as we can if your characters are just telling your story instead of you actually writing it out and showing it through action then you're doing it all wrong at that point it may as well just be a podcast because we don't need to see anything that they're talking about if they're just going to tell us the story when you're creating your characters make sure that in your screenplay each one of them has their own unique voice it doesn't have to be a really major difference but there does have to be some type of subtlety in some type of way we can tell the difference between each character when you listen to people talk in real life nobody really talks the same if you listen closely there's really subtle differences between the way each person pronounces their words grammar dialects accents all those type of things can be ways you can differentiate your characters from one another when you're writing your dialogue in your screenplay forget about composition grammar and punctuation none of that really applies when you're writing how people actually speak when you listen to how people talk rarely do they use proper grammar 100 of the time they don't always finish their thoughts sometimes they interrupt themselves they may talk with an accent they might have a list they might have a bad habit of repeating themselves there's all types of ways you can explore and be creative with the way people talk the worst thing you can do when you're writing your dialogue is make everybody sound the same a good way to give your characters an original voice is to give them a specific tone even better you can combine different types of tone say for instance your character speaks with a laid-back type of tone you could combine that with the fact that he is naive and has a naive type of tone as well and when you do that may influence how you actually write your lines and what you write when you're writing your dialogue another example could be if a character is arrogant and then if you wanted to combine a second tone with the way he speaks is that he could be fearless or he could have a creepy type of tone that's mixed in with his arrogance that could make for a perfect serial killer if you think about it let's jump back to formatting for a second when you're writing your dialogue and one of your characters is speaking but they're off screen you're going to type parentheses os parentheses what this means is that your character is speaking but they're not necessarily in the camera frame we may be able to hear them but we can't see them because they're not actually on the screen this is another subtle way on how you can direct the camera without actually giving camera angles and direction if your character is speaking and suddenly there's another voice that's off screen that's a good way on how you can set up some type of anticipation or a surprise say for instance a character is being called he turns around and he gets punched in the face or even worse he gets shot these are just a couple of ideas it doesn't have to be so violent but keep in mind my favorite genres are crime thrillers so hey similar to using the off-screen element in screenwriting you have what is called a voice over this is probably the most obvious to you because you've most likely heard this in some of your favorite movies like casino apocalypse now avatar goodfellas fight club twilight or the watchmen a voiceover is basically when a character is not on screen and they're pretty much narrating the story the way you're going to format this is you're going to type the character's name and then you're going to have parentheses v o and then close parentheses these are pretty much the basics when it comes to writing dialogue dialogue and screenwriting is really not anything that can be taught it really just comes from a lot of practice and repetition getting things wrong and actually having people recite the dialogue saying it yourself seeing how it sounds coming out of your own mouth and out of an actor's mouth and also from reading different scripts you can read scripts from people like tarantino aaron sorkin the coen brothers or david mamet just to name a few i mentioned this before but it also helps to just really become a student of listening to how different people talk if you have some unique characters in mind and you don't really know how they should talk try interviewing some people that you think have an interesting accent or they speak a certain type of way right before you go make sure you jump on the mailing list so you can get your free screenwriters checklist which will help you before during and after your next big script and you will also get a link to a free filmmaker's glossary which gives you some insight on the basic terms used in the film industry oh yeah before i forget if you're on the fence or struggling with any new movie ideas or you're just questioning if the idea that you do have strong enough make sure you check out the ebook that i wrote on how to write stronger story concepts themes and log lines and as usual don't forget to hit that like button and leave me a comment alright peace you

Channel: Jay Carver

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Keywords: how to write a screenplay, how to write a movie script, screenwriting 101, jay carver, how to make a movie, how to write, writing tips, screenwriting tips, movie script

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Length: 32min 44sec (1964 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 28 2020