Screenplay Format Guide: Sluglines, Action, Dialogue and Transitions (With Examples)

Everything below describes the American feature format, which is also the default for most international festivals, competitions and English-language production companies. Korean broadcast drama scripts follow a different convention; we cover that separately in our K-drama script format guide.

The page itself

Before the elements, the paper. A screenplay is set in 12-point Courier (or a metrically identical variant such as Courier Prime), single-spaced, on US Letter or A4 with these margins:

Page numbers go top right, followed by a period. The title page carries the title, "Written by", your name and contact details, nothing else. No date, no draft number, no copyright line for a spec script; the WGA registration number is optional and most readers do not care either way.

Why Courier? Because the format's whole purpose is estimation. A monospaced font makes one page equal roughly one minute of screen time, which is what producers, first ADs and script readers use to judge length and budget. Change the font and you break the estimate for everyone downstream.

1. Scene heading (slugline)

A slugline tells the reader where and when a scene takes place. It has three parts, in capitals, separated by a period and a dash:

INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT
EXT. HIGHWAY REST STOP - DAY
INT./EXT. PARKED CAR - CONTINUOUS

• INT. or EXT. for interior or exterior. INT./EXT. (sometimes I/E.) is for a scene that moves between the two, such as a car with a window down.
• Location, as specific as the scene needs. If the location has sub-areas that matter, add them after a dash: INT. HOSPITAL - ICU - NIGHT.
• Time of day: DAY, NIGHT, and occasionally DAWN, DUSK, LATER or CONTINUOUS. Resist the urge to be more precise than that. "3:47 PM" belongs in a super, not a slugline.

Sluglines should be consistent. If the kitchen is INT. MARA'S KITCHEN on page 3, do not call it INT. KITCHEN on page 40. Production software indexes locations by exact string, and a reader who is tracking geography will stumble.

A secondary slugline (a location on its own line without INT./EXT.) is a lighter way to move within a master location:

INT. HOUSE - NIGHT

Mara moves through the dark.

KITCHEN

She opens the fridge. Empty.

HALLWAY

A floorboard creaks upstairs.

2. Action

Action lines (also called description or "the black stuff") describe what the audience sees and hears. They run the full width of the page, present tense, no first person.

INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT

MARA (30s, hospital scrubs, hasn't slept) drops her keys on the counter. She stares at a sink full of dishes that were not there this morning.

Somewhere upstairs, a floorboard creaks.

Three rules that separate professional action from amateur action:

1. Only what is filmable. "She remembers her father's warning" cannot be shot. "She looks at the photo on the fridge. Her father, younger, unsmiling" can.
2. Short paragraphs. Four lines is a comfortable maximum. A dense block of description reads slowly and gets skipped. White space is pacing.
3. Capitalise a character's name on first appearance only, along with important sounds and props when you want the reader's eye to catch them. Over-capitalising turns the page into noise.

Camera directions (CLOSE ON, PAN TO, WE SEE) are generally unwelcome in a spec script. You are not the director. If a specific image matters, describe the image, not the lens.

3. Character name

The character cue sits above the dialogue in capitals. Use the same name every time; "MARA" is not "DR. KIM" three scenes later unless the reveal is the point.

Extensions go in parentheses after the name:

• (V.O.) — voice-over: the character is not in the scene, or is narrating from outside it.
• (O.S.) — off-screen: the character is in the scene but not in frame, such as shouting from another room.
• (CONT'D) — continued: the same character speaks again after an action line interrupts. Most software adds this automatically.
• (O.C.) — off-camera, used mainly in multi-camera sitcoms; treat it as O.S. elsewhere.

                    MARA (O.S.)
          Who's up there?

4. Parenthetical

A parenthetical is a short direction in lowercase, set between the character name and the line. It tells the actor how the line is delivered or what small action accompanies it.

                    MARA
               (barely audible)
          Who's up there?

Use them sparingly. Actors and directors resent being told how to read every line, and a parenthetical that explains something the dialogue already conveys is dead weight. A parenthetical should never be a full sentence or contain an action that changes the scene; that belongs in an action line. Reasonable uses: (beat), (to Jin), (in Korean), (reading), (re: the photo).

5. Dialogue

Dialogue sits in a narrow column under the character name. Beyond that, the format has almost nothing to say, and the craft has everything to say.

                    JIN
          You didn't call.

                    MARA
          Phone died.

                    JIN
          For nine days?

Formatting details that come up constantly:

• Dual dialogue (two characters speaking at once) is set in two side-by-side columns. Final Draft, WriterDuet and Fountain-based editors all support it; do not fake it with slashes.
• A line that breaks across a page gets (MORE) at the bottom and CHARACTER (CONT'D) at the top of the next page. Again, software handles this.
• Foreign language: either write the dialogue in English with a parenthetical (in Korean) and a note that it will be subtitled, or write it in the original language with italic English beneath. Pick one method for the whole script.
• Emphasis is underlined in traditional format because typewriters had no italics. Today italics are accepted; underlining is still what Final Draft's default styles produce.

6. Transition

A transition is a right-aligned instruction between scenes:

                                        CUT TO:

                                        DISSOLVE TO:

                                        SMASH CUT TO:

Here is the thing about transitions: you almost never need them. Every new slugline already means "cut to". Writers of the 1970s put CUT TO: between every scene; readers today see that as padding. Reserve transitions for edits that carry meaning (a MATCH CUT that rhymes two images, a SMASH CUT that punctures a moment) and for FADE IN: at the very top and FADE OUT. at the very end.

A complete example

Here is a short scene using all six elements. Note how little formatting is actually visible once the elements are in their columns.

FADE IN:

INT. MARA'S KITCHEN - NIGHT

MARA (30s, hospital scrubs, hasn't slept) drops her keys on the counter. A sink full of dishes that weren't there this morning.

A floorboard CREAKS upstairs.

                    MARA
               (barely audible)
          Who's up there?

Silence. She picks up the heaviest pan.

                    JIN (O.S.)
          Don't.

She freezes. JIN (40s, her brother, a suitcase at his feet) stands in the hallway door.

                    MARA
          You didn't call.

                    JIN
          Phone died.

                    MARA
          For nine days?

He doesn't answer. She doesn't put the pan down.

                                        SMASH CUT TO:

EXT. HIGHWAY REST STOP - DAY (NINE DAYS EARLIER)

Jin, clean-shaven, closes the trunk of a car that isn't his.

Things that mark a first draft

Readers form an opinion within a page, and formatting is the first thing they see. The following are not fatal, but each one costs you a little credibility:

• Sluglines with too much information (INT. MARA'S SMALL BUT TIDY KITCHEN WITH YELLOW WALLS - NIGHT). Put the yellow walls in the action line.
• Orphaned sluglines at the bottom of a page with the scene starting on the next. Software prevents this; if you are working in a word processor, fix it by hand.
• Ages in dialogue cues or every time a character appears. Once, in the action line, on first appearance.
• Parentheticals under every line.
• Numbered scenes in a spec. Scene numbers are added in the shooting script for production scheduling. A spec with numbers looks like it was exported from the wrong template.
• Bold, coloured or oversized fonts for emphasis. Everything is 12-point Courier. Everything.
• Page count far outside 90 to 120 for a feature, or outside roughly 30 to 65 for a TV pilot depending on format. Nobody will refuse to read a 128-page script, but they will notice.

Format is not structure

It is worth saying plainly: a perfectly formatted script can still be a bad script, and a brilliant one with margin errors will still get read. Format earns you the reader's trust for the first page. After that, the story has to do the work. If you have the elements right, spend your attention on scene construction and structure rather than on the exact position of the dialogue column. Our Save the Cat beat sheet template and TV pilot guide cover that side.

Tools that handle the columns for you

You do not need to memorise margins. Any screenwriting editor (Final Draft, WriterDuet, Arc Studio, Highland, Fade In, or the plain-text Fountain syntax) assigns elements automatically as you type and keeps the columns aligned. Our Fountain vs FDX vs PDF guide explains which file format to keep your master copy in and which to send.

Try it in SparkLore

SparkLore's script mode assigns the six elements as you type and supports both the American format described here and the Korean broadcast convention with S# numbering and (E)/(N) tags, so a story can move between the two without reformatting by hand. If you want to see a formatted scene before signing up, the free AI script generator drafts a short scene from a premise, and the drama script formatter converts plain text into either format. Full projects, story bible and exports to Fountain and DOCX are available once you create an account.