Writing a script means putting a story into a specific format that actors, directors, and producers can use to bring it to life on screen. Whether you’re writing a feature film, a short, or a TV pilot, the process breaks down into a handful of learnable steps: building your story structure, formatting the page correctly, writing compelling scenes, and preparing your work for submission. Here’s how to do each one.
Start With Your Story’s Core Idea
Before you write a single scene, you need to know what your script is actually about. That starts with a logline: a single sentence of 30 words or fewer that captures your protagonist, their goal, and the central conflict. Think of the one-line movie descriptions you’d see in a TV guide. Use active voice, lead with your main character, and pick dynamic verbs. If you can’t summarize your story this tightly, you probably don’t know it well enough yet to start writing.
A strong logline does double duty. It keeps you focused during the writing process, and it becomes the centerpiece of any pitch or query letter later on. Write it early and revisit it often.
Build Your Structure Before You Write
Nearly every produced screenplay follows the three-act structure. It’s not the only model, but it’s the one readers and producers expect, and it works.
- Act I (The Setup): Introduce your main character, their relationships, their world, and what they want. This act typically runs about 25 to 30 pages in a feature screenplay. It ends with the inciting incident, an event that forces your protagonist to take action and launches the central story.
- Act II (The Confrontation): Your character pursues their goal while facing escalating obstacles. This is the longest act, roughly 50 to 60 pages, and it builds toward a major crisis or “lowest point” where everything seems lost. A midpoint twist around page 55 to 60 helps keep this stretch from sagging.
- Act III (The Resolution): The tension peaks at the climax, and your character either overcomes the crisis and achieves their goal or, in a tragedy, fails. This act runs about 20 to 30 pages and should feel inevitable but surprising.
Before drafting, outline your major beats: the inciting incident, the midpoint, the lowest point, and the climax. Some writers use index cards, one per scene, pinned to a board or laid out on a table. Others use outlining software like Plottr to map scenes visually. The method matters less than having a roadmap before you start writing dialogue.
Learn the Formatting Rules
Script formatting is rigid, and deviating from it signals to anyone in the industry that the writer is an amateur. The good news is the rules are simple once you learn them.
Every screenplay is written in 12-point Courier font. No exceptions. This convention exists because one properly formatted page roughly equals one minute of screen time, giving producers a quick way to estimate a film’s length.
Page margins follow a specific layout. The top margin is one inch. The bottom and right margins can vary by up to a quarter inch from that. The left margin should be about one and a half inches to leave room for three-hole-punch binding when the script is printed.
Scene Headings
Every new scene starts with a scene heading, also called a slugline, written in all caps. It contains three pieces of information: whether the scene is interior or exterior (INT. or EXT.), the location, and the time of day. They look like this:
EXT. COFFEE SHOP PARKING LOT – NIGHT
INT. SARAH’S APARTMENT – DAY
Action Lines and Dialogue
Below the scene heading, you write action lines (also called scene description) in regular sentence case. These describe what the audience sees and hears, written in present tense. Keep them lean. Two to four lines per paragraph is a good target. Long, dense blocks of description slow the read.
When a character speaks, their name appears in all caps above the dialogue block, indented roughly an inch further than the dialogue itself. The dialogue sits in a narrower column, centered on the page. Parenthetical directions like “(whispering)” go sparingly between the character name and the dialogue, only when the tone isn’t obvious from context.
Choose Your Writing Software
You can format a script manually in a word processor, but dedicated screenwriting software handles margins, indentation, and element types automatically, letting you focus on the writing. Several options exist across price ranges.
Final Draft is the long-standing industry standard, with plans starting at $9.85 per month and a library of pre-made templates for features, TV episodes, and other formats. Celtx offers an all-in-one platform for writing, planning, and managing production at $14.99 per month. Arc Studio Pro emphasizes a minimalist, distraction-free writing environment.
Free options exist too. Several of the major tools offer limited free tiers, and open-source alternatives like Highland (for Mac) let you write in plain text that converts to proper screenplay format. If you’re just starting out, a free tool is perfectly fine. The software doesn’t make the script good; it just saves you from manually adjusting tab stops.
Write Your First Draft
With your outline in hand and your software set up, write the first draft as quickly as you can. The goal is to get the full story on the page, not to polish every line. A feature screenplay typically runs 90 to 120 pages. Comedies often land on the shorter end, dramas on the longer side.
A few principles will keep your draft on track. Write only what the camera can see or the microphone can hear. You can’t write “John is thinking about his dead father” because that’s invisible. You can write “John stares at a faded photograph on the mantel” and let the audience infer the emotion. Enter every scene as late as possible and leave as early as possible. Skip the greetings, the small talk, the characters walking through doors. Start in the middle of the conflict and cut out once the scene’s purpose is served.
Dialogue should sound like real speech, not like written sentences. Read your lines out loud. If a line sounds like something a person would actually say under pressure, keep it. If it sounds like an essay, cut it. Characters should each have a distinct voice. Cover the character names and see if you can tell who’s speaking from the words alone.
Revise With Fresh Eyes
Once your first draft is done, set it aside for at least a week. When you return, read the entire script in one sitting, ideally printed out, and take notes on pacing, clarity, and scenes that don’t earn their place. Then rewrite.
Most professional scripts go through multiple drafts. In revision, look for scenes that can be cut entirely, dialogue that can be trimmed, and moments where you’re telling the audience something instead of showing them. Tighten your action lines. If a four-line description can become two lines without losing meaning, make the cut. A lean script reads faster and signals confidence.
Getting feedback from other writers is invaluable at this stage. Screenwriting groups, both local and online, can give you honest reads. Pay attention to patterns in feedback. If three people are confused by the same plot point, the problem is on the page, not in their reading.
Prepare Your Script for Submission
When your script is polished and ready, you’ll need a few materials to submit it professionally. The logline you wrote at the start becomes the hook in your query letter. A query letter is a short, structured pitch you send to agents, managers, or producers to get them to read your screenplay.
One effective format uses five short paragraphs: open with your logline, state the title along with the page count and genre, offer one or two comparable films (so the reader can picture the tone and market), share a brief sentence about yourself as the writer, and close with a polite request to send the script. Keep the entire letter to one page.
When sending queries, always address a specific person by name rather than writing “Dear Agent” or “Dear Producer.” If you can only find a company’s general email address, include the recipient’s name in the subject line before your title. Research producers who make films similar to yours in genre and budget, aiming for those with recent credits in the low to mid-budget range rather than targeting the biggest names in the industry. A subscription to IMDbPro can help you find contact information and track what producers are currently developing.
Timing matters in small ways too. Avoid sending queries on Mondays and Fridays, when inboxes tend to be most crowded or least monitored. And keep a list of every producer who responds, even with a simple pass. That response means they’ve heard of you, and over time, those small connections build into a real network.