How to Write a Screenplay: Start, Read Scripts, Share Before You Send
Published
To write a screenplay, put scenes on the page in the standard layout and read published scripts when the format raises a question. Show the draft to a few readers before any decision-maker sees it.
The basics come down to five technical points, and screenwriting software handles the font, margins, page breaks and transitions. What follows is the order of work: start, learn the format from scripts, write the first ten pages as a reader will read them, then share.
What a screenplay is
A screenplay, or script, is the written work for a film, a television show or a video game. It describes the characters' movements, actions, expressions and dialogue in a set format, with scene descriptions and scene changes (Wikipedia, read 11 October 2026).
It can be original or adapted from an existing work.
With the end of the studio system in the 1950s and 1960s, scripts were gradually split into a master-scene script, with all the dialogue but only rudimentary scene descriptions, and a shooting script devised by the director after a film is approved for production.
A spec script is written without a commission, in the hope of a sale. It exists to show that its writer can tell a story through action and dialogue. Camera and directing notes rarely belong in it; they come in later drafts (Wikipedia, Spec script).
Start with the five technical basics
Script Slug's Garrett Tripp wrote the list for people kept from writing by the fear of technical mistakes (The Five Technical Basics You Need Before FADE IN, January 2026). He calls it the bare minimum, enough to begin and nothing more.
- Write in a tool that applies the format, so font, margins, page breaks and transitions are handled for you.
- Open a new scene heading whenever the place or the time changes: INT. or EXT., then the location, then the time of day.
- In action, capitalise a speaking character's first appearance and any sound. Leave camera moves to the director.
- Use a parenthetical only when the line would be unclear without it.
- Say it shorter, say it faster. Leave plenty of white space.
The rest of the format is in screenplay format, element by element. Tripp's own closing line is the one to keep: technical mistakes can be fixed, blank pages can't.
Write it to be read
A spec is a reading experience for decision-makers, and the format serves that reading. Matt Lathrom (Draft-to-Draft, Script Slug, March 2026) puts it plainly: make it visual and engaging, until they forget they are reading a script.
He lists what a spec leaves out: scene numbers, "CONTINUED" across page breaks, coloured revision pages. Those belong to the production draft, the crew's reference document. Screenplay vs script draws that line in full.
Read scripts to answer the rest
How to lay out a montage, where V.O. goes, how a flashback is marked: Tripp's answer to every such question is the same. Think of a film where the question comes up, find its script, and read it.
One example of what that reading teaches. Lathrom's piece on montage versus series of shots (June 2024) notes that the two look almost identical on the page. A montage moves the reader through time; a series of shots moves through space.
Published scripts also show how far the rules bend. Lathrom's Breaking Rules (June 2024) describes a page that is a single block of text with bold snippets, and a script written in the first person.
The block of text still tells the crew what they need. His conclusion: you can break the rules once you know them, and an aspiring writer first has to prove they know them.
The first ten pages
Tripp's reading of the opening of Jerry Maguire (Script Slug, March 2026) shows what ten pages can hold. Cameron Crowe sets up the world, the lead, the supporting cast, the inciting incident, the theme and the antagonist, all before Jerry is fired.
Most scripts he reads either open on the firing and run out of steam, or take twenty pages to do what Crowe does in ten. The script also holds characters back for later.
His rule: the first ten pages are everything that happens before everything falls apart, and the reader needs exactly that much and no more. He ends with a question worth keeping on the desk: are you using every word in your first ten pages?
Length beyond that follows the running time, at roughly a page a minute; how many pages is a screenplay goes through the rule and its limits.
Share before you send
Tripp's last piece of advice is about sequence: show the script to friends, teachers and a writers' group before it reaches a decision-maker. The format questions you still have will surface there, where they cost nothing.
What comes after is on Wikipedia's spec script page. An agent sends the script out to buyers, and competitions such as the Nicholl Fellowship are another way in: a screenwriter can enter them.
A spec that does not sell can still lead to a writing assignment when the writing is good.
The tool you write in
Asked which screenwriting software is best, Tripp answers: the one you write in. The format itself can live in plain text. The Fountain syntax reads INT., capitals and parentheses as headings, characters and parentheticals; the font and margins are handled by screenwriting software.
Scrin is a long-form writing space that keeps your project in one file of your own.
Questions
How do I start writing a screenplay? Open a scene heading (INT. or EXT., location, time of day), then write what can be seen and heard, in the present tense. Put the speaker's name in capitals above the dialogue. A tool that applies the format removes the rest of the fear.
Do I need screenwriting software to write a screenplay? Script Slug recommends it, so that font, margins and page breaks are handled for you, and adds that the best one is the one you write in. Fountain lets you write the same format in any plain-text file.
How long should a screenplay be? Roughly one page per minute of screen time, so the count follows the running time you are writing toward. The rule is a ballpark: a page of dialogue plays faster than a page of action.