The parts of a screenplay

A screenplay is written in a handful of elements, and each one has its own place on the page: the scene heading at the left margin, the character’s name set well in, the dialogue in a narrower column under it. That fixed layout is what lets a reader, and a production, find their way around a script at a glance.

Here is the first page of a short script as Calmly Script prints it, with its parts labelled. Each name leads to the chapter about that part.

You never set a margin or an indent. Every line is one of these elements, and the element decides where it prints. As you write, Enter and Tab choose the element of each new line, most of the time without you having to think about it.

Also on a page

• Page numbers. The first page has none; from the second on, the number is at the top right, followed by a full stop. See How pages are counted.
• (MORE) and (CONT’D), when a speech runs from one page onto the next. Calmly Script adds them; see Character.
• Two characters speaking at once, side by side: see Dual dialogue.
• Songs and centered lines such as THE END: see Lyrics and Centered text.
• The title page, a page of its own before the first: see Title page.

Some parts of a script are for you and never print: acts and sequences (Sections and synopses) and notes (Notes and boneyard).

FADE IN: and FADE OUT.

Most screenplays open with FADE IN: and many end with FADE OUT. They are not the same element.

FADE IN: is a line of action. It is written at the left margin, where it prints, and Calmly Script leaves it as action because that is what it is in Fountain. If you want it against the right margin, make it a transition with Ctrl+6⌘6; see Transition.

FADE OUT. is a transition. Typed in capitals with its full stop, it becomes one as you type, and it prints against the right margin like CUT TO:.

Above her, the lamp turns.

FADE OUT.

Shots, intercuts and secondary headings

Some parts of a screenplay are not elements of their own, in Fountain or in Calmly Script. They are written as scene headings: a full stop in front makes any line one (see Scene heading). Like every heading, they are listed in the Outline and print with two blank lines above them.

Shots

A shot tells the reader where the camera looks: CLOSE ON, ANGLE ON, NORA'S POV, INSERT. Write it on a line of its own, in capitals, with the full stop in front:

.CLOSE ON THE FUSE BOX

One fuse is black with soot.

That is also what a Shot from a Final Draft file becomes when you import it.

If you would rather keep shots out of the Outline, write them as action in capitals instead. They print at the same margin, with one blank line above them instead of two, and never in bold, even when Bold scene headings when printing is on.

Intercuts

When a scene cuts back and forth between two places, such as the two ends of a phone call, give each place its own heading first. Then a heading that says INTERCUT lets the rest play as one scene, without a new heading every time the picture changes sides:

.INTERCUT - NORA / BRAM

BRAM
Well?

NORA
It's always the fuse.

The full stop is needed here. INTERCUT only begins like INT, and a word that only begins like one of the openers a heading is recognised by stays action, as Interior does.

Secondary headings

A new place inside the same location, such as another room of the same house, often gets a short heading with only the place in it:

.LANTERN ROOM

Nora pushes the new fuse home.