How to Format Your Screenplay Like a Pro

How toFormat Your Screenplay Like a Pro
by Robert Gregory-Browne

Introduction
Proper screenplay format is one of those things that seems to stymie novice screenwriters. Little do they know that it never was and never will be an exact science.
Over the past several years, I've spent a lot of time on the web, in newsgroups, and on chat lines talking to screenwriting hopefuls. I've been on AOL and other services and have joined or formed a number of screenwriting related forums. In that time, the most common questions I've encountered (second only to "How do you get an agent?") are related to one thing: screenplay format.
"What are the proper margins for a feature screenplay?"
"Should I use CUT TO or leave it out?"
"What's the standard format for a flashback?"
When I first started writing screenplays, I, too, was full of the same kinds of questions. I diligently studied all of the screenplays and screenwriting books I could find and checked a dozen different sources to get the answers I needed -- none of which made me feel any more confident about what I was doing, simply because much of the information I uncovered seemed contradictory:
"Always use CONTINUED to denote the continuation of a scene."
"It is no longer accepted practice to use CONTINUED to denote the continuation of a scene."
"Capitalize a character's name whenever you use it."
"Only capitalize a character's name the first time you use it."
Every source I checked seemed to speak with great authority, and, by the time I'd finished my search for answers, I was left more confused than when I started. How was I ever going to write a screenplay that didn't scream amateur? (And, trust me, the last thing you want to look like in this business is an amateur.)
But not all was lost. After all the months of struggling to understand the intricacies of screenplay format, I did come to realize one very important thing -- a comforting bit of insight I relied on when I wrote my first full-length screenplay, which, shortly thereafter, went on to win one of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, got me a top-flight agent, then subsequently sold to Viacom for their Showtime network.
A dozen or so screenplays later, I'm still guided by that one all-important bit of insight, and nobody seems to be complaining that I don't know how to format a screenplay. My agent still loves me, my manager still promises me the world, and I've got an industry full of fans happy to put my latest spec at the top of their weekend reading pile.
So, what the heck is this morsel of wisdom? Here it comes:
There Is No Strict Standard Format for Feature Screenplays
Some of you may have figured this out yourselves, but I'll say it again:
There is no strict standard format for feature screenplays.
Despite all of the self-proclaimed "experts" you've talked to in the film schools, on the Internet and elsewhere, the ones who stubbornly insist that every screenplay must have exact margin settings, or that such and such should always be capitalized and that you must never-never-never use parenthetical stage directions in your dialog captions... the real truth is:
There is NO strict standard format for feature screenplays. The so-called formatting "standard" varies from script to script, writer to writer.
Take a quick look at a few "selling draft" screenplays (real screenplays, mind you, not the kind published in book form) and you'll see that the evidence bears me out. The differences in format may not be huge, but there are differences nonetheless.
So what does this mean?
For one thing, it means we can now free ourselves of some of the worry about margins and capitalization and get on with what's really important in screenwriting: telling a story. It also means that learning proper format is an extremely simple task. All we need to concern ourselves with now is looking at what all of these selling draft scripts have in common. The common ground upon which they meet is where we'll find a very loose set of rules to guide us.