Do you have any links to standard formatting for script writing? Is there formatting software you have to buy? I’ve been interested in screenwriting for a long time but have never seen classes offered at my college and looking online is so confusing.
My understanding is that final draft is generally considered the industry standard in terms of programs. I haven’t actually used it myself because I don’t have a few hundred bucks to spend on software, but it’s the normal one.
Personally, I use the free version of Celtx, since I do not have much money and quite frankly need to get myself a job.
As for formatting, there’s a ton of books and stuff on that. I think the book I was using earlier this year was called The Screenwriter’s Bible, but I haven’t gotten around to looking through the entire thing yet so I can’t attest to how amazing a guide it is. I don’t really know what your best guide to that would be.
If I could throw my two cents in? We’ve used “the screenwriters bible” in my screenwriting classes and it does have the most comprehensive formatting I’ve seen. Celtx is good and yeah, final draft is expensive ( i was lucky and got it on discount). I think maybe scrivener has a screenwriting mode too, but I haven’t used that.
Probably the most important thing to remember when writing screenplay is that you don’t necessarily want to ‘direct’. You can describe, but give the actors/directors room.
All good advice. And that’s the second person tonight who’s mentioned scrivener, so I guess that could be worthwhile.
The BBC writersroom website also has some PDFs demonstrating a number of scripting formats.
Here is a link to the writersroom. I like reading the Doctor Who scripts, heh. They also post various writing opportunities too.
There’s also the internet movie script database, but the format isn’t always 100% because it isn’t in pdf form.
And if you’e in the sherlock fandom, Losyark wrote “To A Stranger” from MadLori’s “performance in a leading role”, and it’s quite good.
Do you have any links to standard formatting for script writing? Is there formatting software you have to buy? I’ve been interested in screenwriting for a long time but have never seen classes offered at my college and looking online is so confusing.
My understanding is that final draft is generally considered the industry standard in terms of programs. I haven’t actually used it myself because I don’t have a few hundred bucks to spend on software, but it’s the normal one.
Personally, I use the free version of Celtx, since I do not have much money and quite frankly need to get myself a job.
As for formatting, there’s a ton of books and stuff on that. I think the book I was using earlier this year was called The Screenwriter’s Bible, but I haven’t gotten around to looking through the entire thing yet so I can’t attest to how amazing a guide it is. I don’t really know what your best guide to that would be.
If I could throw my two cents in? We’ve used “the screenwriters bible” in my screenwriting classes and it does have the most comprehensive formatting I’ve seen. Celtx is good and yeah, final draft is expensive ( i was lucky and got it on discount). I think maybe scrivener has a screenwriting mode too, but I haven’t used that.
Probably the most important thing to remember when writing screenplay is that you don’t necessarily want to ‘direct’. You can describe, but give the actors/directors room.
I was sent a script recently, and the opening scene was; Jessica, or maybe not Jessica, whatever her name was, rolls around in bed and stretches. She’s 35, and in brackets they had it say 8/10, close brackets. I closed the script, and didn’t read the rest of it. Because you cannot reduce a character, you cannot make them their attractability, you can’t number them and then claim you’ve written a multidimensional female character, or a male character. That is just not acceptable. […] And I think it’s very important to say ‘this is the reason I didn’t respond to, or didn’t read your script’, because that’s absolutely outrageous. You can’t do that.
Andrew Scott, Paris Comics Expo 2016 (x)
Anatomy of a Finale: Download the Scripts for Eps 11 and 12
Anatomy of a Finale: Download the Scripts for Eps 11 and 12
The scripts for Hell Bent and Heaven Sent are now available. For those interested in directing or filmmaking in general, I suggest taking the first couple of scenes of Heaven Sent and thinking through how you would have designed and shot these sequences.
They were some of the more challenging pages I’d ever been given in terms of visually conceptualizing within a budget. In an all CGI world or with all the sets in the world, this is only limited by imagination.
It was its own puzzle-box and those pages alone could have taken at least 1/3 of the schedule and the entire budget to shoot.
Take all your ideas and try to fit them within a TV budget and schedule. Then cut that in half. Then you might start to feel the constraints and how they expand the creativity.
Feel free to tell me what you would have done (and done better). Or just your random thoughts. I’m still trying to figure it out.
Hi. I’m sorry to bother you, but… I’m pretty sure Hell Bent wasn’t written yet when you wrote Face the Raven. So how much did you know about what’s going to happen?
Hello! You’re right – episodes 11 and 12 hadn’t been written when I started Face the Raven, In fact, I’m not sure the scripts had been started by the time I finished, as ep10 was shot quite early in the schedule, before ep9, and Steven is a frighteningly fast writer. However, he let me in on his rough plan for the final two episodes when he sent me off to write my second draft – the point at which my trap street story became ep10 and took on the story of Clara’s death, Ashildr’s involvement, etc, all leading into ep11. So I knew what was going to happen in broad strokes. I knew the Doctor would be all alone and at his nadir in ep11, and that he was going to try to bring Clara back in some way in ep12, but I didn’t know what would ultimately come of that effort… except of course that Jenna wasn’t going to be in s10!
I didn’t need to know all the details of ep12 in order to write ep10, and I was happy to keep it that way so that I could enjoy the final episodes mostly unspoiled as they went to air. The final beats of Clara’s story were a surprise to me on Saturday. I watched with my heart in my mouth just like everyone else. I’m sure I stopped breathing altogether when it seemed like Clara might get Donna’d, and I burst into ugly happy tears when she refused to accept that awful fate. “I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that. It’s mine.” Precious clever fierce as hell Clara bae!! How so perf??? ;___;
I was particularly touched by the return of Rigsy’s painted TARDIS (weirdly, it felt like seeing one of my friends on television – startling and personal and proud-making) and I had no idea she was going to “live” and run off with Ashildr. That idea is taking some getting used to, to be honest. Not because I don’t want her to survive and thrive, and bring Jane onto their TARDIS for adventures, and carry on dazzling the universe for goodness knows how long. No, I think it just feels strange because I have spent the best part of twelve months contemplating Clara’s death in every possible way. I grieved for her from every angle in every draft I wrote, and witnessing your grief for her after FtR aired was the final beat of closure in that journey. I guess it hasn’t sunk in yet that the character gets to live on. Not only live on, but live on gloriously. How do you unpick all that bedded-in grief and closure? You guys only had two weeks of it – I had a full year! I’m going to have to watch Hell Bent again…
“Open Casting” does not exist
In my screenwriting class this week, my instructor explained that if you do not signify a race or ethnicity, your character will be assumed to be white. There will be no clarification, no one will ask you to explain, the director and casting agent will create a whites-only casting call for auditions.
This obviously isn’t news. We know that the default for Hollywood is white even though mathematically, according to the demographics of California and the entire world, this is laughably illogical.
I asked him how you signify that you want open casting in your script for any race or ethnicity because you want the best actor for the character.
He didn’t understand and started talking about words like “eurasian” in the descriptive lines following your character’s introduction.
I explained that I wasn’t asking about how to denote racial ambiguity (which is another favorite of Hollywood), rather an actual open casting call that wasn’t limited to white and white passing people.
He said he had never come across this.
Never, in his entire decade+ career, had he ever come across an open casting call.
So when people say shit like, “oh well maybe they just got the best actor for the role!”, they deserve to have their faces slammed into the nearest available surface.
So I was looking up Joss Whedon’s writing credits ‘cause we had to write about a screenwriter we liked. And I think I just realized why Titan A.E. was so awesome:
Ben Edlund … (screenplay) and
John August … (screenplay) and
Joss Whedon … (screenplay)
I knew he’d written Toy Story, I hadn’t realized he’d done this too. Plus Ben Eduland.
So, whilst working on my script, I decided to look around to see if there were any Torchwood scripts online.
Not everything of course. But it does have “Smith and Jones” from Doctor Who and “Miracle Day ep 1” from Torchwood. I’m amused by this description from Miracle Day when Esther is looking at the Torchwood file:
Plus, PHOTOS OF ONE MAN. A handsome, strong Alpha Male. Photos labelled: Captain Jack Harknesss. They seem to cover a good few decades, the 30s, 40s, 50s… And yet as the years pass, HE ALWAYS LOOKS THE SAME AGE.
And he’s always wearing the same clothes – and army overcoat, a classic LONG GREY GREATCOAT.
Emphasis theirs.