Dream Sequence Screenplay Format: How to Write Dreams, Visions and Hallucinations

Dream sequence screenplay format: the basic markup

A dream is a scene that happens inside a character's head rather than in the story's world. The reader needs that fact at the slugline, so the marker goes there, in the same slot a flashback marker would use.

INT. MARA'S BEDROOM - NIGHT

Mara sleeps. The phone on the nightstand is dark.

EXT. RESERVOIR - NIGHT (DREAM)

Mara stands at the water's edge. Her sister waves from the
far bank, mouth moving, no sound.

                      MARA
            I can't hear you.

The water rises to her knees. Her sister keeps waving.

INT. MARA'S BEDROOM - NIGHT (PRESENT)

Mara wakes. The phone is lit. One missed call.

Three headings, three jobs. The first establishes the sleeper. The second carries (DREAM) and gets its own real location and time of day; the reservoir is a place and the dream is set there. The third returns with (PRESENT), after which unmarked headings are assumed to be the waking story. (DREAM SEQUENCE), (DREAM) and (NIGHTMARE) are all in use; choose one label and hold it.

Because the marker is part of the scene heading, it shows up in the scene list and the breakdown. Zen Writer reads the whole line as a heading as long as it begins with INT. or EXT., so the suffix appears in the scene navigator automatically.

DREAM SEQUENCE as a header for longer dreams

When a dream runs for more than one scene, mark the run rather than each heading. DREAM SEQUENCE on its own line at the action margin opens it; the scenes inside use ordinary sluglines; END DREAM SEQUENCE closes it.

DREAM SEQUENCE

EXT. RESERVOIR - NIGHT

Mara wades in. The water is warm.

INT. HER SISTER'S CAR - UNDERWATER

Her sister sits at the wheel, dry, reading a letter.

                      SISTER
            You were supposed to come alone.

END DREAM SEQUENCE

INT. MARA'S BEDROOM - NIGHT

Mara sits up, gasping.

Notice the second heading. Dreams break the rules of place, and the heading is allowed to break with them: UNDERWATER is not a time of day, but inside a marked dream it is the right word, because it tells the reader exactly what they will see. Outside a dream, that heading would be an error. The flashback format uses the same wrapper with BEGIN FLASHBACK and END FLASHBACK, so a script that has both can run them in parallel without the reader confusing them.

Some writers prefer BEGIN DREAM SEQUENCE to match the flashback form, and others use a right-aligned DREAM SEQUENCE: as a transition. Both are fine. The one thing that is not fine is opening a dream with the header and never closing it, which leaves the reader unsure whether the rest of the act is real.

Hallucinations, visions and things only one character sees

A hallucination differs from a dream in one way that matters for the page: the character is awake and the scene around them is real. Only part of what they see is false. That means you do not leave the scene; you mark the false element inside it.

INT. MARA'S KITCHEN - DAY

Mara pours coffee. Behind her, at the table --

HER SISTER, soaked to the skin, water pooling under the
chair.

                      SISTER
            You're out of milk.

Mara turns. The chair is empty. A wet ring on the floor,
then not even that.

No heading marker, because the kitchen is real and the time of day is real. The hallucination is carried in action, and the action tells the reader when it ends. If the script wants to be explicit, (HALLUCINATION) can be added to the heading in the same way as (DREAM), and for a long hallucinated passage, HALLUCINATION and END HALLUCINATION work as a wrapper. Use the explicit form when the false element takes over the scene; use the action-only form when it is a flicker.

Visions, meaning a character seeing something prophetic or supernatural, follow the hallucination rules. Drug or fever sequences are usually long enough to earn the wrapper. A character imagining a conversation is a short dream: (IMAGINED) or (FANTASY) in the heading, or a one-line FANTASY: label in action for a flash. The same tool that keeps flashback headings consistent, the free scene heading builder, accepts any of these suffixes.

Dream vs flashback: which label to use

The two are formatted almost identically, and writers sometimes pick the wrong one for a scene that is a bit of both. The test is simple.

A memory that plays out in a dream, the character re-living a real event while asleep, is a dream. Mark it (DREAM) and let the action say the events are remembered. A false memory the character believes is real is a flashback the script later corrects. A scene a character narrates in voice-over as something that happened is a flashback even if it turns out to be a lie; the label follows what the character believes at the time.

When the audience should not know it is a dream

The fake-out, where a scene plays as real until the character wakes, is the one case where writers are tempted to hide the marker. Do not. The screenplay is a document for readers, and a reader who feels tricked by the page stops trusting it. The audience can be surprised; the reader must not be.

Keep (DREAM) in the heading, and write the scene so that the surprise lives in the film, not the format. The reader knows it is a dream from the slugline, watches Mara answer the door to her drowned sister, and understands both what the audience will feel and how the cut to the bedroom will land. That is what a producer is reading for. If you strip the marker to preserve the twist on the page, the reader reaches the wake-up beat and has to re-read the previous two pages to work out what was real, which is the opposite of a surprise.

The same rule covers the ambiguous case where the film itself never confirms whether the scene was a dream. Decide, mark the heading according to your decision, and let the action be ambiguous. (DREAM?) is not a heading. A script that does not know what its own scenes are cannot be scheduled, and the shooting script that follows will have to decide anyway.

Dreams are also where writers reach for camera language, slow motion, colour drained from the frame, a fisheye lens. All of that belongs to the director. Describe what the character sees and how it is wrong, and leave the lens alone.

Common dream sequence formatting mistakes

1. No exit. The dream opens and the reader is never told it closed. Every dream needs END DREAM, (PRESENT), or the character waking on the page.
2. Hiding the marker for a twist. The audience is tricked; the reader is annoyed.
3. INT. DREAM - NIGHT. A dream is a qualifier, not a location. Say where the dream is set.
4. Two labels for one thing. (DREAM) on page ten, (NIGHTMARE) on page thirty, DREAM SEQUENCE on page sixty. Pick one system.
5. Directing the dream. Slow motion, lens choices, colour grades. Describe the image; let the film decide how to shoot it.
6. Dreams as exposition. A dream that exists so a dead character can explain the plot is a monologue in a costume. If the information is needed, find a waking scene for it.

Because a dream heading is still a heading, the time-of-day and location rules from the slugline guide apply to the waking scenes on either side of it, and a missing marker is the kind of thing a reader spots on the first pass. If you write on the move, Zen Writer for iPhone formats the marked heading as you type it and adds it to the scene navigator, and the screenplay formatting hub covers every element that sits around it.

Frequently asked questions

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