Screenplay Formatting Examples: Every Element on One Page

These screenplay formatting examples put every standard element on a single sample page: FADE IN, scene heading, action, character cue, parenthetical, dialogue, V.O. and O.S. extensions, dual dialogue, a transition, INTERCUT, a montage, and a page break with MORE and CONT'D, each followed by the rule that governs it.

Updated 2026-09-22 · About 6 sections · 5 answered questions

A complete screenplay format example

Most screenplay formatting examples show one element at a time. Screenplay format is a fixed set of positions, not a style, so below is a two-page sample in which every standard element appears at least once, laid out in Courier at the standard margins: action at the left margin, dialogue indented at 2.5 inches, parentheticals at 3.1, character cues at 3.7, transitions flush right. Read it first, then use the walkthrough beneath it to find the rule for any element and the article that covers it in depth.

FADE IN:

EXT. NORTH POINT LIGHTHOUSE - NIGHT

Rain comes in sideways off the sea. The lamp turns, sweeps
the rocks, turns again.

A figure struggles up the path: MARA VOSS (30s, city coat,
wrong shoes), one hand clamped over her phone.

                      MARA
                (into phone)
          I'm here. I can see the light.

                      DANIEL (V.O.)
          Then you can see why I called.

She reaches the door. Pounds on it.

                      ELLIS (O.S.)
          It's open. It's always open.

INT. NORTH POINT LIGHTHOUSE - CONTINUOUS

ELLIS (60s, keeper's coat, hands that never stop moving)
trims a wick by touch. He does not look up.

                      MARA
          You're Ellis.

                      ELLIS
          And you're late. The lamp isn't.

                      MARA                  ELLIS
          Daniel said you'd --         Daniel says a great deal.

A beat. Mara puts the phone away.

                      MARA
                (quieter)
          He said you saw the boat go
          down. That you saw who was on
          it. That you've been keeping it
          to yourself for eleven years
          and you'd tell me if I came in
                      (MORE)

                                                          1.

                      MARA (CONT'D)
          person. So I came in person.

Ellis sets down the wick.

                      ELLIS
          Sit. This takes as long as it
          takes.

                                                  INTERCUT WITH:

INT. DANIEL'S CAR - NIGHT

Daniel grips the wheel, phone on speaker, wipers losing.

                      DANIEL
          Is she in?

                      ELLIS
          She's in.

MONTAGE - THE STORY ELLIS TELLS

-- A trawler heaves against a black swell.

-- The lamp, dark. A hand on the switch.

-- A younger Ellis on the rocks, shouting at nothing.

END MONTAGE

INT. NORTH POINT LIGHTHOUSE - LATER

Mara has not moved. Ellis looks old now.

                      MARA
          Who turned off the light?

                                                   SMASH CUT TO:

EXT. HARBOUR - DAWN

Daniel's car sits at the water's edge, engine running,
door open, nobody inside.

                                                       FADE OUT.

Everything in that sample has one correct position on the page. Nothing is centered by eye, bolded, or spaced by taste. Dual dialogue is the one element a plain text block cannot render exactly; on a formatted page the two speeches sit side by side in two narrow columns, and the sample shows that arrangement as closely as monospace allows.

Scene headings and action lines

FADE IN: sits alone at the left margin as the first line of page one, and it appears once. Its partner FADE OUT. closes the script, right-aligned, with a period. Neither appears anywhere in between.

Scene heading. One line in caps, flush left: INT. or EXT., the specific location, a hyphen, the time of day. CONTINUOUS means no time has passed since the previous scene; LATER means it has. The full anatomy is in what is a scene heading, and the interior-versus-exterior decision, including the INT./EXT. case, in INT. vs EXT. in a screenplay. Paste your headings into the free slugline validator if you are unsure of any of them.

INT. NORTH POINT LIGHTHOUSE - CONTINUOUS
EXT. HARBOUR - DAWN

Action. Present tense, left margin, paragraphs of four lines or fewer, describing only what a camera can photograph. A character's name goes in caps on their first appearance only, with a compact description an actor can use; that is the character introduction. Sounds and on-screen text may also be capitalised, sparingly. The craft of keeping description lean is in how to write action lines.

Character cues, dialogue, parentheticals and extensions

Character cue. Caps, on its own line at 3.7 inches, above the speech. Use one spelling for the whole script; MARA on page 1 must not become MARA VOSS on page 40.

Dialogue. Starts on the line beneath the cue, at 2.5 inches, in a column about 35 characters wide. Never merged onto the cue line and never run out to the page margins. Everything about the block, including how to handle interruptions and pauses, is in how to format dialogue in a screenplay.

Parenthetical. Lower case, in parentheses, on its own line between the cue and the speech at 3.1 inches: (into phone), (quieter). It exists for a physical action performed while speaking or a reading the line cannot carry alone, and it should be rare. How to write parentheticals covers the limits.

Extensions. Attached to the cue in parentheses. (V.O.) marks a voice not present in the scene: narration, a recording, the far end of a phone call, as in DANIEL (V.O.). (O.S.) marks a character who is in the scene but not in frame, as Ellis is behind the door. The difference matters to a sound department and to a reader, and V.O. meaning and O.S. meaning each get their own article.

Dual dialogue. Two characters speaking at once. The cues sit side by side, the second at about 5.5 inches, and the speeches share the same lines beneath them. Every screenwriting application applies it as a command to two adjacent speeches; never build the columns with the space bar. Use it for genuine overlap, once or twice in a feature, and never for ordinary back-and-forth.

Transitions, INTERCUT and montage

Transitions. Caps, right-aligned at the right margin, ending in a colon: SMASH CUT TO:, DISSOLVE TO:, MATCH CUT TO:. A new scene heading is already a cut, so CUT TO: between ordinary scenes adds nothing and most spec scripts omit it. Screenplay transitions lists which ones still earn their place.

INTERCUT. When a scene cuts back and forth between two locations, usually a phone call, give the first location a full heading, then INTERCUT WITH: as a right-aligned transition, then the second location's heading. From there the dialogue alternates without further headings. An alternative writes INTERCUT - LIGHTHOUSE / DANIEL'S CAR as a single heading. Both are in how to format a phone call.

Montage. A heading at the left margin, MONTAGE - THE STORY ELLIS TELLS, followed by one beat per line with a leading dash, and END MONTAGE to close. Some writers number the beats or drop the dashes; consistency matters more than the choice. A montage that needs full scene headings for each beat is a series of scenes, not a montage, and how to format a montage shows where the line is. Flashbacks and dream sequences use a related device, a label in the scene heading, covered in how to format a flashback.

Three special cases the sample leaves out have their own pages: dream sequences, foreign language dialogue with subtitles, and text messages and on-screen text.

Page breaks, MORE and CONT'D, and the title page

Page breaks inside a speech. When dialogue runs off the bottom of a page, (MORE) closes the page at the dialogue margin and the cue repeats at the top of the next page with (CONT'D) attached, as Mara's speech does across pages 1 and 2. Screenwriting software, Zen Writer included, inserts both automatically and moves them when the text changes; typing them by hand guarantees they will be wrong after the next edit. (CONT'D) is also used, optionally, when the same character speaks again after an action line. What CONT'D means covers both cases.

Page numbers. Top right, half an inch from the top edge, numeral and period. The title page carries none. The full geometry, font choices and Letter-versus-A4 question are in screenplay margins and font.

Title page. Title in caps about a third of the way down, Written by, your name, contact details in a bottom corner. No date, draft number, copyright line or logline on a spec. How to format a screenplay title page has the mockup.

Notice what the sample does not contain: scene numbers, camera angles, CONTINUED: at the top of page 2, revision marks. Those belong to a production draft, and spec script vs shooting script explains why a spec must not carry them. If you are converting a draft from a word processor, the free screenplay formatter will place every element above on its correct margin, and the spec script checker will flag anything that should not be there.

Formatting mistakes the sample avoids

A proportional font. Everything above assumes Courier 12; in Times the page count and the runtime estimate both break.
Directing from the page. ANGLE ON, CLOSE UP, WE SEE. Write the image as action and let the director find the shot.
Action paragraphs that run past four lines. They get skimmed, and the important line in the middle gets skimmed with them.
A parenthetical under every speech. Two in a page is plenty.
CUT TO: between every scene. The heading is the cut.
Hand-typed MORE and CONT'D. They drift the moment a line changes.
Inconsistent cues. The same character under two names, or a capitalised introduction repeated in every scene.

Every one of these is a manual decision in a word processor and an automatic one in an application built for the format. Zen Writer positions each element as you type and moves to the next logical element on Enter, so a page you write on a phone comes out looking like the sample above; the free online screenplay editor does the same in a browser with no login. The rest of the conventions, element by element, are collected in the screenplay formatting hub.

Frequently asked questions

What are the basic elements of screenplay format?

Scene heading, action, character cue, parenthetical, dialogue and transition are the six core elements, and every line of a script is one of them. Extensions such as V.O. and O.S., dual dialogue, INTERCUT, montage and the MORE and CONT'D page-break markers are variations built on those six.

Does a screenplay have to start with FADE IN?

It is the convention and almost every spec script uses it, but it is not mandatory. If you use it, it sits alone at the left margin as the first line of page one and appears nowhere else; the script closes with FADE OUT. on the right.

How do you show two characters talking at the same time?

With dual dialogue: the two cues sit side by side and the two speeches run in parallel columns beneath them. Apply it with your software's dual dialogue command on two adjacent speeches, and reserve it for genuine overlap rather than fast back-and-forth, which is written as stacked speeches.

What does INTERCUT mean in a script?

INTERCUT tells the reader that two locations, established with their own scene headings, are being cut between freely for the rest of the sequence, so the writer does not repeat a heading at every switch. It is most often used for phone calls and for parallel action in two places.

Should I type MORE and CONT'D myself?

No. (MORE) at the foot of a page and (CONT'D) on the repeated cue are inserted by screenwriting software wherever a speech breaks across a page, and they move automatically when you edit. Typed by hand, they end up in the wrong place after the first revision.

Ready to turn this idea into a screenplay?

Zen Writer formats every element in this sample automatically as you type, from the scene heading to the (MORE) and (CONT'D) at a page break, and exports the finished script as a standard PDF or FDX.

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Screenplay Formatting

Screenplay Formatting Examples: Every Element on One Page

A complete screenplay format example

Scene headings and action lines

Character cues, dialogue, parentheticals and extensions

Transitions, INTERCUT and montage

Page breaks, MORE and CONT'D, and the title page

Formatting mistakes the sample avoids

Frequently asked questions

Ready to turn this idea into a screenplay?

Continue reading

What Is a Scene Heading?

How to Format Dialogue in a Screenplay:

Screenplay Transitions:

Screenplay Margins and Font:

Spec Script vs Shooting Script: What Is the Difference?

Plain Text Screenplay Formatter

Spec Script Checker

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