Spec Script vs Shooting Script: What Is the Difference?

Spec script vs shooting script: the short answer

A spec script is written on speculation: nobody commissioned it, and it exists to be read by agents, producers, contest judges and executives who will decide whether to buy or make it. Its only job is to make a reader see the film. A shooting script is the same screenplay after a production has taken it over. It is a working document for a crew, and everything added to it exists so that a hundred people can refer to the same scene, the same page and the same version without confusion.

The formatting itself does not change. Both use Courier 12, the same screenplay margins and the same six elements. What changes is the layer of production bookkeeping on top, and the reason the distinction matters is that a spec wearing that layer looks like a writer imitating a script they saw online rather than a writer who knows what the layer is for.

Scene numbers in a shooting script

Scene numbers are the first thing a production adds. Each scene heading gets a number, printed in both margins so it is visible whichever way the page is bound, and from that moment the number is the scene's name. The schedule, the call sheet, the storyboard, the script supervisor's notes and the editor's bins all refer to scene 47, not to the lighthouse scene.

47   INT. NORTH POINT LIGHTHOUSE - NIGHT                    47

     Ellis trims the wick by touch. He does not look up.

                           MARA
               You're Ellis.

48   EXT. HARBOUR - DAWN                                     48

     Daniel's car sits at the water's edge, door open.

Once numbers are assigned they are locked. If a scene is inserted between 47 and 48 it becomes 47A, then 47B, and it keeps that number for the rest of production even if 47 is later cut. Renumbering would break every document built on the old numbers, which is why nobody does it. Every screenwriting application adds and strips scene numbers as a command, and the free spec and shooting script toggle does the same for a draft you already have.

On a spec, leave them out entirely. Numbers in the margin of a script nobody has scheduled are the single most common sign that a writer has copied a production draft, and readers notice them before the first scene heading has been read.

Camera directions and shot language

A shooting script may carry the director's shot choices in the text: CLOSE ON, ANGLE ON, MARA'S POV, TRACKING WITH, CRANE UP TO REVEAL. Many directors never write them in, preferring a separate shot list, but when they appear they are legitimate, because the person choosing the shots is the person writing them down.

In a spec they are a liability. The writer is not the director, the reader knows it, and a script that directs from the page reads as a writer covering for a scene that does not work on its own. The trick is to write the shot as an image without naming it. Compare:

CLOSE ON MARA'S HAND as it closes around the phone.
WE PULL BACK TO REVEAL the whole room watching her.

Mara's hand closes around the phone.

The whole room is watching her.

The second version gives the director the same image and the reader a faster line, and it costs nothing. The rare exception is a shot the story cannot survive without, a reveal that only works as a single move; write it once, as plainly as possible, and then go back to describing what happens. How to write action lines covers the craft of that restraint, and the free spec script checker flags WE SEE, camera language and other production habits in a draft.

Revision pages and the colour sequence

Once a script is in pre-production it is never reissued whole. Changes go out as revision pages: only the pages that changed, printed on coloured paper so that every copy on set can be checked at a glance for being up to date. Each revision has a date, and every changed line carries an asterisk in the right margin so a reader can find the change without comparing drafts.

                                              Blue Rev. 14/03/26     47.

47   INT. NORTH POINT LIGHTHOUSE - NIGHT                    47

     Ellis trims the wick by touch. He does not look up.

                           MARA
               You're Ellis. Daniel said you'd     *
               be expecting me.                    *

The colours follow a fixed order so that a crew member can tell which revision is newest by the colour alone. The standard US sequence:

1. White (the original locked draft)
2. Blue
3. Pink
4. Yellow
5. Green
6. Goldenrod
7. Buff
8. Salmon
9. Cherry
10. Tan
11. Gray
12. Ivory

After ivory the cycle restarts as Double White, Double Blue and so on. A script that has been through a long shoot ends up as a rainbow, and the title page carries a list of every revision colour and its date. Television productions often use the same colours in a different order or add their own, so check the production's convention rather than assuming. Digital distribution has not retired the system; PDFs are still labelled by colour, and many productions still print.

Locked pages, A and B pages, and OMITTED

Revision pages only work if page numbers stay put, so a shooting script's pages are locked at the same time its scenes are. From then on, an edit that pushes text onto a new page does not shift every following page number. Instead the overflow becomes an A page: page 47 is followed by 47A, then 47B, and page 48 remains page 48. A page that loses all its content is not deleted; it is kept, marked OMITTED or left mostly blank, so the sequence stays intact.

Scenes work the same way. Add a scene between 47 and 48 and it is 47A; add one before it and it is 46A. Cut scene 47 and the number stays on the page with the word OMITTED beside it, so nobody on the crew wonders whether they are missing a page or a scene:

46   EXT. HARBOUR - DAWN                                     46

     Daniel's car sits at the water's edge, door open.

47   OMITTED                                                 47

47A  INT. DANIEL'S CAR - CONTINUOUS                         47A

     Rain on the windscreen. The keys still in the ignition.

Locked pages also explain CONTINUED: at the top and bottom of production pages, and the (CONT'D) that repeats on a cue after a break. The first is a shooting-script habit that tells a reader a scene continues across a physical page and is gone from most specs; the second survives in both because it marks a broken speech. What CONT'D means in a screenplay separates the two.

Why a spec must not look like a shooting script

Every device above exists to solve a production problem, and every one of them signals to a reader that the script is in production. On a spec, that signal is false, and a false signal is worse than none. In rough order of how badly they read:

1. Scene numbers. The clearest tell, visible on every page.
2. A dated, numbered draft on the title page. Third Draft, Blue Revisions on a script nobody has bought. The spec title page carries the title, the credit and a way to reach you, and nothing else.
3. Camera directions. A writer directing a film that does not exist yet.
4. CONTINUED: on every page. Clutter borrowed from paper drafts.
5. Asterisks and revision marks. Evidence that the writer is imitating a production PDF line by line.
6. OMITTED scenes. A spec has no reason to keep a scene that is not there.

Readers do not deduct points for these on a checklist. They form an impression in the first few seconds, and the impression is that the writer has learned the format from the outside. Strip all of it before anything leaves your desk. The complete element-by-element reference for what a clean spec page looks like is in screenplay formatting examples, and the rest of the conventions are in the screenplay formatting hub.

The reverse conversion is not your problem. When a script is bought, the production adds scene numbers, locks the pages and starts the colour cycle, usually in Final Draft or a comparable application, and usually with a script coordinator whose job that is. Your draft only needs to be clean and correctly formatted when it arrives. Zen Writer writes spec-format pages by default, with no scene numbers unless you ask for them, and exports the FDX a production will expect; on a phone or tablet, Zen Writer for iPad keeps the whole draft offline until you choose to send it.

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