What Is a Scene Heading? Format, Rules and Examples

A scene heading is the single line of capital letters that starts every scene in a screenplay. It states three things in a fixed order: INT. or EXT., the location, and the time of day, as in INT. DINER - NIGHT. Nothing else belongs in it.

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

What is a scene heading in a screenplay?

A scene heading is the line of ALL CAPS text that opens a scene and tells the reader where and when it happens. Every scene gets one. It is not a title and it is not description. It is a label, and the whole industry has agreed on what goes in it: an interior/exterior tag, a location, and a time of day, in that order, separated by a space, a hyphen and a space.

INT. DINER - NIGHT

A booth by the window. RAY, 50s, stirs a coffee he has no
intention of drinking.

The heading is the first thing a reader sees in a scene and the first thing a production office extracts from the script. A first assistant director builds the schedule from the headings alone, which is why the format is rigid. If you are also seeing the word slugline, it means the same element; the slugline article covers the vocabulary and the secondary sluglines that live inside a scene.

One page of correctly formatted screenplay runs about a minute on screen, and readers rely on that. Scene headings keep the page honest: each one marks a new setup, and the count of them is a rough guide to how expensive the script is to shoot.

The three parts of a scene heading

Take the heading apart and you get three fields. Learn what each one is for and you will never write a bad one.

EXT. HARBOUR ROAD - DAWN
^    ^              ^
|    |              time of day
|    location
interior or exterior

INT. or EXT. Interior or exterior, always abbreviated, always with the period. Interior means inside an enclosure with walls and a roof: a kitchen, a car, a submarine. Exterior means outside. The choice decides whether the crew needs a set or a location, so it is never cosmetic. The INT. vs EXT. guide walks through the edge cases (porches, tents, doorways, cars).
Location. The specific place, in capitals. MARA'S KITCHEN, not KITCHEN. If the place belongs inside a bigger place, go from large to small with a hyphen or a slash: INT. ST. JUDE'S HOSPITAL - ICU - NIGHT. Use the same spelling every time the location returns, because scheduling software groups scenes by exact string.
Time of day. DAY or NIGHT in most cases. It answers a lighting and scheduling question, not a storytelling one. The full list of accepted terms is in the table below.

Keep the whole thing on one line. If the location name is long enough to wrap, it is doing work that belongs in the action line underneath.

Time of day: the terms that are actually allowed

Time of day is the field writers get creative with, and creativity is exactly what it does not want. Every term below is something a crew can schedule. Anything else is mood and belongs in action.

Term	Use it when
`DAY`	Daylight. The default. Covers morning and afternoon unless the difference matters.
`NIGHT`	Full dark. The other default.
`DAWN` / `DUSK`	The light itself is the point. Both are short, expensive windows to shoot, so use them on purpose.
`MORNING` / `EVENING`	Acceptable, but only when the story needs the reader to know it is breakfast rather than lunch.
`CONTINUOUS`	The scene picks up the instant the previous one ends, usually because a character has walked from one location into another without a cut.
`LATER` / `MOMENTS LATER`	Same location, time has jumped. `LATER` is vague on purpose; `MOMENTS LATER` means seconds or minutes.
`SAME TIME`	This scene runs in parallel with the previous one, somewhere else.

CONTINUOUS is the term new writers avoid and experienced writers lean on. Someone leaves the bedroom and enters the hallway: that is a new location and a new heading, but no time has passed, so the heading is INT. HALLWAY - CONTINUOUS. Writing NIGHT again is not wrong, but it hides the fact that the two scenes are one movement.

INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT

Mara pulls on a coat and heads for the door.

INT. HALLWAY - CONTINUOUS

She stops. The front door is already open.

Leaving the time of day off entirely is a real mistake, not a stylistic choice. The free spec script checker flags headings with a missing time of day, which is a fast way to audit a draft before you send it.

Scene numbers: shooting scripts only

Scene numbers are added when a script goes into production. They sit in both margins beside the heading, they are locked once the schedule is built, and they never change even when scenes are cut or added (a new scene between 12 and 13 becomes 12A). In a numbered draft the heading looks like this:

14   INT. DINER - NIGHT                                   14

A spec script, meaning anything you send to a contest, a manager or a producer who has not bought it, has no scene numbers. Numbering your own spec does not make it look professional; it makes it look like you have confused the two kinds of document. The spec script vs shooting script article lists everything else that separates them, including camera directions and revision colours.

If you write in software that handles this for you, the distinction is a toggle rather than a chore. Zen Writer keeps scene headings as a distinct element, so the scene navigator can list, reorder and jump between scenes, and the script statistics count them for you without any numbers on the page.

Common scene heading mistakes

Readers do not consciously grade your headings, but a bad one drops their trust in the writer before the scene has started. These are the ones that show up most.

Camera language in the heading. INT. DINER - NIGHT - CLOSE ON RAY is two elements welded together. The shot, if you must have it, goes in action. The spec script checker will catch CLOSE ON, ANGLE ON and WE SEE anywhere in the draft.
Generic locations. INT. ROOM - DAY tells production nothing and tells the reader less. Name the room and whose it is.
Adjectives instead of a place. EXT. LONELY STRETCH OF HIGHWAY UNDER A BRUISED SKY - DUSK is a sentence wearing capital letters. EXT. HIGHWAY - DUSK, then describe the sky underneath.
Inconsistent spelling. RAY'S APARTMENT, RAYS APT and RAY'S FLAT are three locations to a breakdown program and one location to you. Pick one and stick to it. Full-script search in Zen Writer makes this a two-minute check.
Missing time of day. Usually a copy-and-paste error, always noticed.
Lower case or mixed case. Headings are uppercase. There is no house style that says otherwise.
A heading for every camera move. A new heading means a new location or a new time. Following a character across the same room does not need one.
A transition before every heading. CUT TO: is implied by the heading itself. Save transitions for the moments that need them; the transitions article explains which ones still earn their place in a spec.

Paste a page of headings into the free slugline validator and it will flag most of these in one pass. It runs in the browser and needs no login.

How a scene heading looks on the page

On a standard US Letter page in 12-point Courier, the heading starts flush at the left action margin, 1.5 inches from the paper edge, and runs toward the 1-inch right margin. It is never indented, never centred and never bold or underlined in a spec script (some shooting scripts bold headings for the crew; that is a production choice, not yours). One blank line sits above it and one blank line separates it from the first action line. Some writers use two blank lines above a heading for readability; either is fine as long as you are consistent.

Those numbers come from the same layout that makes a page equal roughly a minute of screen time, and the margins and font article gives every measurement. You do not need to memorise them. Any real screenwriting app positions the heading for you: in Zen Writer you type INT. at the start of a line and the app recognises it as a scene heading, capitalises it and moves you to action on Enter. Open a draft in Zen Writer for iPhone and the headings are already where they belong, even when you are writing on a train.

To see a scene heading sitting alongside every other element in context, action, character cue, dialogue and transition on a single page, the screenplay formatting examples page shows a complete sample. The rest of the screenplay formatting hub covers each element in the same depth.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a scene heading and a slugline?

There is none. Slugline is the older, newspaper-derived word and scene heading is the term most software and screenwriting books use. Both describe the ALL CAPS INT./EXT. line that opens a scene. The word slugline is also used for shorter secondary lines inside a scene, such as a bare location or a time jump.

Does every scene need a scene heading?

Yes. Every change of location or time gets a full heading with INT. or EXT., a location and a time of day. The only lines that skip the INT./EXT. tag are secondary sluglines used within an established scene, such as a room inside a house you have already set up.

What time of day should I write if the scene is inside with no windows?

Still write DAY or NIGHT. The time of day tells the schedule when the scene sits in the story, and it tells the crew whether night-shooting rules apply if any exterior is visible. A windowless bunker at 3 a.m. is INT. BUNKER - NIGHT.

Should a scene heading be bold or underlined?

Not in a spec script. Plain uppercase Courier is the standard, and any emphasis reads as an attempt to decorate. Some production drafts bold or underline headings so crew can find scenes quickly, but that is applied by the production office, not the writer.

How do I write a scene heading for a car?

Use INT. CAR - DAY if the scene stays inside with the passengers, EXT. CAR if we are outside watching it, and INT./EXT. CAR only when the scene genuinely moves between the two, such as someone getting out mid-conversation. Name the vehicle if the script has more than one.

Can a scene heading include the year or a caption like 1987?

Keep it out of the heading. Put the caption in the action line beneath, in capitals, such as SUPER: 1987. Some writers add a flashback tag after the time of day, as in INT. KITCHEN - DAY (FLASHBACK), which is accepted, but a year on its own is a superimposed title, not a heading element.

Ready to turn this idea into a screenplay?

Type INT. or EXT. at the start of a line and Zen Writer turns it into a scene heading, capitalises it and moves you to the action line when you press Enter.

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Screenplay Formatting

What Is a Scene Heading? Format, Rules and Examples

What is a scene heading in a screenplay?

The three parts of a scene heading

Time of day: the terms that are actually allowed

Scene numbers: shooting scripts only

Common scene heading mistakes

How a scene heading looks on the page

Frequently asked questions

Ready to turn this idea into a screenplay?

Continue reading

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INT. vs EXT. in a Screenplay:

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Spec Script vs Shooting Script: What Is the Difference?

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