The nuts and bolts of screenplays

One of the many quirks of screenplay writing is one I obliquely referred to in the last update: they have a specific formatting style that goes back many, many decades. As the world moved from typewriters to computers, most publications looking for manuscript submissions—stories, nonfiction articles, whatever—gave up insisting that you make your manuscript look as much like it came from a typewriter as possible. Screenplays, though, didn’t, and studios still insist on that typewritten look.

But it’s not just the typeface, it’s the persnickety formatting. If you find a screenplay on the web and it’s not a PDF, it’s probably not a “real” script. Here’s a (well-done) fan transcript of Zootopia; here’s what the actual first page of the script looks like:

There are some concessions to modernity here—bold and italics, the proper accents for the word “mâché”—but it’s pretty typewriter-esque. Different elements start at different tab stops with different margins, and you’re switching constantly. This makes using a typical word processor a pain in the ass. Enter: screenplay processors.

The screenwriter’s Microsoft Word is Final Draft. Like Word, it’s been around forever; like Word, it can do just about anything you want (it includes its own “beat board” for the scenes-on-index-cards idea I talked about in the last article); like Word, it’s an accepted “industry standard”; and like Word, it’s not particularly well-loved by its users. Well, no: that’s not fair to Word, which many people at least like. Most of the time when I read about Final Draft, there’s a clear undercurrent of resentment about it. It’s clunky, particularly on the Mac; it can seem like it’s stuck in another era (another thing it has in common with Word, perhaps); and at $249.99, it’s damn expensive.

Now, magazine editors—even in the world of furry—usually demand story manuscripts use Word format, because the editors make comments and markup in the actual file and send it back to the author for revision. This isn’t something that happens in Hollywood. Despite the name, the final file format of a screenplay is not Final Draft; it’s PDF. So anything that can output a PDF that looks like a screenplay does just fine. Rather than Final Draft, I’m using Slugline, a screenwriting program that uses a plain text writing format called Fountain. When you’re writing in Slugline, it has a what-you-see-is-what-you-get look just like Final Draft does, but you can just open the file in any text editor. Here’s what that first page of Zootopia looks like in Fountain:

.IN BLACK –

We hear the feral, primeval sounds of a jungle at night. A timpani bangs an ominous beat.

FADE IN ON:

.A JUNGLE - NIGHT

A BUNNY nervously walks through the dark, foreboding forest, frightened by every shadow and moving leaf.

YOUNG JUDY (V.O.)
Fear. Treachery. Bloodlust! Thousands of years ago, these were the forces that ruled our world. A world where prey were scared of predators. And predators had an uncontrollable biological urge to maim and maul and…

The timpani crescendos. A JAGUAR leaps out of the shadows, attacks the bunny, who screams–

CUT TO:

INT. BARN - A JUNGLE (SET) - NIGHT

The action continues– as imagined by an amateur stage production.

YOUNG JUDY
Blood, blood, blood!

Reams of red papier mâché entrails ooze from the bunny. And when those run out—projectile ketchup.

Reveal: These are ANIMAL KID ACTORS. The bunny, JUDY HOPPS, 10, is our hero. And this is her play being staged. A banner reads: CARROT DAYS TALENT SHOW!

YOUNG JUDY
And death.

The CROWD looks on, confused. The music goes discordant as BOBBY CATMULL, a bobcat, bangs a drum.

YOUNG JUDY
Back then, the world was divided in two. Vicious predator or Meek prey.

As you can see, you don’t need to know much about Fountain to follow this; the only odd thing is the “.” before the first two scene headings (“.A JUNGLE - NIGHT”), because those headings don’t start with either “EXT.” or “INT.”, the conventional way to mark an exterior or interior scene. I cheated and changed the “INSIDE A BARN” scene heading to take advantage of that.

Fountain also has formats for outlining, showing headings and synopses. As I mentioned last time, I’m using an outlining program for this, but I have a widget to convert from my outline to Fountain-style, which means that as I move from outline to screenplay draft, I’ll have my outline in the same document. The start of this outline looks something like this:

# Act I

## The Party

### Small Talk

= Opening scene with Gabrielle and Mirasol; introducing main characters and the Underwoods' high society but alienated life; theme stated moment.

### The Parlor

= Harry, Darby, Commissioner Newcomb, General Taney together talking about the plan and Mirasol. Have to talk somewhat elliptically. But she's brilliant, we see, and he talks about how his grandfather's old research has solved Mirasol's problem and, with any luck, vice-versa. The bankers don't want to back him; Newcomb is concerned about the vigilante reports he's been hearing. But Darby, as someone involved with military contracting, is interested. Darby also cruelly berates Gabrielle, for interrupting or bringing the wrong wine or something trivial, which Mirasol sees.

## Catalyst Moment

= Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. A nam consequat habitant ut luctus fringilla aliquet, mus fames rhoncus lacinia rutrum cursus nulla euismod, erat porta imperdiet proin aptent purus.

“The Party” is a sequence of two scenes, “Small Talk” and “The Parlor”; the next scene, “Catalyst Moment,” has a real name in the actual outline, but it would be giving away a little too much to let you in on it yet. (Hence the lorem ipsum instead of the synopsis.) I’ve started the screenplay in Slugline already, using a Save the Cat! beat sheet template, but I’m going to replace that with my more detailed (and a bit less Snydery) outline in a few days.

Okay, so! Where am I in all this? In a good place. I think. The outline isn’t quite finished but it’s over the most monumental hurdles. I have maybe three scenes left to outline at this point, although I’ll give it all a once-over for coherency before importing it into Slugline.

I’m a little sorry that I’m missing “Kaijune” with this (not that I even knew that was going to be a thing), but we should be underway in July!