ScriptFaze

Screenplay Genre: HORROR

“Supernatural, perhaps; baloney, perhaps not.”
--Bela Lugosi in The Black Cat, written by Edgar G. Ulmer

Don’t go in that closet! A popular sentiment for fans of scary films, the urge to yell at the screen and steer a protagonist from danger is a must-have for any great horror film! Good versus evil. Innocence versus corruption. Slobbering monster versus cute high school cheerleader. These are the epic themes of horror films. Often moralistic in their message, horror films are meant to cause dread and panic by playing on our innermost fears and vulnerabilities. In their attempt to evoke a deep-down visceral response from audiences, no sight is too ghastly or liquid too precious—be it blood, pus, drool or general goo! 

Usually a normal Joe or Jane, horror film heroes are plucked from their everyday lives and forced to confront a horrible, and often demented antagonist. Whether it’s a ten-year-old with a penchant for sharp objects, a talking doll or a serpent of the netherworld, the horror film villain is irrationally obsessed with doing harm, and is quite often a more interesting character than the protagonist. Caught in an all-out contest for life and loved ones, the horror-film hero’s last hope for outside help is usually caught or killed in the beginning of Act Three. Forced to go it alone in a final, one-on-one battle with a now-more-powerful-than-ever monster, the protagonist realizes they are outmatched physically, and must instead outsmart or outmaneuver their aggressor. Against all odds, horror movies END when evil is vanquished and normalcy is restored—or so we think!

Horror movies to watch: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 version), The Exorcist, Halloween, Jaws, The Blair Witch Project, The Night of the Living Dead, Saw

Genre hybrids: The Shining (Thriller Horror), Rosemary’s Baby (Sci-Fi Horror), The City of Lost Children (Fantasy Horror), The Cat People (Psychological Horror)

The First Ten Pages

 

The most important part of any screenplay is the FIRST PAGE, and beyond that, the FIRST TEN PAGES. Here is where you will either HOOK your reader—or loose him or her for good. Your goal may be to get your script sold, shot, and screened in front of enormous audiences, but your first bottle-neck will be a lone READER, most often an assistant or an intern at a production company or a talent agency. Your first ten pages, then, must successfully embody these FOUR ELEMENTS:

1) INCITING INCIDENT

That’s film-speak for the THING THAT MAKES THE MOVIE HAPPEN. It’s an example I've used before, but if E.T. hadn’t been left behind on earth—if he’d made it back to that ship and sailed away with his glowing-heart friends—there would be no movie. No Elliott. No flying bicycles. Nothing. The first five minutes of E.T. sets up the film’s HERO (E.T.) and INCITES a story to unfold. There are some movies in which the inciting incident remains a mystery, or even takes place before page 1 of the script. These are the exception—most movies clearly lay out an inciting incident, and use this setup as a way to hook the reader and introduce central characters. But if you do choose to leave your inciting incident shrouded in secrecy, you must at least provide a FALSE START—a situation that readers will THINK is the inciting incident, even if you ultimately pull the rug out later.

2) PAGE-ONE HOOK

The page-one hook comes down to one thing: If you haven’t “hooked” your reader by the end of page 1—if you haven’t wet their palette and made them ask “what’s next?”—then they might not flip to page 2. Again—page 1 of any script is the most important page you’ll write. My general rule of thumb is to keep the descriptions witty but sparse, and to save as much of the page as possible for dialogue that exposes the personality of your main character (your HERO). Keep the dialogue punchy, but make his or her point-of-view very clear. And if possible, SUGGEST what your inciting incident might be, even if you don't delve into it completely until page 2 or 3.

3) INTRODUCTION OF THE PROTAGONIST AND ANTAGONIST

Your PROTAGONIST is your hero—you good guy—your main character. Your ANTAGONIST is your bad guy—your source of conflict—the shmuck who gets in the way. If it works for your story, try to introduce BOTH of these characters in the first ten pages, and better yet, PUT THEM TOGETHER IN A SCENE. The sooner readers get to know and understand your protagonist, the sooner they’ll start to care about his or her story. And the sooner they get a glimpse into the psyche of your antagonist, the sooner they’ll understand the roadblocks that will SHAPE this story.

4) THE NORMAL WORLD

It doesn’t matter what genre you are writing—the first ten pages of any screenplay must be all about the “normal world” that your characters inhabit BEFORE their lives change, on or about page 10. This is Indiana Jones delivering a boring lecture, Marty McFly interacting with his loser family, or Will Smith in I Am Legend doing the rounds before night-fall. Your hero’s journey will only make sense to audiences IN CONTRAST with where he or she began, so make sure you use these ten pages to paint a CLEAR PORTRAIT of your character’s day-to-day life BEFORE the shitake hits the fan.

 

The bottom-line is that any screenplay must quickly display the writer’s competency and grasp of screenwriting in a very short period of time, or your script won’t make it past a first-round read. And while your BFF or girlfriend might take the time to read a sloppy first-draft, professional readers won’t. Other than correct formatting, nailing these four points in the first ten pages of your screenplay is the best way to put that nineteen-year-old assistant at ease, and to fill them with confidence that the NEXT 110-pages is absolutely worth the read.

How to Format a Screenplay

 

 

Before moving through the guide below, it’s important to take a minute and say that these days, most professional screenwriters (if not all) don’t spend much time thinking about screenplay format. This is not because it doesn’t matter—it does. A lot. A WHOLE lot. It’s because if you’re getting serious about screenwriting, most writers take the jump into screenwriting software pretty quickly.

Final Draft is the gold standard, but occasionally you'll meet a writer still knocking ‘em out on ScriptBuddy, Celtx, or one of the myriad other Final Draft competitors. Formatting isn’t altogether tough, but getting it correct is imperative to getting your scripts read. I can honestly tell you that if a producer, agent, lit manager or other decision-maker in the industry picks up a script and finds any format error of any kind in the first couple of pages, that is as far they’re going to read. Writing software makes screenwriting an easier, faster process—but it’s also insurance against an unnecessary error that might doom your script to the scrap heap.

That said—there used to be this thing with buttons and ink ribbons and return levers called a ‘typewriter.’ I hear they were popular. Turns out, for sixty years or so, screenwriters did a pretty decent job at formatting their own scripts using little more than their memories and a ruler. So—for those of you just starting out, who may not have access to screenwriting software, or who simply want to do things the old-fashioned way, below is ScriptFaze’s official screenplay format guide:

 

THE SCRIPTFAZE SCREENPLAY FORMAT GUIDE

Okay—first things first. The rule of thumb when writing screenplays is that ONE PAGE EQUALS ONE MINUTE, so a two-hour film is approximately 120 pages, an hour-and-half film is approximately 90 pages, etc. It will be difficult to understand screenplay formatting if you have not already studied some actual script-pages, so for those of you in that category, please take a minute to read over the following PAGE ONE EXAMPLE:

 

This is an actual page from an actual script. There are many different genres of film, but every film script uses the exact same FORMAT.

Okay, ready to try this for yourself? When it comes time to start laying word to page, here’s what you’re gonna want to do:

 

1) FONT

ALL of the text in your screenplay must be typed in 12-point Courier (or Courier Final Draft) font. It is the industry standard, and experimenting with other fonts only shows readers that you don’t know what you’re doing—and that’s a bad thing! Hollywood is a nostalgic industry, and we like our scripts to look like they came out of an Underwood. 

 

2) THE FOUR PARTS OF A SCENE

The basic building block of any script is a SCENE. A new scene will begin anytime YOU CHANGE LOCATION or SKIP FORWARD OR BACKWARD IN TIME, and each of your scenes will be made up of four basic elements:

a. SLUGLINES

b. ACTION BLOCKS

c. CHARACTER NAMES

d. DIALOGUE

 

a. SLUGLINES

In the PAGE ONE example above, the first SCENE began with this slugline:

INT. CLASSROOM – DAY

Sluglines starts at a margin set 1.5-inches from the left side of each page, and setup a scene by describing WHEN and WHERE that scene takes place. Every scene you write MUST start with a slugline, and each slugline is made of three parts:

INT. or EXT. to demarcate whether the scene takes place inside (INTERIOR) or outside (EXTERIOR). If it’s both, such as when a bird shatters through a window into a kitchen, you can write INT./EXT.

LOCATION. Where the scene takes place. These should be short, and avoid emotive description. It’s not INT. PIMPING 1970s LOVE VAN, just INT. VAN. Don’t worry—they’ll be room for the fun stuff later!

TIME. Usually just DAY or NIGHT, but can also be a specific time, like 3:00 PM, if it’s an important detail to the plot. Avoid overusing demarcations like DUSK, MORNING, MIDNIGHT, or LATER.

Slug lines are always in ALL-CAPS. There is usually one spaces between INT.or EXT. and LOCATION, then space, hyphen, space between LOCATION and TIME.

Occasionally, you’ll need a SUBLOCATION to clarify the location. These look like:

INT. JANITOR’S OFFICE/HIGH SCHOOL – DAY

Remember: A new slug line is needed every time you start a new scene--so you will be writing a lot of these!

 

b. ACTION BLOCKS

Next comes the ACTION BLOCK. This is where you can fill in details for your location, and explain what your characters are doing RIGHT NOW. Action is always written in the present tense, and in most cases follows standard rules of capitalization and punctuation. It’s always justified left, and looks like this:

 

In the FIRST PAGE example above, Teacher’s description is quite simple: Scrawny. When introducing a character for the first time, however, it’s often useful to offer one to two lines of description to help give readers a fuller sense of their personality or appearance, such as:

 

Or:

Your character descriptions can be as detailed as you’d like, but avoid making them so long that they interrupt the momentum of your script.

 

c. CHARACTER NAMES

When you’re ready for a character to start speaking, move two spaces down from your last action block, and indent 2.2 inches from the left margin to type the characters name in ALL-CAPS, like this:

                                    ROGER

Or:

                                   SISTER MARY CATHERINE

For minor characters that may only have a line or two, it’s also acceptable to name them by DESCRIPTION or by PROFESSION, such as:

                                    POLICE OFFICER

Or:

                                     FAT GUY

And if you have more than one of the same type of minor-character, just add a number to the right of their names so readers can tell them apart, like so:

                                     POLICE OFFICER #2

Or:

                                     WEREWOLF #1

The last thing you need to know about formatting character names is how to handle a VOICE OVER, or a situation in which a character can’t be seen on camera but is heard speaking OFF SCREEN. This is easy. Simply add the initials (V.O.) or (O.S.) directly to the right of a character’s name, as in:

                                     MCGEE (V.O.)

 Or:

                                     ROBOCOP (O.S.)

 

d. DIALOGUE

Now that you’re all set up, it’s time to give your character a voice! Dialogue is introduced one line below the character’s name who is speaking it, and is sandwiched in a window one-inch from the left margin to two-inches before the right margin. It looks like this:

Dialogue should be written in all lower-case, and should never be underlined or italicized. That’s what TV dramas are for! If you want dialogue to be spoken with a special emphasis, you may indent by an additional .6 inches (or one tab) on the line directly beneath a character’s name, and add your direction in PARENTHETICAL:

 Or:

A parenthetical can also be used to clarify who a person is talking to, or who they are talking about. For example:

                                    (to GRANDMA)

 Or:

                                    (re: JIMMY)

If the description within a parenthetical runs longer than a few words, try to move it out of the parenthetical and into the action block preceding the dialogue.

When one character is done talking, drop down two spaces to add a new action block at the margin--or add a new character name followed by his or her dialogue. When your scene is all done, skips ahead to STEP 3.

 

3) SCENE TRANSITIONS

You’ve just learned the four basic parts of a SCREENPLAY SCENE. So you’re all ready to write your script, right?

Well—almost.

There’s just a couple more things you’ll need to know before you’re off and running. If you scroll back up to the PAGE ONE EXAMPLE above, you’ll notice two words printed on the TOP-LEFT of that page, before the first SLUGLINE:

FADE IN

This is a VISUAL TRANSITION, and while you don’t HAVE to start your screenplay with a visual transition, most screenwriters do. Some of the more common ones (along with a description of what they mean) are:

FADE IN  -- the first image slowly arises from blackness

HARD CUT TO -- the first image instantly appears on the screen

FROM BLACK -- the exact same as above

At the end of scene, the norm is to skip down THREE SPACES and simply type a NEW SLUGLINE to begin your NEXT SCENE. Most screenwriters do not use visual transitions BETWEEN SCENES, but in that special case where you do want to dictate a special transition, transitions at the END OF A SCENE are justified to the RIGHT, while transitions at the START OF A SCENE are justified to the LEFT, like in this example:

 

But remember—in movies, writers generally DO NOT use transitions between scenes. A straight-cut from one scene to the next is best presented on the page as a simple SLUGLINE heading off a NEW SCENE.

 

4) CAPITALIZED WORDS IN ACTION BLOCKS

Notice that in the action blocks of the PAGE ONE EXAMPLE above, the words ROWDY TEENAGERS, SCREECH, TEACHER, CHALK DUST, LAUGH, HENDERSON, HESITATES, GLOCK 9, CEILING, BLAM, PRINCIPAL SCHMIDT and GUN SHOT have all been capitalized. This isn’t a part of some top-secret Hollywood code—instead, it’s another important part of screenplay format.

Until the last few years, the norm for screenplay writing was to never capitalize words within action blocks, with the exception of CHARACTER NAMES the first time they are introduced into a script. Perhaps influenced by TV writers, this has changed somewhat, and today it has become increasing common for writers to capitalize other types of words as well. But there are still rules! You don’t just get to capitalize whatever word you’d like!

So here’s how it breaks down:

 

a. CHARACTER INTRODUCTIONS

Anytime a CHARACTER is introduced in your script for the first time, the character’s name must be in ALL-CAPS, and generally, the character’s AGE or AGE RANGE should be placed in parenthesis to the right of it. For example:

TEACHER (30s) or  CARL DEWEY (21)

Any subsequent mention of that character should be typed in lower-case, except for the first letter of course, ie: Mother, Janitor, Henry, Hank, etc…

 

b. PEOPLE and SOUNDS

Any word that describes one or more people, such CROWD, PEOPLE, TEENAGERS, KIDS or ZOMBIES should always be placed in caps, as should any key props, and any words that describe sounds, such as GUN SHOT, CHALK DUST, BOING, ZING, or WHOOSH.

 

c. IMPORTANT ACTIONS

At certain times, it is also appropriate to capitalize ACTIONS for special emphasis, such as:

                                    His entire truck VANISHES.

Or:

                                     The panda bear RACES around the corner.

 

5) THE END

You made it! You’re all done!

Or, at least you will be one day—and when you get there, you’ll need to know how to wrap things up.

Screenplay formatting is a fairly simply affair as long as you stick to the guidelines above. Unlike in television scripts, you’ll never demarcate act breaks or say things like “END SCENE 3” in a film screenplay. Scenes simply start with a LOGLINE and finish when you write the following scene’s LOGLINE. You’ll go on this way, one scene after another, until your script is finished.

But wait! Haven’t you seen writers in movies type “THE END” on the last page of their scripts? Don’t you get any dang closure?!

Yes, you do! The words THE END are treated like a scene transition since technically you are transitioning from a SCENE into END CREDITS. For this reason, at the end of your very last scene, you should drop down TWO SPACES and justify RIGHT to type the words “THE END.” Sometimes, it is also appropriate to couple your sign-off with a visual transition, like so:

 

And that’s it… Slap a title page on that baby, and you're ready to share your baby with the world!

 

6) FORMATTING PECULIARITIES

There may be situations you find yourself in as a screenwriter in which the formatting rules above either do not seem to apply, or must be bent to meet a unique creative problem. While the parameters above cover 96% of everything you’ll ever need to know about screenplay formatting, there are definitely situations in which additional formatting knowledge may be required.

If you run into one of these situations, either post a question in the comments section of this article and we will do our best to address your query quickly, or you can check a commonly used reference book such as David Trottier’s The Screenwriter’s Bible. There may also be times when you notice that certain writers or writing instructors suggest slightly different formatting guides. Fear not. As long as you choose one of them, and are consistent throughout your script, no one will ultimately care whether you go with one small style peculiarity or another.

 

So--now that you know all the tricks of the trade, the final step is to WRITE! There may be a correct format, but there’s no correct creative process for pulling off your first screenplay. Read our Script-Tastic Screenwriting Method and structure guides, get your hands on as many published screenplays as possible, then—go for it! Keep your butt in your chair, and you’ll be amazed how quickly those pages start to fill up...

Something I Wish I'd Known As A New Writer: Independent Filmmaking is NOT the Straightest Path

 

I remember when I was new to screenwriting: My role models were the stars of the independent film scene, those brash outsiders who seemed to rise from obscurity to displace the Hollywood elite. Independent FilmMaker Magazine was founded in 1992, and immediately gave voice—and a narrative—to the ascension of this ‘new’ breed of filmmaker. Hell, I loved these guys. Every article I read reaffirmed their storyline: They were the outsiders, the kids working the mailrooms or the video-store counters who had decided to make their own damn movie—and had WON. Tarantino, the Cohen brothers, Todd Solondz, Edward Burns, Kevin Smith, Darren Aronofsky—everyone fit the script as a struggling-outsider who’d bet it all and now found themselves on top of the pile—and it was just the kind of script I wanted to believe. Because I had nothing. Because I was an outsider. Because I had no money, no contacts and no reason to believe that I would ever succeed at the OLD Hollywood game. But this new game I was reading about? Yes—that sounded right up my alley.

So I took a page from the playbook of these trailblazers, and started writing ‘independent movies’. Small films with kooky, off-beat characters and kooky, off-beat problems. My scripts were good—they got into film festivals and won awards. I was accepted to the UCLA graduate directing program, and spent several years there having my paradigm reaffirmed: ‘Indy’ films were the films that mattered—the uncommon, out-of-the-mainstream ‘auteur’ voices that would separate a filmmaker from all the ‘elite’ folk working on the Hollywood-inside. Again—I loved this narrative. It positioned talent over social-networks, and hard-work over a birthright-ascension to the best jobs in the industry.

The only problem was—the narrative was totally false.

Here, I’ll skip past the many ‘oh-wow’ moments that finally broke through my fantastical perception, and focus instead on what you need to know as a new, or new-ish writer. At some point I plan to write a book, and in it I’m sure a chapter will be devoted to the many chinks that finally brought down my armor—my deeply held faith (read: HOPE) that the indy-filmmaking game was the best game in town for industry outsiders. For the sake of this blog, though—I’ll just skip ahead to the meat and potatoes. Here is the REAL TRUTH, as I have come to realize it:

Independent filmmaking is for rich people, or people who know rich people.

Period.

Now—I’m not knocking rich people. Hell, nearly everyone in Hollywood—and everyone trying to break into Hollywood—is rich, nearly-rich, upper-middle-class or well-tucked into this community. And many of them are extremely talented. In fact, to be intelligent enough, comfortable enough around people, comfortable enough around money, and to have the time and drive necessary to succeed in this industry, you almost NEED to come from an elite background. It’s a rare cocktail of skills that people with moneyed lives are simply better setup to command. But let’s call a spade a spade. With very rare exceptions, the people who’ve achieved runaway success in the world of independent filmmaking have certainly had talent, drive, originality, chutzpah, luck—but guess what? They’ve also had money. A LOT of money. And if it wasn’t their own, it was a rich uncle’s, a business-associate of their fathers, culled from a prestigious circle of alumni, or somehow otherwise ‘rounded up’ from the types of friends and contacts that one accumulates in an upper-middle-class or upper-class childhood. Simply put—the indy-stars I had modeled my early career on may have been Hollywood-outsiders, but all had the silent purse-strings necessary to fund their rebellion. ‘Independent’ equals ‘independently financed,’ and one does not exist without the other. This, more than any lesson of my young career, is one I wish I’d realized and internalized a whole lot sooner.

So what am I saying? That people with no money and no way of raising money have no hope of breaking into filmmaking? That it’s all a wash, and the non-elite need not apply?

No, not at all.

But the path is through the front-door—not the back.

Turns out, after years of honing my ‘independent voice’ and planning a never-realized poor-guy-proves-himself ascension through the indy-film circuit, the REAL path to success was the one I’d exed-out long ago. Turns out, for people who truly have no money, and no way of raising the requisite tens-of-thousands-of-dollars necessary to jump-start an indy production—the way into Hollywood is the same way writers and directors have been breaking in for the last ninety years: COMMERCIAL FILM.

Yup, that’s right. Turns out, if you write movies that are marketable and attract wide audiences, producers will want to make them irregardless of your personal finances, and you, my friend, will have a career. Counter to all the hype, story-weaving, little-guy-takes-on-the world, David-and-Goliath-type reporting of the 1990s and early 2000s—independent filmmakers are NOT the underdogs. In fact, they are the opposite—they're the alphas. Independent filmmakers are the folks who don’t play by the rules because they don’t have to—they have the money to do things their own way.

So what’s the take-away on all of this? Well—here’s what I’d say: If you’re new to filmmaking and trying to figure out the best way forward, do some honest assessment. If you really, truly, deep-down-in-your-soul know that you will NEVER be able to raise a large amount of money from friends and relatives, then forget about feature independent filmmaking right now. Sure, there are exceptions—Tarantino and the creators of The Blair Witch Project probably fall into this category. But 99.8% of the time, those without genuine money-raising ability need not apply. If you really, truly, deep-down KNOW that your friends, relatives and personal contacts haven’t a dime to spare—then embrace your situation, and focus your efforts instead on writing the types of movies and TV shows that studios and establishment ‘indy’ production companies know will earn them money.

Go commercial now, and save that kooky mumblecore script, or offbeat sexual-awakening screenplay for a time later in life when you have more control, and ultimately—more dough.

Something I Wish I'd Known As A New Writer: Structure is Your Friend

 

You can always tell a new writer, or someone who hasn’t yet written a feature script, when meet them at a party or film festival mixer, and are treated to tirade on the worn-out, tired-old-Hollywood-script-format, that, they argue, has enslaved the film industry and turned countless creative folk into mindless button-pushing hacks. ‘Where is the originality?’ they’ll ask. ‘Hollywood just isn’t what it used to be!” These folks will tell you that when it comes to screenplay structure, ‘they just don’t buy it,’ and that they—personally—have chosen to take the creative high-ground, forging a new and shiny path toward writing-independence and bonified FREE THOUGHT. And they really believe it. Hell--they FEEL it. And they should! Why?

Because they’re NEWBIES. They’re very, very green, and they haven’t yet learned what it took THIS writer at least two mediocre early-screenplays to fully digest: Screenplay structure is your friend. It doesn’t exist to cuckold writers—it exists to make our jobs easier. And our scripts better. And our lives just a little bit more enjoyable.

Structure wasn’t created by producers then heaved upon us—it was crafted by veteran screenwriters as a means of sharing with new writers what they WERE ALREADY DOING and what WAS ALREADY WORKING. There’s a misconception out there that learning screenplay structure will turn us all into producers of the SAME KINDS OF FILMS—namely, Hollywood blockbusters like Twister or Armageddon. Well, guess what? Woody Allen, Charlie Kaufman, Todd Solondz and Diablo Cody all use standard screenplay format—just like J.J. Abrams and Aaron Sorkin. You can argue that some do it better than others, and we all have different tastes. But that’s where the creativity comes in—in HOW use the structural guidelines while avoiding predictability and cliché. Screenplay structure is not an obstacle, it’s a shortcut. And the sooner you internalize that fact, the sooner you will be off and running.