Why Script Formatting Matters
Any time you talk formatting with screenwriters, you’ll inevitably run into a contingent of creatives that lament the rigid structure of scripts and yearn for the industry to look beyond the technical to focus on story alone. But there are a few good reasons the folks reading your script care if you took the time to do things properly.
1. Formatting Is A Shortcut For Identifying Amateurs
Improper formatting is the quickest and most efficient way to spot an amateur writer. Industry professionals are reading scripts every single day, so when they receive one that doesn’t follow industry-standard formatting, it sticks out like a sore thumb. It sets itself apart from the professional scripts they are used to working with in all of the wrong ways. It screams, “This script was written by an amateur!”
You might feel like an amateur. You might even be an amateur by definition. But in this industry professionals are defined by their actions. Many screenwriters toil away for a decade or more before they are signed or sell their first script, but hardly anyone would still consider them an amateur after a few years. Writing is their career — everything else is just their day job. Take writing seriously enough to get the little things right, like formatting, and people will start to take you seriously as a writer.
2. Film And Television Are Highly Collaborative
The next movie you see, stick around through the credits. According to research from Stephen Follows, the top 1,000 films between 1994 and 2013 had an average of 588 crew credits. Now consider how many of those use a script to guide their work.
Screenwriting requires a rigid format to allow any of those hundreds of workers to pick up a script page and know what’s going on, who’s in the scene, where it’s set, what props are needed, what costuming is required, and on and on.
You have to follow the industry-standard format because basically, the entire industry depends on it. Formatting is vital to hundreds of jobs on a film and tens of thousands in the industry at large. It’s a bit selfish to ask all of these people to look past your formatting errors or make someone’s assistant tweak all your formatting because you think your story is worth it. Save the production designer and hundreds of others the headache and get it right on the page.
3. Effortless Reading Allows For More Focus On The Story
When you spend enough time talking with development execs and representation, you’ll start to hear the same phrase used by a large number of them. They’ll talk about some form of a “bump” in a story: bumping into, bumping up against, hitting a bump, etc. It often refers to something they can’t exactly articulate, but just know from experience is hindering the story and read. Your job as a writer is to eliminate those bumps because every bump in the read distracts or pulls the reader out of your story.
Imagine you’re out to dinner with friends telling your best story. Everyone around the table leans forward in their seat, enraptured by the tale. And the waiter comes to take your order. The moment is gone. They probably want to hear the end of the story, but it’ll never have the impact it could have. That’s what bumps in your screenplay do.
Improper formatting isn’t just a bump. It’s a hill, or sometimes even a mountain because bad formatting reminds the reader that they are reading words on a page, not just experiencing a story. Formatting mistakes remind them of the medium. They prevent them from envisioning your completed film or show and get them thinking about all of the development and production your project needs. Perfect formatting makes the medium fall away and all that’s left for the reader to focus on is your great story.
The old saying goes, “learn the rules, so you can break them.” Screenwriting follows that maxim. Study the proper industry format, and you’ll know when breaking it will actually help your read, rather than hinder it. There are tons of books and articles on formatting to learn from or stay tuned here as I’ll be putting together an in-depth series on formatting soon.
