Write your script

A script is not literature. It is a set of instructions for the people making the film, describing only what the audience will see and hear. If it cannot be seen or heard, it does not belong in a script.

One page is roughly one minute

This is the single most useful fact in screenwriting. Properly formatted, a page of script runs about a minute on screen. A five minute film is about five pages.

That number is smaller than most people expect, and it is why short films have to be ruthless. Five pages is not much room. Everything in it has to be doing a job.

The format

Script format exists so that a stranger can read your script and immediately know where they are, who is speaking and what they can see. You only need four things.

INT. KITCHEN - DAY

Cramped. Washing up piled by the sink. SAM (20s) sits
at the table, coat still on, staring at an envelope.

The kettle clicks off. Sam does not move.

                    SAM
          I'm not opening it.

                    DEV (O.S.)
          You've been not opening it for
          a week.

• Scene heading. INT. for inside, EXT. for outside, then where, then DAY or NIGHT. New location or new time means a new heading.
• Action. Present tense, only what a camera could record. A character's name is in CAPITALS the first time they appear.
• Character name, centred, above their dialogue.
• Dialogue, indented underneath. (O.S.) means off screen — heard but not seen.

Write the last scene first

If you know where you are going, everything else gets easier. Write the final moment — the image you want people left with — before you write anything else. Then work out what has to happen for that moment to land.

Cut the first minute

First drafts almost always begin too early. Somebody arrives, greets somebody, sits down, makes a drink, and eventually the film starts. Delete all of that. Start as late into the scene as you possibly can — ideally at the moment something is already going wrong.

The same applies at the end. Once the audience understands, stop. You do not need the character to walk out of shot.

Dialogue that sounds like people

• People do not answer the question they were asked. Real conversation is full of deflection. Use it.
• Say it out loud. If you stumble reading it, an actor will too. This is the fastest fix in writing.
• Cut every line that only gives information. If a line exists to tell the audience something, find a way to show it instead.
• Let people interrupt. Nobody waits politely for their turn.
• Silence is dialogue. The pause before an answer often says more than the answer.

Read it to somebody

Before you shoot anything, read the script out loud to one person who will be honest with you. Watch their face rather than the page. You will know within thirty seconds which parts are working.

Ask them one question afterwards: what do you think it was about? If the answer surprises you, that is useful information about what you actually wrote.