FORMATTING YOUR SPEC SCRIPT WHILE SOCIAL DISTANCING: A PRIMER - PART 3

Here is part 3 in our ongoing series to help you format your spec script. While fellowship season is also quarantine season, we will try to post a few examples once a week of how some popular shows approach format.

Our plan is to cover as many shows as possible. We’re working through the Warner Brothers Television Workshop’s List of Accepted Shows for 2020. If we haven’t covered the show you’re spec-ing, or you have additional, more targeted questions, please send us an e-mail at library@wgfoundation.org.

While we cannot send you scripts in their entirety (We are not the copyright owners and do not have the right to distribute scripts beyond the physical library), we can dig through the scripts and try to get you the info you need. Also, where possible, we’ll try to link to where award-nominated scripts and early drafts of pilots are available online.

BOB’S BURGERS (FOX)

Average page count: roughly 60

Average scene count: 30

Broken into acts? Yes, 4. (Each act is around 11-17 pages)

Other things to consider:

• Act breaks are formatted like ACT THREE (or whatever act it is) centered, bolded and underlined at the top of the page, then at the end of the act there's usually a FADE OUT. bolded on the right side followed by END OF ACT THREE centered, bolded and underlined. 

• Dialogue is all double spaced, just like a multi-cam sitcom. (And don't worry about numbering it like you see in some of these examples).

• Scene headings are bolded and there's no extra spacing between dialogue and description. Notice that occasionally in the scene heads, they write in establishing shots.

• Sometimes there's an end credits sequence or a song. We didn't notice any special formatting for those scenes, but occasionally a script will include song lyrics appended at the end.

DEAD TO ME (Netflix)

Average page count: 30-33

Average scene count: 19-25

Broken into acts? No

Other things to consider:

• The key to remember with Dead to Me is SIMPLICITY. It's a short page count and there really aren't that many scenes because it's a lot of dialogue-centric, heart-to-heart scenes and not all that many locations. Like most great scripts, there's a lot of white space because there's not a lot of description. It's mostly dialogue. 

• There isn't a "teaser" so to speak, but on page 2-3 (usually after the first scene), the writers include TITLE: DEAD TO ME in bold on the left side of the page. 

• The opening of each episode isn't formatted in any specific way. It's much like reading the beginning of a feature screenplay.

• We’re also including a screenshot of a last page, so you can see how an episode ending is formatted.

POWER (STARZ)

Average page count: 56

Average scene count: 58

Broken into acts? No.

Other things to consider:

• Scene headings are in bold and underlined.

• Dialogue in Spanish is written in bold.

Read an early draft of the Power pilot here.

THE ROOKIE (ABC)

Average script page count: 53

Average scene count: 56

Broken into acts? Yes, 6. (Average act length 7-10 pages)

Other things to consider:

• Scene headings are underlined.

• Act breaks are formatted like ACT THREE (or whatever act it is) centered and underlined at the top of the page, then when it’s over: END OF ACT THREE, centered and underlined.

• After the first scene, the writers insert a title card on the right, e.g — TITLE CARD: THE ROOKIE.

• Scripts also tend to hold on characters’ reactions at the end of scenes and acts.

Read an early draft of The Rookie pilot here.

RUSSIAN DOLL (Netflix)

Average page count: 31

Average scene count: 40

Broken into acts? No

Other things to consider:

• Due to the surreal nature of the content, sometimes the writers take more than 3-5 lines in their description paragraphs to really ensure we SEE what’s going on. They’ll also include explanations of certain concepts and characters feelings.

• When a character resets, the writers often specify what time it is.

• Episodes end simply with “END OF EPISODE.” in all capital letters on the ride side of the page.

Read Emmy-nominated episodes of Russian Doll here.

YOUNGER (TV Land)

Average page count: 29

Average scene count: 26-31

Broken into acts? Yes, 4. (Average act length is 8 pages or so)

Other things to consider:

• Acts are formatted with roman numerals, e.g. - ACT I, ACT II. When acts begin, ACT III is centered, bolded and underlined in the center of the page. When acts end, it’s END ACT III (also centered, bolded and underlined).

• Snappy, fun dialogue, throughout, but also plenty of dramatic moments to match, particularly at act conclusions. The show also has nice tidbits of information about the publishing industry.

• Scripts are written pretty standardly. The only unique formatting seems to be the texting in the show.

Stay tuned for more formatting advice on additional shows next week!

Watch: Writing the Screenplay Zoom Panel

On March 26, we hosted screenwriters Robert Nelson Jacobs (Chocolat, The Shipping News), Dan Petrie, Jr. (Beverly Hills Cop, Toy Soldiers), and Tom Schulman (Dead Poets Society, What About Bob?) for an online discussion on writing screenplays. Listen to this discussion to hear about each writer’s screenplay essentials, ways to approach outlining, and developing good protagonists and antagonists.

NOTE: Several technical difficulties towards the end of the stream caused feedback issues and distorted excerpts of the audio. We apologize for the technical difficulties and are working to improve our recordings for the future.

Things To Do At Home: Organize Your Personal Archive

WGF Archivist Hilary Swett shares some thoughts about how to be fortuitously productive.

The WGF staff is working from home, just like everyone else. And if you're anything like me, you are staring at that pile/corner/room full of important/rare/special papers, creative work, mementos or family history that you've been meaning to organize. Or perhaps it's your computer desktop or a folder where you keep your digital life, your “stuff to be filed.”

I am an archivist. One of the things I do is organize writers’ stuff that has been donated to the WGF Library and Archive. But even I fall victim to having these piles of stuff in my own life. I'm here to encourage you that now is the time to tackle it! There is no better time than when you are basically FORCED to be inside. Once you're done streaming that show you've been meaning to watch for three years, get your favorite beverage, put on some tunes and do some spring cleaning. Here are a few pro tips to get your started.

Too much paper got you down?

Approach the project like an archivist.

• Treat it like a part of your job. Don't think of getting organized as an extraneous chore. In the business of being you, you have to maintain your own archive. Know that it's worth it. As a writer, you have lots of research and drafts and variations of your work. Make sure you are sending people what you mean to send and saving what you mean to save.

• Break your task into manageable chunks. In archival work, to keep from being overwhelmed by stuff, we take an entire writer's collection and put things into buckets. We break it into smaller and smaller chunks until it's in a state that we are comfortable with long term. This applies to organizing physical material like papers and memorabilia, as well as digital material like photos and even browser bookmarks.

  Buckets can be based on date, type of items, project-based, whatever you want. Devote 15 minutes a day to tidy up files for just one of your projects or one set of vacation pictures and you'll make great progress.

• Stay focused. Resist the urge to walk down memory lane.

• Treat any effort as a productive one. Doing anything is better than doing nothing! Looking through piles, deciding what your buckets are, labeling things, throwing stuff out, renaming files, organizing folders on your hard drive...it all counts in the end.

At the WGF, we store scripts in folders and toss out brads and paperclips.

• Only focus on stuff that has long term value to you. In archival work, we “appraise” records and only keep what has long term value within our context. This will be different for every person but deciding what to discard is an important part of the process. Aim for Marie Kondo-style decluttering rather than the warehouse in the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

• Preserve your materials. Common sense applies to preserving paper and analog media – keep the material in a dark, stable, temperature and humidity controlled environment. Protect from agents of deterioration like chemicals, pests, sun and rain. Storage indoors is better than outside in a shed. You generally don't need to purchase special boxes and folders but they are available if you want.

• Take active steps to manage important digital files. Digital files are not going to last forever. They don’t have long term stability like paper and you don't know what you will be able to open and read in the future.

Special considerations for digital file management:

• Digital files can become unreadable given a long enough time span. For example, Final Draft 11 is currently backwards compatible to earlier versions down to release 5 but the file has to be migrated to the newer version. And that's just at this moment in time. Your important digital files demand long term management and periodic “migration” from one file type to another, newer file type. This is where appraisal becomes important.

• Documents look different depending on what operating system, computer or program is used to open them. PDF is a very stable format and is ubiquitous, whether the document is created from Final Draft or Word or Google Docs or whatever. The chances are high that computers will render the file true to how you originally created it.

• Impose some hierarchical structure to your digital folders, just as you would paper.

• Create descriptive, consistent filenames based on content, instead of the default, mysterious IMG_9053.jpg. You should be able to guess what a file is without opening it. Avoid special characters. Underscores are useful as spacers.

• You could always scan/digitize paper, photos, movies, etc. as a way of preserving the content. There is lots of information available online for how to do that. The National Archives is a good place to start.

  Old analog recordings and files from defunct computers, hard drives, CDs, DVDs, thumb drives etc. could potentially be salvaged and put into a usable format - by you or by a professional vendor.

• Make copies and keep them in different geographic locations. We've all had the dreaded hard drive crash. Protect yourself so you can recover. Your laptop has the original material. The cloud can be your backup or use an external drive. Even better is an external drive that you keep in a different location from your home or office.

• Write down decisions or explanations of things that will be helpful to others or your future self. This can be on paper or saved as a digital text file in the relevant folder(s).

Much more information and strategies can be found online. Here are just a few web resources to inspire you on your journey. Now open a bottle of wine and get organizing! You can always email me at hswett@wgfoundation.org for quick guidance.

Getting Started

How to Begin a Personal Archiving Project

Caring for different types of material

Library of Congress Preservation Tips

The Atlantic: Taking Care of Your Personal Archive

The New York Times: Advice on How to Preserve Photos, Records, and Videos

NYT: Tips on Archival Family History, Part 1

NYT: Tips on Preserving Family Films and Photos

NYT: Tips on Archiving Family History, Part 3

Family Tree Magazine: How to Organize Your Family Archive

Digital Preservation

Library of Congress: Personal Archiving

University of Michigan Libraries: Preservation Planning

FORMATTING YOUR SPEC SCRIPT WHILE SOCIAL DISTANCING: A PRIMER - PART 2

One thing is certain right now — you can’t go anywhere, so what better time than this moment to work on submission materials for a TV writing program or fellowship (At your own pace, of course. It’s important to factor in some time for self-reflection, petting your cat, and staring at walls).

We know the WGF Library and our trove of current TV scripts are typically an invaluable resource to those writing spec episodes, so while fellowship season is also quarantine season, we will try to post a few examples once a week of how some popular shows approach format.

We hope this information gives you what you need to format your spec. Our plan is to cover as many shows as possible, so if you don’t yet see the show you’re spec-ing, check our previous posts or send us an e-mail at library@wgfoundation.org. Even when we’re not all at home, you can e-mail us here with formatting and other questions.

While we cannot send you scripts in their entirety (We are not the copyright owners and do not have the right to distribute scripts beyond the physical library), we can dig through the scripts and try to get you the info you need. Also, where possible, we’ll try to link to where award-nominated scripts and early drafts of pilots are available online.

ATLANTA (FX)

Average page count: 28

Average number of scenes per script: 24 (Although for this particular show, it varies widely)

Broken into acts ? No

Other things to consider:

• Sometimes Atlanta scripts contain a title card, following by what song is heard on screen, written out [In brackets.] In scripts that contain a title card, it typically falls between page 3 and page 7. Including this in your script with a song that really fits would illustrate how well you know the show’s tone.

• In the description, the writers generally make reference to specific songs that are playing in the background, listing the artist and song title.

• When new characters appear on screen, their names are always CAPITALIZED. Any TEXT THAT APPEARS ON SCREEN is often capitalized and bolded.

• The writers capitalize SOUNDS and ITEMS that they want to draw your attention to.

Find the pilot and some award-nominated scripts from Atlanta here.

EVIL (CBS)

The average page count: roughly 54

Average number of scenes per script: 43-49

Broken into acts? Yes, scripts include one very long teaser (16-20 pages long) and 4 additional acts. The other acts range from about 5-10 pages. 

Scripts begin with TEASER at the top, centered, bolded, in all caps and underlined. The teaser ends with "END OF TEASER" also centered, bolded, in all caps and underlined. Act breaks are formatted exactly the same. ACT ONE (or whatever act it is), centered at the top of the page in bold and underlined, then END OF ACT ONE. 

Other things to consider:

• Scene headings are in bold

• Description is very sparse and pages consist mostly of dialogue with description rarely going over one line (Save for when the writers are establishing visually and auditorily what's going on either at the beginning of a scene or in moments that don't have a lot of dialogue). 

• The writers use a lot of underlining and bold to put emphasis on certain things in the description

• SOUND EFFECTS are almost always written in capital letters

• Characters names are often written out first and last name.

Read an early draft of the Evil pilot here.

THE GOOD DOCTOR (ABC)

Average page count: 55.

Average number of scenes per script: 50, but they can range anywhere from 45 to 55.

Broken into acts? Yes, 6. The first act is typically the longest, averaging about 16 pages. The rest of the acts are usually between 6-9 pages.

Other things to consider:

• Opening credits title card typically occur around page 6. It’s usually preceded by a scene transition and the words OPENING CREDITS are bolded, capitalized and centered.

• Good Doctor scripts are very clean and direct without a lot of special formatting.

• The thing to remember when writing a Good Doctor spec is that the show is procedural in nature and usually involves solving a medical case-of-the-week.

Read an early draft of the pilot for The Good Doctor here.

LEGACIES (THE CW)

Average page count: 40-43 pages

Average number of scenes: 40

Broken into acts? Yes, 6. Each act is about 6 to 10 pages.

• Usually around page 2, the writers cue the opening title by putting TITLE CARD in bold on the left side of the page, then continuing right along with the next scene or shot on the next line.

• Act breaks are formatted with ACT ONE (or whatever it is) at the top of the page, underlined and centered. Act endings are formatted END OF ACT THREE (or what ever act it is), also centered and underlined.

• In the following excerpt, notice Hope’s voice-over as well as formatting of text seen on a sign, then text seen as students are writing:

SUPERSTORE (NBC)

Average page count: At least in the first season, which is what we have in the library, it’s very rare to see a Superstore script over 34 pages or under 33.

Average scene count: 10-20

Broken into acts? Yes, 4 and everything is very tight. 

Other things to consider:

• Scripts open with a 2-3 page cold open. First page begins with COLD OPEN centered, underlined, in bold, then ends with MAIN TITLES also centered, underlined and in bold on page 2 or 3. 

• Act breaks are formatted -- ACT ONE centered, underlined and bold; END OF ACT ONE same format. Act breaks often include a FADE OUT. in all caps, underlined on the right hand side, just preceding the end of an act. 

• After the cold open, the first act runs from about page 4 to page 11. The second act runs from page 12 to page 19. The third act runs from page 20 o 29. And the fourth act runs from 30 to 33 or 34. This seems to be how they keep their page count consistent. 

• Episode endings: END OF EPISODE, centered, underlined and bold just like an act break. 

• All scene headings are underlined.

Watch: Writing for One-Hour TV Dramas Zoom Panel

On March 23, we hosted our first-ever Zoom panel with TV writers/producers Alfredo Barrios, Jr. (Magnum P.I., Burn Notice) and Y. Shireen Razack (New Amsterdam, Shadowhunters) for a discussion on writing for one-hour dramas. The discussion centered around how they stay productive while working at home, writing for network TV, and their tips for pitching and getting samples noticed.

Due to compression from recording a livestream, there are a few sync and distortion issues with our stream. As an alternative, we also have the discussion available as an audio-only format below!