All right. This is the big moment, the one you've been losing sleep over: the Formatting of the Stage Play. After all that tossing, turning, nail-biting, and solemn mirror-gazing, we're not sure how to break this to you, but....it's fairly simple.

You know what a play is, and maybe you‘ve seen published versions before in school but for the purposes of writing it looks a little different.

Script formatting is standardized to help those who will be considering it for production or publication, and to help the actors, directors, and designers. Generally a page of a play means a minute to a minute and a half of production.

Remember, the most important thing during April is to get your scripts written. If your formatting isn’t perfect, don’t worry about it. That is what May is for!

ACTS & SCENES

Acts and scene breaks—Plays are often broken into acts, which are large chunks of the play often containing multiple scenes. A full-length play can have 1 to 5 acts. Act breaks are dictated by plot like our beginning, middle, and end. Scene breaks are usually dictated by production (change of location, time elapses, etc.).

Act and scene designations should only appear at the top, centered in ALL CAPS on the first page of each act or scene, like this:

(This means Act One, Scene 2)

Acts are usually designated with Roman numerals or spelled out: Act II, Act Three

Arabic numeral designations are used for scenes: Scene 2, Scene 3, etc.

Each Scene should start on a new page. Acts often have page dividers.

STAGE DIRECTIONS

A few things to remember:

These start the play or act and yes, they are pushed halfway over to the right side of the page. This is where you give the basics of where and when this particular scene is set and what is happening as the lights come up and perhaps what has happened between the scenes as it applies to what is on the stage at that time, like this:

Example: Scene Directions

2.) Staging Directions

These describe what happens on stage during the scene. Entrances, exits, new characters, fights, light changes and being chased by a bear:

Example: Staging Directions

3.) Character Stage Directions

These are always brief and fit right under the character tag, relating to that character. These types of directions give a clue to the style of the line. Often they are line directions such as "waving him off" or "sing-song" or "whispering to ROBERT". These should be used sparingly, as they are regarded as directorial. They are needed only when a reader wouldn't understand what was going on without them:

Example: Character Directions

DIALOGUE:

Character Tags:
Character tags are indented at about 4". You can center them, but most writers find it easier to set a single tab for the Character Tag. The dialogue itself is flush left.

Use all capital letters to identify the character speaking. You can use their full name or a shorter version such as a first name or last name as long as it's unique within your draft, like so:

Example: Character Tags

THE GLOBAL SETTINGS:

Margins
Top: 1.0"
Bottom 1.0 - 1.5"
Left 1.5 (scripts are 3 hole punched so leave more room on the left)
Right 1.0"

Headers
Upper right corner—start on the first page of dialogue—use a roman numeral for the act and then the page number. Start numbering over with each act. Each act is number consecutively through the end of the act: i.e. I-1, I-2, etc. If your play has only one act, then don't worry about it.

Footers
Place the name of the play in the lower left of the footer. You can put your name there too, just keep it all on one line. Some playwriting competitions like to read plays without any info about the playwright appearing on the pages, so be sure to check submission guidelines before printing it out.

SOME OTHER NOTES:

You do not need to use all caps for character names when used in dialogue by the other characters, only in the stage directions.

If a character is interrupted, it's common to use a dash to represent where they were cut off. If a character trails off in their dialogue, an ellipsis follows the last intelligible bit of their dialogue.

If a character is only heard and not seen, either V.O. for Voice Over or O.S. for Off Stage is used in parenthesis after the character tag on the same line.

If a character is singing, as in a musical, just put the lyrics of the song as dialogue in italics. You can keep the line breaks (as in poetry) for the lyrics.

To denote a break in the action most writers use either "Pause" or "A beat" or "Silence". They're used sparingly, as the actors and directors will likely figure out where these go on their own, but it can be a clue to the reader that something changed in that moment. They can appear as either Staging Directions or Character Stage Directions.