Week Three: What Makes a Script a Script

Well, here we are. Two weeks down and only two more to go before the official start to Script Frenzy. You are more than halfway there.

Congratulations!

This week, we're going to learn about the four main ingredients that make up a script: dialogue, character names, action, and description. When you write a short story or a novel, you are allowed to just tell the reader things about your characters and plot. In a script, on the other hand, you have to show an audience who your characters are and move the plot forward using these four ingredients only. That means you can only write what an audience can hear (dialogue) and what they can see (action and description).

Dialogue and Character Names

Dialogue is what happens when characters speak to one another, and your script is going to be filled with these meaningful exchanges.

Above each line of dialogue is a character’s name, which should always be written in ALL CAPS and centered above the dialogue like so:

We experience dialogue all the time in our everyday lives. A common conversation in real life might sound something like this:

"Hey, dude. How are you?"
"I'm really good. Thanks for asking. And you?"
"Good, thanks."

Of course, this kind of dialogue is important to everyday life. In fact, most of our daily interactions depend on these kinds of exchanges. If we didn't say "hello" and ask people how they are doing, we might lose a lot of friends, and fast. But in a script, long scenes of this kind of realistic dialogue end up being mind-numbingly dull. It's tricky: audience members actually want to hear unrealistic dialogue when they go to a movie or watch TV. They want to hear interesting characters make exciting declarations, challenge each other, improvise hilarious wisecracks, or reveal the whereabouts of the portal to the fifth dimension.

Dialogue in a script should do one, if not both, of the following:

1. Reveal characters’ relationships to one another.
2. Move the plot forward.

Exercise
Read examples of character-revealing and plot moving-dialogue and practice writing your own, in this "Writing Awesome Dialogue" worksheet.

Action and Description

Now that you know a lot about dialogue and you know how to format character names, we’ll move on to talk about the other two important ingredients in a script, the action and description. If dialogue in a script is what’s heard, action and description are what’s seen. Basically, action and description make up everything in a script that is not dialogue.

Facts about Action and Description:

1. Action is what your characters are doing in a scene.
2. Description adds details to a script about a scene’s location, important props within a scene, and the time in which a scene takes place.
3. In a stage play, action and description are referred to more generally as stage directions.
4. Action and description are always written in the present tense.
5. You can only write about what you can see. That means you can’t write about what a character is feeling or thinking. You can only describe what he or she looks like from the outside.
6. Scriptwriters should be selective in writing action and description. You should only describe what a director/artist needs to know in order to make your script come to life.
7. Character names within action are always written in ALL CAPS.
8. Important props, sound effects, and actions in a screenplay are often also written in ALL CAPS.

Exercise
Learn more about formatting action and description, and practice writing some for your own script, in the following "Lights, Camera, Action!" worksheet.

When you're finished, you'll be ready to move on to the final week of the Boot Camp.