Resources

There is a wealth of knowledge out there, and if you can read all the books available, you will no doubt either be confused, over saturated or perhaps wiser. For those new to this discipline, here are my suggested books and sites.

Book - "Story" by Robert McKee.
Book - "Save the Cat!" by Blake Snyder.
Book - "Poetics" by Aristotle.
Book - "Making a Good Script Great" by Linda Seger.
Book - "The Art of Dramatic Writing" by Lajos Egri.
Book - "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell.
Masterclass - "Screenwriting" with Aaron Sorkin.
Masterclass - "Art of Storytelling" with Neil Gaiman.
Masterclass - "Dramatic Writing" with David Mamet.
Software - Final Draft, industry standard screenwriting program.
Software - Story Planner, to capture your screenplay ideas and plan. Apps available for your Apple devices.
Website - scriptmailer.com Query letter and industry database service
Website - storymastery.com from Michael Hauge
Website - screencraft.org consultancy and competition platform
Website - blcklst.com hosts screenplays

Materials wise, it is great to always be armed with a pen or pencil and a notebook of some kind to write in. Although I also have a Dictaphone for recording ideas, it is great to get into the habit of writing on paper and practicing the art by observing the world around you.

Set this up as a daily exercise, as I cover in my blog post here.

Standard Page Format

Screenplay documents for TV and Film conform to specific page placement of their elements. Luckily screenwriting software, like Final Draft, Highland, to name a few, manage this task for you. However, if you were to use a word processing program, these are the page settings and text element measurements you would need for a US Letter page size:

Font set to Courier 12-point.
Left page margin - 1.5 inch.
Right page margin - 1 inch.
Top and bottom page margins - 1 inch.
Page numbering at top right - half inch from top, right flushed with a period, beginning from the 2nd page of your screenplay (NOTE: Title Page is not part of the numbering - effectively it's page 0).
Scene Headings (Slugs - in ALL CAPS) and Action Description are left aligned.
Character Names (ALL CAPS) - 3.7 inches from left edge.
Parentheticals (Wrylies) - 3.1 inches from left edge.
Dialogue - 2.5 inches from left edge, and be no longer than 3 inches for each line.

If you write your screenplay using a word processor, it will be imported into Final Draft as part of the 'Formatting & Basic Editorial' service (SP001) and the expected page layout will be put in place. You will receive a properly set Final Draft file and PDF file of your screenplay.