Formating a Play

Video Transcript

"In this clip we're going to talk about how to format your play. Now you might want to get a computer program that will do that, or you might just want to use your word processor. If you've written a lot of screenplays, the form might be very familiar to you. On the other hand, if you've been in plays, this is more what you may be used to which is the published version of a play. But actually you want to make sure you use the official version, which we'll go over in just a second. For proper play form, you want use 8 1/2 by 11 white paper with a type of Courier 12, only. Put the title in all caps, COLOR MY HEART, skip two spaces, then put an underscore the exact length of the title. Skip another two spaces, a play in two acts or a play in one act, skip another space, by, another space and then put your name. Now you'll go down to the right. Don't put your name again, but go ahead and put your contact phones, address, and email address. Against the left margin you want to put copyright and the date. Go ahead and do that even though you haven't submitted the proper copyright forms quite yet. Just put the date that you finished this play. Don't number your title page or the following page which will be the dramatis personae page, or cast of characters. I actually prefer cast of characters myself. The margin setup is very easy to remember -it's an inch all the way around, but add an extra half inch on the left to make room for the three-hole punch. Now the character names will line up along the left. Underline those names and put a colon. The characters will be listed in starring order, not necessarily order of appearance. Again, you don't want to number this cast of characters page. This is the page that begins your play. This is the first numbered page. You want to put the number in the upper right. The first number is the act number, which will be in Roman numerals, then put a dash, then the scene number, dash and the page number. A new act or scene will begin a new page. You want to indent four inches from the left. Put ACT in all caps, underline it, then skip two spaces and put Scene in upper and lowercase. Next comes setting and at rise against the left margin. You might want to put those in a table in your word processing program. Setting is for the physical layout of the stage whereas at rise is the situation, what's happening as the play begins. In this case, the character Marissa is sitting at the couch, carefully signing a letter. You'll put the character name in all caps, except when it's a part of the dialog, someone is talking about Marissa, then obviously it wouldn't be capitalized. But in the stage directions, and of course the name above the dialog showing that they're speaking, that's all caps. You want to make sure after their character name it goes right into the dialog without any spaces. Now the dialog will run the entire length from margin to margin, there's no reason to right-justify it. Don't hyphenate words unless they have a natural hyphen in them. Stage direction should only run 2 1/2 inches, no more. Now as you can see here with Marissa's lines, she's just finished signing the letter, and she says, "Love, Miss Anonymous." Then her stage directions come with no space, then she has one more line, then we have another space because the stage directions are separate and not within dialog. In this sample the dialog is single-spaced. I have seen some official playwright forms where it's double-spaced, so check with the venue you're submitting it to for the exact form they want this in. Again, we have the number in the upper right. Roman numeral I for act one, dash, scene one, then page five. Here's the end of the scene. After the final line we skip a space, have blackout in parentheses and all caps, skip another space, end of scene in parentheses, also in all caps. This is the official form, but remember if you're going to be submitting to theater companies, publishers or competitions, be sure to find out their individual rules because everyone might be very slightly different and you've got to make sure that you do exactly as they say in terms of formatting. You might want to get yourself a little guide just for hand reference, but basically what we showed you is official play format."