What are Screenplays?

Series Summary

A Screenplay is the blueprint for a movie or television show which contains the script as well as the directions and descriptions of what is happening in the movie. It is the backbone of every movie and can be an adaptation of a novel or short story. The major components of most screenplays are the characters, what the characters say, or dialog, and what the characters are doing, or actions. They do not usually involve any emotion related descriptions, as that is something visual that will be created by the actors and director.

In this free video series, our expert screen writer Tony Ramirez will show you how to write a screenplay. You will get easy to follow, step-by-step instructions on how to create the cover page, what type of font to use and how to number your pages. You will also get tips on how to write headings, dialog and action lines. If you are interested in writing a screenplay but do not know where to start, let our expert show you how to get started on this fun and exciting career choice.

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Tony Ramirez from Tampa Florida, and on behalf of expert village, this is how to write a screenplay. Let's get started. Chapter one: Screenwriting 101. So, you want to write a screenplay. This is the basic thing that you're going to want to follow to write your own screenplay. There's several ways to do it. You have the old fashioned writing it by hand, or if you're still using a type writer, you can go ahead and type it out, if you're using a word processing software such as Word Perfect or Microsoft Word, you can use those as well. The one thing that you are going to have to remember is the formatting of how a script is written. This is something throughout the next couple of chapters, hopefully I'll be able to help you understand... the spacing of things, the order of things, how things are supposed to be written out when writing a screenplay. These are the main things you're going to have to follow; everything has a format and it has to look exactly like this. So again, hopefully, the following chapters will help you out. My suggestion is to go out and get yourself software. This one I purchased a few years ago; it is the Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000. They're up to version six now, they're not number 2000 anymore. Thi program cost $299 a few years ago; I spent that because I was making some decent money while I was trying to make all these short films, commercials and things like that. There's also Final Draft, which is another company that makes screenwriting software. Those now are just over $200 as well. But the best part if you're listening to this and you're remembering this and you're going to be doing stuff is that there is a website out there called celtx.com. This is a free, yes free, free, free, free, screenwriting software. This software is very powerful, it works perfectly, it's just as good as this $300 one or the $200 and $300 Final Draft ones, so go out and get that one. Especially, if you're just going to test the waters and you want to just start writing stuff out. But the main thing is when you're using these softwares, they'll do almost everything for you. When you're writing your action scripting, your action lines, your heading, your dialog, your characters, It'll actually space things exactly how they're supposedto be. So that's why you want to use these and not Microsoft Word. And have to go back and try to format everything and move your margins over, because that can be a real pain in the butt. So go out and either invest in something really fancy, go to that website and download it for free, install it in your computer, play around, learn your characters, develope your characters, develope your story, write your script, print it out in these software programs, and you're pretty much ready to go. So good luck in Hollywood! "