Put Your Best Foot Forward, Please!
Yeah, so your eyes probably glazed over when you read that headline. Formatting… ugh… so boring! Right?
Unfortunately, it’s also important. Because it’s the first thing a reader will notice when they open your file. If the formatting is off, you’ll immediately be judged as an amateur, and it will dim (or kill) the chances of being taken seriously or getting your foot in the door –– no matter how brilliant your story is.
So, whether this stuff is in your comfort zone or not, it’s worth spending the time to up your format game.
Here are some of the common formatting mistakes we’ve been noticing:
O.S. VERSUS V.O. (and O.C.)
O. S. stands for OFF SCREEN. V.O. stands for VOICEOVER. O.C. stands for OFF-CAMERA and means the same as O.S. When a character speaks, but we can’t see him in the shot, he is considered off-screen, or O.S. Note that the O.S. (as well as V.O.) goes in parenthesis to the RIGHT of the speaker’s name. It does not go UNDER the character’s name.
V.O., or VOICEOVER, is used when a character is narrating from off-screen—for example, Deckard’s much-reviled voiceover from “Blade Runner.” Like O.S., the V.O. designation goes to the right of the speaker’s name. V.O. can also be used when a character is narrating a scene that he or she is in and commenting on it, such as in Dexter. To summarize: V.O. is only for voice-overs. O.S. is for anything you hear where the speaker is off-screen but NOT doing a voice-over.
PARENTHETICALS
“Parentheticals” (aka “wrylies”) are the line-reading cues. They go under the speaker’s name and above the dialogue. It should be used to indicate to whom a character is speaking, if it’s not already obvious, OR occasionally to add a new dimension to the line reading not clear from the line itself. Sarcasm is a great example–often it doesn’t “read” as such, and the writer might want to point it out.
Parentheticals can also be used mid-dialogue to indicate a pause (beat) or to clarify who the character is now addressing. For example, when a character takes a pause to gather their thoughts or switches topics abruptly as well as when the character suddenly addresses themself to a different person. Don’t forget: a parenthetical should be on its own line, with nothing else on it.
Now novice writers often overuse parenthetical direction like nobody’s business. Shocker: in general, actors will be able to figure out what you were getting at simply from the line. There’s seldom a reason to embellish further. Let the actors act. Trust us, they will add all the necessary arm gestures and head gyrations. And remember, parens are for line-reading cues only, not actions. Actions go flush left in the scene description.
TRANSITIONS
A tricky-sounding word that just means how you get from one scene to another. These include:
CUT TO:
DISSOLVE TO:
MATCH CUT TO:
And our favorite: SMASH CUT TO: or SLAM CUT TO:
These are placed on the far right side of the page. Screenwriting software should place the transitions in the proper place for you.
CUT TO: is used between scenes and, please, DON’T USE IT. It’s passé. It’s obvious from the new Location Slug that we’re in a new scene; we don’t need a CUT TO: to tell us we’re about to go there. It’s like saying, “Get ready, I’m about to make a turn,” every time you drive. Just make the darn turn.
MATCH CUTS & DISSOLVES: Every now and again, as part of telling your story visually, you may wish to employ a match cut. This is a fancy-shmancy way of saying you’re cutting from one image to another one that looks similar to it. This can be used for humorous effect, or simply to be cool. Mostly this is a director thing – the director will figure out how to shoot the movie – but when employed by the writer, it can show you’ve got visual style.
Finally, SMASH & SLAM CUTS are quick cuts employed for dramatic effect. For example, the boxer tells the reporters how he will dominate his opponent and then we smash (or slam) to a visual of him out cold and blood soaked in the ring.
Learning to tell your story VISUALLY is key to screenwriting and one of the big differences between playwriting and screenwriting.
INTERCUT
Basically, a whole movie or TV show is intercut, now isn’t it? So why would a writer have to worry about an editing term? We don’t, except for one time: during two-way conversations—over the phone, a police radio, etc. Some writers make the mistake of cutting back and forth between locations during a phone call by using the different location slugs of the callers on the phone and then the character name and then their dialogue and then on to the next speaker. Rinse and repeat. It’s tedious and consumes page space unnecessarily.
A more efficient way to do this is by using INTERCUT AS NECESSARY (as always, all caps and on its own line) once we’ve established the two locations for the conversation and let the director worry about who to show on camera and who should be off-screen.
We hope this demystifies the process a bit. All of this (and much more!) can be found in our CI Spec Format & Style Guide, our 125-page ebook available as a PDF download from CoverageInk.com. Pick up a copy – you (and those reading your scripts) will be very glad you did.
