The Simple Guide to Formatting a Stage-Play Script

If you’re here, it probably means you tried googling “play format” and got a bunch of confusing, different formats — I know I did when I tried to figure it out for myself. “UK format?” “Radio plays?” “Where does the dialogue go?”

Every source I looked at seemed different. But after taking a college course in the craft, and completing my own short scripts, I thought I’d break it down into a much simpler guide. A few quick pointers before we get to the nitty-gritty:

• Courier, or Courier New, are usually your go-to fonts
• 12pt. size all the way through, single-spaced (and no extra spaces before or after your paragraphs)

Of course, if the production company you’re sending the script to likes it a certain way, always be sure to follow their instructions. This guide is meant to be as a general format that should work for most places.

If you like seeing things in a bigger-picture format, the image at the bottom shows what all this looks like put together. For a step-by-step guide, keep reading.

Title Page:

This is pretty straightforward; your title goes here, along with your name as the author (if you’re writing it with someone then you’ll put that there as well). Whether or not it needs to be centered is up to how the people you’re submitting it to like it, but I find a good rule-of-thumb is to keep it simple; left-aligned, with a colon and a short description of how long it is…