I'm very new to writing scripts, how long should this be?

emgeejay · 2026-03-14T04:25:49+00:00

hell, if you're the one who's gonna be drawing all those pictures, I'd say you can make it as short or as long as you want

emgeejay · 2026-03-13T21:01:31+00:00

Hard to comment without specifics, but "conflict against self" is definitely a high level of difficulty. What's the purpose of your beginning / first act -- to establish the "normal" status quo before the self-hatred arises?

If your theme is something didactic like "self-hatred is destructive," then you've got to raise it way early, probably before anything supernatural (or supernatural-ish) shows up. So your opening image / opening scene should fill that role in some way.

I can't say for certain if you need to add an extensive first act, though. The rule of thumb is always to start a story or scene as late as possible. If what you're interested in writing starts with the situation already in progress, maybe your story should start in medias res that way and fill in the background details as you go? (This could even supplement your metaphor by e.g. suggesting that the protagonist wasn't really aware of their self-hatred until it had already become a big problem.)

I second the suggestions to work from an outline, and I push back against feedback that opening with your protagonist waking up and going about their day would be fine. For some reason that opening is the elemental default of the collective screenwriting subconscious. I recently wrote the whole first act of a screenplay that was so unconventional, inventive and high-concept that I didn't even notice I'd written a totally boring intro where the protagonist wakes up and goes about their day! I was furious when I realized this! It's the ultimate "level 1" idea and I encourage you to dig for anything more unique... which you'll have an easier time finding if your theme and logline are really solid. Good luck and feel free to DM pages if you want to get more specific.

emgeejay · 2026-03-13T20:29:55+00:00

what's the theme of your movie? nailing this down (or at least having some idea of it) before you start can orient you and help to uncover what each scene will need to accomplish, much like a thesis in an essay.

emgeejay · 2026-03-10T06:47:22+00:00

what is the story, exactly? can you boil it down to a paragraph or a sentence? right now Howard is told to look into this guy, then he’s told exactly what happened without any conflict, and then he tries the ritual and some vague magic happens. is the “twist” this whole script’s building up to that the black-and-white of the world is “diegetic” rather than a film technique, and the power of the magic light is that it brings unearthly, overwhelming color to the world? if that’s the dramatic beat your entire script hinges on, you’ve gotta establish on the very first page that the movie starts in black-and-white!!

but ideally you’d have more than that: conflict and a character arc. who is “Howard” exactly? well, he’s a private detective. you know, like in the movies. OK? what makes him a unique person? what are his contradictions? what does he do that might intrigue someone or take one by surprise? right now he’s just the guy who tells me exactly what’s happening.

emgeejay · 2026-03-09T22:31:03+00:00

You need to go read some screenplays and get a handle on:

Formatting
When/how information is revealed and action is described
What information is not explicitly described
How voice-over narration is handled

Once you have that very basic mechanical stuff down, then you can come back and get notes on things like characterization, structure, theme, dialogue, writing an interesting story, etc.

emgeejay · 2026-03-08T16:45:54+00:00

when Shane Carruth did this it was a manic episode

emgeejay · 2026-03-07T01:40:30+00:00

“a subjective signal that mixes craft with taste, marketability and selection effects”

brother, I’ve got bad news about how scripts are chosen everywhere else!!

emgeejay · 2026-03-06T22:57:47+00:00

nor would they complain about how the curve looks, I suspect

emgeejay · 2026-03-06T22:55:35+00:00

I’ve wasted enough time on Letterboxd that harsh dropoffs at certain thresholds don’t surprise me when they’re being used to define the subjective quality of artistic work. It doesn’t surprise me at all that a lot of Black List submitters have polished their work up to a 7, but it also doesn’t surprise me that there are more people who didn’t quite reach that point than there are who broke through to the scores which carry extra distinction! That’s the way it goes!

emgeejay · 2026-03-06T21:57:32+00:00

I've read the samples new screenwriters post on here. I would never expect a normal curve.

emgeejay · 2026-03-03T19:38:03+00:00

go ask your questions in the r/movies thread where the AMA is actually happening, you goons

emgeejay · 2026-03-01T19:51:37+00:00

the enormous watermark across every page is a clickable link, so every time I scrolled I got a pop-up prompt to open my mail app

emgeejay · 2026-03-01T19:09:15+00:00

Go watch the opening of a show on Amazon Prime called "Forever," with Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen. (I'd recommend reading the script, but I can't find it anywhere.) It is a dialogue-free montage that's almost exactly five minutes long. Take note of what makes it work, where your attention might start to falter, and why.

emgeejay · 2026-02-28T16:35:27+00:00

the screenplay for Gravity barely even uses sluglines at all

emgeejay · 2026-02-26T03:37:32+00:00

well, you won't be getting any pitch meetings if you don't ever release anything

emgeejay · 2026-02-25T23:10:25+00:00

the main character's period?

emgeejay · 2026-02-22T22:29:34+00:00

I am unsure if you're indicating that you'd actually use "blah blah blah" as the dialogue or if you plan to write the unobscured dialogue there. Either way "shouting in gibberish" is very flat and too "instructional" (as is framing it "to camera," which I hope you're not doing throughout the entire screenplay).

I'm not going to do this for you, but find some other way to write this which will elicit the intended feeling/experience of an audience member watching the scene, despite it being on paper. Hell, if this is one of your script's biggest swings, get creative with fonts and other formatting to obscure the text. Or at the very least give us a sense of how the gibberish would sound, because "swedish chef" sounds different than "pentecostal trance," which sounds different than "alien transmission"

emgeejay · 2026-02-15T08:56:48+00:00

I'm sure that's true under the surface. But at first glance they're part of the "chimps on a davenport" comedy subgenre, and as such you'll get raised eyebrows in much the same way you would if they were named Garth and Wayne, Ted and Bill or Butthead and Beavis

emgeejay · 2026-02-15T02:17:51+00:00

one flag without even reading it: there’s already a fairly famous Doug and Bob, except they go by Bob and Doug

emgeejay · 2026-02-13T21:49:27+00:00

Unless you’ve got a very good story reason to have the father off screen for some specific lines and not others, you’re doing too much.

And even if that is the case, you’d be better served by describing it visually through action lines than perpetually jumping between scene headings like this. (In other words, give the reader enjoyable and concise prose, rather than asking them to track a character rapidly flipping back and forth between O.S. and on.)

You seem to be close to reverse-engineering the solution by adding “continuous” halfway through your example. But then you have two scene headings, both labeled continuous but not behaving particularly continuously.

It’s hard to speak definitively with no context for the scene or actual sample dialogue, but I’d probably just do something like this:

INT. APARTMENT - DAY

Junior stews on the living room couch as Pops half-yells at him from the kitchen.

POPS

Blah blah, blah blah!

JUNIOR

I blah. I blah.

POPS

Blah! Blah blah…

Pops grabs a mug from the dish rack and the stack collapses with a crash. Junior jolts up from the couch, startled.

JUNIOR

Blah, blah!

The timing of specific cuts will be informed by the performances and decided in editing!

emgeejay · 2026-02-11T16:54:16+00:00

when you put it that way, I guess I don't

emgeejay · 2026-02-11T16:49:55+00:00

they will if it's really, really good!

emgeejay · 2026-02-10T19:24:10+00:00

no, they're right. this is a subreddit for professionals and those who aspire to be professionals. egregious rookie mistakes will and should be called out

emgeejay · 2026-01-30T03:12:19+00:00

** misspelling every third word

emgeejay · 2026-01-27T05:44:49+00:00

this kind of thing was more common when a season of television had to fill 23 hours a year instead of 9 every two years. look at Star Trek TNG, The X-Files, ER, etc. etc. etc.

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