screenplay template?

[Diana Fox]

Does a screenplay template exist for Word?
Or is there an "unoffical" way of creating the appropriate format?

(I know most people say you should use a seperate program to do
screenplays, but I'm trying to save money.)

Thanks

Diana

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Describe your requirements, and we can tell you how to fulfill them.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Diana Fox]

Describe your requirements, and we can tell you how to fulfill them.


The left margin is 1.5 inches, the right is 1 inch.
Desciption of the action goes right across the page.
But setting up dialog is more complicated.

Character's names - 3.5 inches from the left margin
Stage directions - 3 inches from the left margin (and always in
parenthesis)
Dialog - 2.5 inches from the left margin (but should only be 3 inches
in length, so the right margin has to be set yet again)

Programs like Final Draft and MovieMagic Screenwriter do all things
automatically, but a template for Word would be a good alternative.

Thanks
Diana

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Diana

On the face of it, this doesn't sound too hard. Here's what I would do:

Create a new template.

Within that template, create 4 styles called (say) Action, Character,
StageDirection and Dialog. Base each one on style Body Text. In style
Body Text, set whatever font formatting you need to apply to all four
"child" styles (the advantage of doing it this way is that if you
choose, say, Times New Roman 12pt and you later need Arial 11pt, you'll
be able to change the font for all four styles very quickly). Don't
change the margins for each new kind of text; instead, for each of your
styles, set the left and right indent appropriately. So the left indent
for Character would be 3.5".

You might even use Tools > Customize to create a new toolbar and put a
button for each of your styles on the toolbar. This would allow you to
apply the styles quickly.

Within the template, set the margins for your template as you need it.
And set any headers and footers you need. If the headers and footers
need to reflect, say, the Act and Scene number, then I would use the
built-in Heading styles for the Act and Scene numbers. Then you can use
STYLEREF fields to create the running headers or footers.

When you need to create a new document, choose File > New and select
your template.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word
Melbourne, Australia

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

By the time I got your reply last night (after returning from a ballet
performance), it was late, and I was tired, so I saved your post for this
morning. Now I see that Shauna (on the other side of the world) has beat me
to it. There's not much I can add to what she has said, but here are a few
more tips:

1. If you don't know how to create a template, see
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart1.htm

2. If there is a usual sequence of styles (for example, if the character's
name will always be followed by stage directions, and those will always be
followed by dialog), set the appropriate style as the "Style for following
paragraph" in your style definition. This will save you a lot of work.

3. Shauna suggests a toolbar for the styles. I've tried this, and in my
experience a keyboard shortcut to apply a style is a much better approach
(though you could have a toolbar, too). If you're mostly typing, it's easier
to be able to apply styles without taking your hands off the keyboard. Only
if you're going through an existing manuscript and style tagging is a
toolbar easier (since you're mostly using the mouse already, anyway).

4. Note that, although you can define font characteristics for your styles,
there's no way you can automatically add the parentheses to your stage
directions. Well, actually you could add an opening parenthesis as
"numbering," but that is probably more trouble than it's worth, and you'd
still need to type the closing paren. What might be worth using numbering
for, though, would be the acts and scenes. If you want to get into that, see
Shauna's article at
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Diana Fox]

Suzanne & Shauna

Thanks for the helpful info!

Diana