Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Formatting for a visual medium: Screenplay or transcripts?

Every genre has its own style and professional standards. There may be multiple standards for subsets of a genre as well. They don't exist to make your task difficult, even though the learning pr...

posted 6y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-20T00:40:36Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41608
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T10:42:13Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41608
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T10:42:13Z (almost 5 years ago)
Every genre has its own style and professional standards. There may be multiple standards for subsets of a genre as well. They don't exist to make your task difficult, even though the learning process can drive you crazy. They exist for consistency and utility.

What you call a "transcript" style is actually very similar to finished scripts that comic book writers use. In that case, you'd give more description for the artist (not the reader) and break the story up page by page, panel by panel.

A script for live action is not going to be the same as one for animation. The level of description, settings, art style, etc will be very different. The underlying screenplay format may be the same or similar though.

TheNovelFactory is correct; your next step is to ask the people you want to work with. The point of formatting is to make it useful for the person you're giving it to. So ask them what is the most useful. Your "transcript" style is an earlier step before a full screenplay, and it may be what they want, if they will be deciding much of the visuals.

That said, go learn the proper formats. Yes, it's very awkward to write in a way you're not used to, but it's something you need to learn, even if you never write it that way. If your scripts will be turned into full screenplays by someone else, you'll need to understand screenplay format so you can give enough information for this to happen. Eventually, you will be comfortable doing it yourself.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-01-25T17:43:12Z (almost 6 years ago)
Original score: 1