Screenwriting

A character sheet is a one-page reference that fixes who a character is: for writers it lists traits, goals and history; for artists it shows the face, costume and turnaround views so every drawing, shot or AI generation stays consistent.

A logline sums up a film in one or two sentences: the protagonist, their goal, the obstacle and what's at stake — the hook that sells the script and, today, the seed for an AI storyboard.

The Save the Cat beat sheet is Blake Snyder's 15-beat map of a feature, from Opening Image and Catalyst to Finale and Final Image, with page targets for each beat — a ready template for planning scenes and storyboards.

A screenplay is the written blueprint of a film in a fixed format — scene headings, action lines, character names, dialogue and transitions — where one page roughly equals one minute of screen time.

Dialogue is the spoken exchange between characters; good screen dialogue reveals character and conflict while leaving the most important things unsaid.

A monologue is an extended speech by one character, addressed to others in the scene, that reveals their state of mind or turns the scene at a key moment.

A synopsis is a short prose summary of the whole film — setup, main characters, turning points and ending — written for producers, readers or grant committees.

A scene heading, or slugline, opens every scene in capitals: INT. or EXT., the location and the time of day — the line that production breaks down and a storyboard starts from.

A treatment is a prose document, usually 2–10 pages written in present tense, that tells the whole story of a planned film scene by scene and conveys its tone before the screenplay is written.

A screenwriter writes the screenplay — story, structure, scenes and dialogue in screenplay format — either on spec or on assignment, and often through many rewrites before and during production.

A beat is the smallest unit of dramatic change in a story: a moment where an action, reaction or decision shifts the scene's direction. In dialogue, a parenthetical (beat) also marks a short pause.

A parenthetical is a brief note in brackets under a character's name that tells how a line is said or to whom, used sparingly so it doesn't direct the actor.

Scene description, or action lines, is the prose under a scene heading that tells what we see and hear, in present tense and in short visual paragraphs that read like shots.

A screenplay transition is a right-aligned cue such as CUT TO:, DISSOLVE TO: or SMASH CUT TO: that tells how one scene hands over to the next; modern specs use them only when the cut itself carries meaning.

A script outline is a scene-by-scene plan of the story written before the draft, listing what happens and why in each scene so structure problems surface early.

A shooting script is the production version of a screenplay: scenes are numbered, locked and often annotated with shots, so it can drive the schedule, the shot list and the storyboard.

A spec script is a screenplay written without a contract, on the writer's own initiative, to be sold or used as a writing sample; it avoids camera directions and reads as cleanly as possible.

TV script format is how episodes are laid out on the page: one-hour dramas follow screenplay format split into acts or a teaser, while multi-camera sitcoms use double-spaced dialogue and capitalized action.