Comedies tend to be shorter than dramas.ĭon’t cheat by narrowing your margins in an effort to shorten the page count. (The final draft of Chinatown, for example, was 145 pages.) However, the trend is toward shorter, punchier scripts. Longer screenplays used to be more acceptable.
Try to keep it under 120 pages, but no shorter than 100 pages. It takes twice as long to turn a page, which may result in the perception your script reads slow. Double-sided printing may save paper and make your script appear slimmer, but readers tend to find it awkward and annoying. Print your script on only one side of the page. Underscore for emphasis instead of using bold or italics. (Don’t confuse this with double-spacing the lines, which is done only in three-camera television shows.) Keeping sentences separated by two spaces, not just one, makes the script easier to read. Two spaces should follow the punctuation at the end of each sentence. The bottom margin varies, according to the rules for where it’s permissible to break a page, but the target is between half an inch to an inch. The first line of text should appear on the seventh line from the top of each page.
