Sci-Fi Screenplay Template | Free Google Docs Format

Why this template?

Sci-fi is the question.

Every great science fiction screenplay starts with "what if." What if a machine could think. What if we could travel through time. What if the person sitting across from you wasn't human. The concept is the engine, but the screenplay is the vehicle. Sci-fi doesn't work because of its ideas. It works because of what those ideas do to the characters trapped inside them. The best sci-fi scripts use their premise as a pressure chamber: put a human being in an impossible situation and watch what they reveal about themselves.

World-building in a screenplay is not exposition. It's implication. You don't explain the rules of the world in dialogue. You show a character following them, or breaking them, and the audience fills in the rest. The less you explain, the more real it feels. A single detail -- a scar, a locked door, a word someone refuses to say -- can build an entire universe in the reader's mind. That's the craft. That's what separates sci-fi screenwriting from sci-fi novels.

This template gives you the structure. Scene headings, action lines, dialogue: all formatted to industry standard. You bring the question. The margins are already correct.

What's inside

Everything You Need

Industry-standard format

Courier 12pt, correct margins

Pre-built scene structure

Adapt or delete as needed

Character and dialogue formatting

Ready to go

Works with Screenplay Editor

One-click auto-formatting

The film behind the template

Ex Machina (2014)

This template is built around a pivotal scene from Ex Machina (2014), Alex Garland's directorial debut: the moment Caleb meets Ava for the first time. A young programmer, flown to a remote research facility, walks into a room and sees a machine that looks back at him. A sheet of glass between them. A conversation begins. And nothing in the film, or in Caleb's understanding of reality, will ever be the same.

The scene is deceptively simple. Two people talking through glass. But Garland's screenplay turns that simplicity into a trap. Every line of dialogue is doing double work: Caleb is testing Ava, Ava is studying Caleb, and Nathan is watching both of them. The audience thinks they know who is in control. They don't. The genius of the scene is that it functions as a Turing test for the viewer as much as for the character. By the time you realize you've been manipulated, it's too late. You already care about the machine.

Garland wrote and directed Ex Machina on a $15 million budget. It earned $37 million worldwide and won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. But the real achievement is the script. Three characters, one location, and a question that gets under your skin: if you can't tell the difference between a real mind and a simulated one, does the difference matter? Garland doesn't answer. He just keeps tightening the screws until the final frame.

The best sci-fi doesn't show you the future. It shows you yourself, reflected in something you built.

Does it pass the test?