A free screenplay template
for Microsoft Word.
Six industry paragraph styles that chain when you press Enter, the right margins, capitals that type themselves, a title page and numbered pages. Open it and write. No macros, no sign-up, no email.
.docx, 4 KB, opens in Word on Mac, Windows, iPad and the web. Also fine in Google Docs, Pages and LibreOffice.
Why this one and not the other twelve.
Every screenwriting site gives away a Word template. Almost all of them are a document with the margins changed, which is the easy half. Here is the difference, and you can check every line of it in the file.
| A typical free template | This one | |
|---|---|---|
| Margins and font | Usually right | Right |
| Named paragraph styles | Often none: direct formatting you cannot reuse | Six, one per element |
| Enter moves to the next element | No | Yes, every style knows its successor |
| Capitals without holding Shift | No | Yes, on headings, cues and transitions |
| Title page | Sometimes | Yes, laid out the way readers expect |
| Page numbers with the full stop | Rarely, and page one is numbered | Yes, and page one is not |
| Something to read inside | A blank page | Two real screenplays, below |
| What it costs you | An email address, often | Nothing, no form |
What is in it.
Most free templates are a document with the right margins and nothing else, so you spend the evening setting indents by hand. This one carries the format in its styles, which is what makes it hold together from page one to page ninety.
Six, and they chain
Scene heading, action, character, parenthetical, dialogue, transition. Press Enter after a character and Word puts you in dialogue, because each style knows what comes next.
Capitals on their own
Scene headings, character names and transitions are set to all caps. You type in lower case and never hold Shift.
The numbers that matter
Courier 12, single spaced, 1.5 in left margin, 1 in everywhere else. One page is about one minute, and it stays true.
A title page
Title a third of the way down, Written by, your name, contact at the foot. Replace three words and it is yours.
Page numbers with the period
Top right, followed by a full stop, and page one is not numbered. The detail every reader notices and no template does.
No macros, nothing to trust
A plain .docx of four kilobytes. No code, no tracking, nothing that asks for permission. Look inside if you like.
Two more, already written.
A blank template is a blank page with better margins. These two are screenplays you can read, take apart, and write over. Same six styles, same file, nothing to set up.
The opening of Scream
Twelve minutes, one location, one character and a phone call that becomes a trap. Kevin Williamson’s opening is a horror short with a beginning, a middle and an end, and it is the best lesson in dread you can read in fifteen pages.
Room 306, a whole screenplay
An original feature-length script, fifty pages, written for a screenwriting conference in Oxford and given away here. Read it, delete it, keep the shape. It is the fastest way to see what ninety scenes look like when the format never moves.
Both are US Letter .docx files, in the same six styles. The Scream pages are there to be studied, and the script belongs to its author.
How to use it.
- Open it and save it under your own name. File, Save As, and you are writing your script rather than editing our template.
- Delete the sample scene. Keep one paragraph of each kind if you want a reference, or clear the lot: the styles live in the document, not in the text.
- Write, and pick the style for each line in the Styles gallery on the Home tab. After a character, Enter already gives you dialogue.
- Give the styles shortcuts. On Windows, right-click a style, Modify, Format, Shortcut Key. On Mac, Tools, Customize Keyboard. Something like Control 1 to 6, in the order of the list above.
- Send a PDF. File, Save As, PDF. That is what producers read. Keep the .docx for yourself.
If you would rather not pick a style four hundred times, that is exactly the part we automated, below.
The template does not press Tab for you.
A template sets the shapes. It cannot know that the line you are typing is a character name and the next one is dialogue, so you keep telling Word, line after line. Our add-in does that part, inside the same Word, on the same .docx, with the same six styles: this template and the add-in fit together exactly, so you can start here and install it later without redoing anything.
- Type int. kitchen - night, press Enter: scene heading, capitals, right column.
- Tab in an action line: character. Enter: dialogue. Tab again: a parenthetical, brackets typed for you.
- Paste a messy draft and press Format my document: every line gets its element.
- A side panel adds the rest: scene numbers, stats, a table read with voices, a production breakdown, exports to PDF, Fountain and Final Draft.
Free for a week, everything open. Mac and Windows, signed and notarized by Apple.
Questions.
Is it really free?
Yes, and there is no email to give. We sell an add-in that writes the format for you; the template is the part you can have for nothing.
Letter or A4?
Letter is the industry standard and what American readers expect. A4 is fine in Europe and the columns are adjusted for it. Pick one and stay on it, because the page count moves between them.
Will it work in Google Docs or Pages?
It opens and the format survives, since it is all standard styles. For live formatting in Google Docs there is the Chrome extension instead.
Which font does it use?
Courier New, because every computer has it. If you have Courier Prime, which is free and prettier, select all and switch: the widths are identical, nothing moves.