How to Write a Movie Script With AI (Format + Template)

A screenplay is not a short story with names in front of the sentences. It has a fixed shape, and readers in the industry can spot a wrong one in about four seconds. This guide gives you that shape, a full example scene written in it, a working AI workflow, and a template you can copy straight into your next draft.

The six parts of screenplay format

Every page of every film script is built from the same six elements. Learn these and format stops being a mystery.

1. The slugline (scene heading)

All caps. It tells us interior or exterior, where, and when.

INT. GARAGE WORKSHOP - NIGHT

Use INT. for inside, EXT. for outside, and INT./EXT. for a car with the window down. Time is usually just DAY or NIGHT. Resist CONTINUOUS and LATER unless they genuinely earn their place.

2. Action (scene description)

Present tense, third person, only what a camera can see or a microphone can hear. Keep blocks to four lines or fewer so the page stays readable.

You cannot write "she remembers the fire". You can write "she stares at the matchbox until her hand shakes". Everything internal has to be made external.

3. The character cue

All caps, centred above the dialogue. The first time a character appears in the action, put their name in caps there too: MARA (40s, burnt hands, no jewellery). After that, normal case.

4. Dialogue

Indented under the cue, in a narrow column. Screen dialogue is shorter than real speech. Three lines is a long speech; six is a monologue you should probably cut.

5. Parentheticals

A short direction in brackets between the cue and the line — (whispering), (not looking up). Use them rarely. If the line only works because of the bracket, rewrite the line.

6. Transitions

CUT TO:, DISSOLVE TO:, SMASH CUT TO:, flush right. Modern scripts use almost none; the cut is implied by the next slugline. Save them for a deliberate effect.

Quick reference

A formatted example scene

Here is a complete scene written in correct format. Read it once for the shape, once for how little is explained.

INT. GARAGE WORKSHOP - NIGHT

A half-stripped motorbike on a stand. Tools laid out in a straight line, newest to oldest.
MARA (40s, burnt hands, no jewellery) tightens a bolt she has already tightened twice.
The side door opens. DANIEL (19, school bag, wet shoulders) stands in it.

MARA
Door was locked.

DANIEL
It wasn't.

She keeps working. He puts the bag down where the oil won't reach it. He has done this before.

DANIEL (CONT'D)
They called the house.

MARA
I know.

DANIEL
And?

Mara sets the spanner down in its exact place in the line.

MARA
And I'm going to finish the bike.

Daniel picks the spanner up. Holds it. Puts it down two inches out of place.
Mara looks at it. Doesn't move it back.

DANIEL
(quiet)
Okay.

He sits on the step. She goes back to the bolt. Rain on the roof.

Notice what is missing: no one says they are angry, no one explains the phone call, and the emotional turn happens through a spanner. That is the job.

The AI workflow that actually produces a script

The mistake is asking for a whole screenplay in one go. You get ninety pages of competent nothing. Work in five passes instead, and keep the decisions yourself.

Step 1: Idea and premise

Lock one sentence before you write anything: a protagonist, a want, and the thing in the way. "A mechanic who has hidden a death for twenty years must decide what to tell the son of the man who died." If your premise needs two sentences, it is two films.

Prompt: "Give me eight one-sentence film premises about a mechanic hiding a secret from a teenager. Vary the genre. No logline clichés." Then throw away seven.

Step 2: Beats

Ask for structure, not prose. Twelve to fifteen beats for a feature, five or six for a short. This is where AI is strongest, and where a story plot generator is faster than staring at a wall. If you are shaky on why beats fall where they do, our complete guide to plot covers the underlying shape.

Prompt: "Break this premise into 14 beats. For each: one line of what happens, and one line of what changes for the protagonist. No scene descriptions yet."

Step 3: Scene by scene

Now generate one scene at a time. Give the model the beat, who is in the room, what each person wants, and what must be true by the end. A movie script generator handles the formatting so you can judge the scene rather than fight with tabs.

Prompt: "Write beat 7 as a screenplay scene. Location: garage workshop, night. Mara wants Daniel to leave. Daniel wants an admission. By the end he has decided to stay. Under 1.5 pages. No character states their feelings directly."

Step 4: The dialogue pass

Run through the scene again with one instruction only: cut. Ask for every line to be shortened, every explanation removed, and every character to sound different from every other character.

Prompt: "Rewrite this dialogue. Cut every line by a third. Remove anything that explains backstory. Mara uses short flat sentences; Daniel asks questions."

Step 5: Polish

Read it aloud. Then fix by hand: the one image that is yours, the joke only you would make, the line that is slightly wrong in an interesting way. This is the pass that makes the script yours, and no model does it for you.

Our AI script generator is free, runs without sign-up, and streams the draft as it writes, so you can stop a scene the moment it goes wrong instead of waiting for a bad page to finish.

What AI is bad at, and how to fix it

• Everyone sounds the same. Fix: give each character a rule before you generate — one never finishes a sentence, one always answers with a question, one uses trade jargon.
• Characters explain the plot out loud. Fix: delete the sentence, then check whether the scene still makes sense. Nine times out of ten it does.
• Scenes start too early and end too late. Fix: cut the first speech and the last speech of every scene and see what breaks.
• Conflict is polite. Fix: state the opposing wants explicitly in the prompt. Without them the model writes agreement.
• Stage directions drift into novel writing. Fix: strike anything a camera cannot record.
• Long-range memory fails. Fix: keep a one-page facts sheet — names, ages, locations, what each character knows and when — and paste it in with every scene request.

The reusable scene template

Copy this, fill the brackets, and paste it as your prompt for every scene.

SCENE BRIEF
Beat: [what this scene has to accomplish in the story]
Slugline: [INT./EXT. LOCATION - DAY/NIGHT]
In the room: [characters, with one voice rule each]
A wants: [concrete, scene-level want]
B wants: [the opposing want]
Status at the start: [who has power]
Status at the end: [who has it now]
Must be true by the last line: [the change]
Not allowed: [flashbacks / phone calls / anyone naming their feelings]
Length: [under 2 pages]
Format: standard screenplay — sluglines in caps, present-tense action, minimal parentheticals, no camera directions.

And the page skeleton itself, if you are formatting by hand:

INT. LOCATION - DAY

Two to four lines of action. Present tense. Only what we see and hear.

CHARACTER
(parenthetical, only if essential)
A short line.

OTHER CHARACTER
A shorter one.

One line of action that changes something.

A sensible order of work

1. Write the premise sentence yourself.
2. Generate beats, cut them to the ones that hurt.
3. Write a facts sheet: names, ages, places, secrets, timeline.
4. Draft scenes one at a time, brief in hand.
5. Do a dialogue-only pass on every scene.
6. Read the whole thing aloud in one sitting.
7. Rewrite the three worst scenes by hand.

If you want to practise the format without inventing a story first, generate a short premise with our free AI story generator and run it through steps two to five. Ten short scenes teach you more than one abandoned feature. For broader craft — character wants, escalation, endings — see our notes on the key elements of a story.

Start your script

Formatting is learnable in an afternoon. Judgement takes longer, and it is the part you keep. Let the tool set the sluglines and the margins, and spend your attention on what people want and what they refuse to say.

Draft your first scene now with our free movie script generator, or start from an idea with the AI story generator.