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Outlining a Movie Scene

Starting a movie script can be daunting. The question of who the characters are, how they talk and what happens to them can leave your fingers above the keyboard, unsure of what to type. This confusion makes outlining a valuable process, as it lets you formulate and arrange your ideas before beginning the actual writing. Once you have some basic ideas for your movie, you’re ready to begin outlining.

Things You'll Need

  • Paper and pen or writing computer software
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Instructions

    • 1

      Take out a sheet of paper and a pen or open writing software on a computer.

    • 2

      Write down your basic idea for the scene. Example: “Tommy goes into the grocery store and sees the robbery taking place.”

    • 3

      Add more details once they come to you. This could be five minutes after you wrote the initial idea or a week later. The more you write in your outline, the easier the writing process is.

    • 4

      Decide what time of day the action takes place. Movie scripts typically specify what part of the day the action happens in, such as “night,” “afternoon” or “morning.”

    • 5

      Decide whether the action takes place outside or inside. Movie scripts always specify this with either “EXT.” – meaning exterior -- or “INT.” – meaning interior. If the action takes place in a park, it’s happening outside, which means “exterior.” If it’s happening in a grocery store, that’s inside, so it’s interior.

    • 6

      Decide which characters are in the scene.

    • 7

      Decide more specifically what happens in the scene. In the grocery store example, does Tommy try to stop the robbery? Does the robber take someone hostage?

    • 8

      Add some basic ideas for dialogue. You don’t have to write all of the dialogue during the outlining process, but thinking of a few important lines can help get you going during the writing process. In the grocery store robbery example, a dialogue idea could be, “Put down the melon and give me your money.”

    • 9

      Come back to your scene outline at a later time. Continue to add more details and take away ideas you no longer plan to use until you feel ready to start writing the actual script.

Screen Writing

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