Movie scripts can be found in three different forms. The first form in known as a rough draft and this is usually only seen by the writer. This draft puts the basic ideas down onto paper and helps flesh out the plot. The final draft is the polished copy and may take three or more revisions on the rough draft to reach this point. The final draft is then converted into a shooting draft where camera angles, scene numbers and other directions are placed into the script.
Movie scripts did not become significant until sound became a huge part of the movie business. Until then the director usually came up with the story. Many famous theater and playwrights were brought in to write scripts. The first Academy Award for Best Original Story was given in 1928 to Ben Hecht for his screenplay titled "Underworld." The same year Best Adaptation was given to Benjamin Glazer for "7th Heaven."
Writing a movie script requires as much work on formatting as content. The writing style has changed over the years, but it typically features all present tense and removal of common "to be" phrases like "is". For example the sentence "Jimmy jumped from the building and fell into a dumpster" would be written like this for a movie script: "JIMMY digs his foot into the gravel and jumps from the rooftop -- CRASH! He lands into a dumpster."
One page of a screenplay represents about a minute of screen time. Typical screenplays are 100 through 120 pages long, with longer movies like "Lord of the Rings" surpassing 150 pages. Movie scripts are all printed in the same font, Courier New, size 14. Programs like Final Draft Pro automatically use this font and help with tedious formatting tasks.
Movie script writers have potential to get their story turned into a feature-length movie and earn a lot of money and fame from that movie. They can turn movie scripts into a full career and potentially win awards like the Academy Award, Golden Globe and the WGA awards. WGA is the Writer's Guild of America; most screenwriters are WGA members.