The standard screenplay layout – and Film Script

The format (the layout) determines the readability

You imagine a scene, but don't write it down? What is the point? Or, you write it down, but reading it is not very easy? What is the point, still?
For a screenplay to function, good readability is the key.
The reader must get a good impression of what it would be like watching the film, once it's made.

The screenplay document layout makes it possible to read a film script as a film.

The standard format

The standard format (layout) is as shown in this illustration below.
This is that simple thing that we need (so badly :)) when writing a screenplay.

formatting 🡢 parsing 🡢 eventual layout

In order to achieve the standard screenplay document layout, we use formatting rules, film_script, namely. However, unlike with typewriters, the eventual format (layout) isn't the product of our formatting during writing. We just apply the film_script formatting so that the document could be processed (parsed).

The eventual document layout is shaped by styles which we apply to the different text-block types (paragraph types) in the text – scene heading, character name, dialogue, parenthetical, action description, etc – which we identify by parsing the text, which is possible because of our consistent formatting.

Using a Simple Text Editor or/and Writer

The concept on the base level was thought up for using a Simple Text Editor.
Libreoffice Writer, however, the amazing Open Source tool offers itself for writing screenplays beautifully, too. As it is now (version 26.xx) capable of working in or/and exporting to Markdown, great perspectives open up workflow-wise.

Film Script can be used with Simple Text Editors and Writer. To these two platforms, come two film_script variants, film_script_i and film_script_h – an indentation-based and a heading-based formatting rule-set, respectively.
With the up-coming export functionalities (under development), these two platforms (and the film_script variants) can be used interchangeably.