It’s Week 9 and oddly enough, we get a reading that would have been a little bit more useful to have a couple of weeks ago. But I suppose things happen for a reason.

To start off this new week, we read a section of Notes to Screenwriters by Vicki Peterson and Barbara Nicolosi (2015, pp. 120-136). And while these past few weeks we’ve been learning about screenplay structure, this reading contains the literal definition of screenplay structure. It’s a guide on how to format screenplays, from line spacing rules to writing dialogue, it has it all.

It’s definitely useful if you don’t have screenplay software and using other writing apps like Word or Pages. But with the ever-growing technological age we live in, there are plenty of screenwriting sources on and offline to help budding writers. The one I’m using to write my screenplay is Celtx, which is free online (but you can purchase the desktop app), and it already has the template for a script loaded so I don’t need to worry about doing the indentations and all that myself.

It also had some pretty helpful hints especially with the difference between off screen (O. S.) and off camera (O. C.)  I never really thought about the difference, but off screen is for when a character is speaking in a different place (like over the phone) whereas off camera is for when the character speaking is not shown on camera (like getting the opposite character’s reaction while they’re talking) (p. 125).

The reading definitely has a lot of great tips for writing and it’s a good reminder on the do’s and don’t’s of screenwriting. One of the main points I got out of it was to avoid using too much parenthetical and camera directions unless absolutely necessary. As a screenwriter, you need to leave room for directors to direct and for actors to act.