Formatting & Page-Length Specs
Correct format won't make your short good — but wrong format will get it dismissed before anyone reads the story. The good news: a short uses the exact same rules as a feature.
Whenever I read shorts for a festival's screenplay competition, I could sort them into "pro" and "amateur" piles from the first page — before reading a word of story — just from the formatting. That's not fair, exactly, but it's real: bad format signals that a writer hasn't done the work, and it makes a reader tune out. The reassuring part is that short film format isn't some special system to learn. A short screenplay uses the identical rules as a feature. Master the standard once and it serves you for everything.
The format is the standard screenplay format
Same elements, same look as any professional script:
- 12-point Courier — the monospaced font that makes one page ≈ one minute. Non-negotiable.
- Scene headings (sluglines) — ALL CAPS: INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT.
- Action lines — present tense, only what we see and hear, in tight blocks.
- Character cues & dialogue — the speaker's name centered above their lines, dialogue in its narrower column.
- Standard margins & page numbers — one-inch margins, numbers top-right. Let your software handle it.
If you took our formatting chapter in Screenplay 101, none of this is new — a short is just the same format, fewer pages. Use real screenwriting software so all of it is automatic and you can focus on the story.
The title page and a short-specific note
Keep the title page clean and simple: the title, "written by," and your contact info. Nothing else — no draft dates, no WGA stamps, no artwork. For a short, one small addition is welcome and useful: you can note the estimated runtime or page count, since programmers and readers care about length up front. That's the one place a short's title page differs at all from a feature's.
Page count is your runtime — respect it
We covered the sweet spot earlier, but it lives on the page, so it belongs here too: your page count is your runtime. A 9-page short is about a 9-minute film. This makes your script a planning tool — you can see your length as you write and keep it in the festival-friendly 5–12 range without guessing. If your "short" hits 20 pages, the page count is telling you the truth before an editor has to: your scope crept. Trust the pages. A tight, correctly formatted 8-page script that reads clean and lands at 8 minutes is worth more than a sprawling one twice its length.
Clean formatting pays off the moment you go into production. A properly formatted script is what your first AD breaks down into a schedule and your team reads to prep. Non-standard scripts create confusion, slow down breakdowns, and quietly signal to a crew that the filmmaker is green. On a short, where everyone's donating time, a professional-looking script earns trust — people take a well-formatted page more seriously, and that goodwill shows up on set.
Your short is now written, budget-smart, and formatted like a pro's. In the second-to-last chapter, we look at one of the most strategic things a short can be — a proof of concept that sells your feature — before we finish with the rewrite that makes it sing.
Once your short is written, the Filmmaker Toolbox takes it from page to shot-ready plan — script formatting, scene breakdowns, shot lists, and more, all in one place. Everything you need to move from draft to production.