How to Write Scene Headings (Sluglines) in a Screenplay
How to write scene headings, or sluglines, in a screenplay: interior or exterior, place, time of day, in that order. Plus when to start a new scene and how to handle flashbacks and montages.
Chapters (9)
In this lesson you will learn
- The three parts of a scene heading: interior or exterior, the place and the time of day
- How ScreenWeaver suggests prefixes, places and times of day as you type
- How a new place in a heading becomes a location in your sidebar
- When you need a new scene heading, and when to use LATER
- Why one place must always keep exactly one name
- How to handle flashbacks, phone calls and montages
Every scene in a screenplay starts with a scene heading, sometimes called a slugline. This lesson shows how to write scene headings that answer two questions at once: where are we, and when? You learn the three parts, interior or exterior, the place and the time of day, and how ScreenWeaver's autocomplete suggests the prefixes, your existing places and times such as night, dawn, later, continuous or moments later.
You also learn when a new scene starts, why the jetty must never become the dock or the pier, and how to keep headings concrete. Reading the five scene headings of The Night Ferry shows how time moving from night to dawn can carry a whole film. The lesson ends with special cases: flashbacks, phone calls between two places and montages.
Full transcript
0:04Every scene starts with a scene heading, sometimes called a slugline. It answers two parts before anything else happens. Where are we? And when?
0:14A scene heading has three parts. First, interior or exterior. Are we inside or outside? Then the place. Then the time of day. Exterior, the jetty, night. Interior, the ferry cabin, night. Simple. In capitals and always in that order.
0:36Let's type the first one. In the toolbar, choose scene. As soon as you type the first letter, ScreenWeaver suggests the standard prefixes. Interior, exterior, interior slash exterior and I slash E for scenes that move between the two. Use the arrow keys to pick one and press enter.
0:57Now the place. The jetty. Because it's a new place, the suggestion list offers to create it. Confirm and the jetty is added to your places in the sidebar. From now on, every time you start a heading with interior or exterior, your existing places are suggested. So you never misspell them.
1:16Then type a space, a dash and a space. And the list offers the times of day. Day, night, dawn, dusk, morning, afternoon, evening, but also later, continuous, moments later and same time. Pick night.
1:35When do you need a new scene heading? Every time the place changes or the time jumps. When Maya steps from the jetty into the cabin, that's a new place, new heading. When we come back to the cabin a little later, that's the same place at a later time. Interior, the ferry cabin, night, later.
1:56One rule matters more than all the others in Screenweaver. Name a place exactly the same way every time. The jetty is always the jetty. Never the dock in one scene and the pier in the next. Each different name creates a different location. And later, a different set in your storyboard.
2:16Keep headings short and concrete. A place a camera can go to. Not a feeling. The ferry deck. Not somewhere in the fog. If the place needs more detail, that's what the first action line is for.
2:29Here are all the scene headings of the night ferry. So you can see the pattern. Exterior, the jetty, night. Interior, the ferry cabin, night. Exterior, the ferry deck, night. Interior, the ferry cabin, night, later. And exterior, the island harbour, dawn. Five headings. Four places. And the time of day moving from night to dawn. Which is the whole emotional journey of the film. Readable from the headings alone.
3:01A few special cases you'll meet. A flashback. Put it in the heading. Interior, the ferry cabin, night. Twenty years earlier. Or write flashback as the first word of the action. A phone call between two places. Give each place its own heading. And cut between them. And a montage, a series of short images. Write a heading for the main place, then one short action line per image. Clarity first. The reader must always know where and when we are.
3:34Your exercise. List every place of your story and write the scene heading of each scene. With interior or exterior, the place and the time. Next lecture, the action lines. Where the film really happens.