The Duffer Brothers on 3 Key Script Elements

Twin brothers Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer are the creative minds behind Netflix’s Stranger Things. The Duffer Brothers fell in love with movies as children, which led them to Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. To make their Hollywood dreams come true, they began to write and sell a spec script—or one they would write and submit, as a whole, for consideration. After several rejections, they pitched Stranger Things to Netflix executives. Season one of the show dropped on July 15, 2016. Since then, the series has received several accolades: Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, and a prestigious Peabody Award for entertainment, just to name a few.

A script is the play-by-play of a movie, TV show, or stage play. It includes the setting description, characters, dialogue, and stage directions. The script starts the artistic process for a dramatic performance, but film, TV, and theatre are all inherently collaborative. Directors, actors, and designers interpret the script. In film and television, scriptwriters are called screenwriters. A film script is called a screenplay, and a TV script is called a teleplay.

According to the Duffer Brothers, a few crucial elements turn an outline into a script. “It's important to keep in mind there are three key elements to every script,” Matt says. These elements are action, description, and dialogue:

1. 1. Action: The action lines in your script are every moment you’re describing movement—this could be a fight sequence, a car chase, or a heated argument between two characters. There are several ways to write action in a scene; the Duffer Brothers recommend pacing it slowly to keep readers engaged. “Allow your action room to breathe, allow people to keep flipping through those pages,” Ross says. “What we like to do is mirror the writing with the pace.” Rather than compress all of the action in a scene into one action-packed paragraph, spread it out with line breaks and dialogue. “By spreading it out,” Ross adds, “it highlights how fast it goes in each moment—and also makes your script read really, really fast.”
2. 2. Description: Description is composed of the non-dialogue details of your script—any place where you’re describing a place, character, or time of day. Description takes up most of the space of your non-dialogue writing. The Duffer Brothers recommend keeping description short and snappy. The pilot script of Stranger Things describes Will’s house: “Will bursts out of the woods. Up ahead, his house. It is small, one story, lower-class, falling apart.” “That's it,” Ross says. “We just skipped all of [the detail] because we want the reader to fly through this.” They distilled the description to the most crucial detail. “Will lives in a lower-class house,” Matt adds. “[Readers] can imagine that.”
3. 3. Dialogue: The dialogue in your script is any line a character says, whether in a scene, off-screen, or voiceover. According to the Duffer Brothers, bad dialogue is usually overwritten, meaning it overexplains, feels too crafted, and sounds stilted when a character says it. “Simplicity is your friend here,” Matt says. He and Ross recommend keeping dialogue short and simple rather than using long paragraphs to explain the plot. In addition, try out repetition for a more realistic feel. Matt uses a scene from the film Panic Room as an example: “[The character] goes, ‘They can't. They can't get in here. No. They can't.’ She keeps repeating ‘they can't.’ She's trying to reassure herself that they won't get in there,” he explains. “And that's something you often don't see in dialogue—but you do see it in dialogue that's written well, because that's really how people speak.”

Most TV and film screenplays and teleplays follow an industry-standard script format. Key formatting standards include:

1. 1. Page margins: You should have a 1.5-inch margin on the left, a one-inch margin on the right, and one inch of white space on the top and bottom of the page.
2. 2. Proper font: An industry standard screenplay uses size twelve Courier font.
3. 3. Title page: The script should have a title page with no content apart from the title, author's name, contact information, and representation (if applicable).
4. 4. Page numbers: Page numbers mark every script page apart from the first page.
5. 5. Character names: When characters speak, their names appear in all capital letters, centered on the page, and indented 3.7 inches from the left side of the page.
6. 6. Dialogue: Center lines on the page below the name of the character. Indent each dialogue block 2.5 inches from the left side of the page.
7. 7. Voiceover: Characters speaking in voiceover signified by "V.O." next to their names.
8. 8. “Off-screen” or “off-camera”: Characters who can be heard off-screen are signified as O.S. (off-screen) in film scripts and O.C. (off-camera) in TV scripts.
9. 9. Dialogue descriptions: Center descriptions in parentheses directly above the dialogue.
10. 10. Action lines: Descriptions of action align with the left margin of the page. Action lines should always appear this way, never in parentheticals.
11. 11. Proper character introductions: Capitalize characters the first time they appear. (This applies to everyone from the main character to unnamed extras passing through a scene.)
12. 12. Scene headings: Often called sluglines, these belong in all caps, aligned left on the page.
13. 13. Locations: Scene headings must always be preceded by “EXT.” for "exterior" or “INT.” for "interior."
14. 14. Transitions: Instructions like "FADE OUT," "FADE IN," "CUT TO," or "BLACKOUT" appear in all caps, aligned with the right margin.
15. 15. Minimal camera directions on spec scripts: On a TV show or feature film, camera and lighting choices belong to the director and their photography team. Refrain from including camera or lighting directions unless it’s essential.

“When we were learning how to write, the best thing to do is actually not even to take a screenwriting class; the best thing to do is read other scripts,” Matt. says. Echoing his brother, Ross adds, “We would suggest reading some more recent examples because screenplay formatting…has changed a lot over the years.”

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