Script

“Artists create because, no matter how bleak their visions might be, they are optimistic enough to hope their offerings will have meaning for their fellow humans. And a society will exist just as long as the artists believe in it enough to keep telling their stories.”
– Stephen Sewell, Theatre at the end of History

Theorist Alan Spiegel in Fiction and the Camera Eye (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976) claims that cinema was invented in the mid nineteenth century by Gustave Flaubert in his novel, Madame Bovary. To learn more, read the novel and the theory, but where does this leave the script?
Is a screenplay a sort of template for a cinematically rendered novel? Perhaps not, but template is a useful word here, because it suggests an ability to anticipate what these flat pages of type will become with the addition of time, space, actors, music and dramatic tension – to name a few.
But what of the play for the theatre? Perhaps with its symbolic representation of time and space the play is more akin to poetry.
Do we care? Yes, but we care more for the finely tuned ear and the passionate idea.
At some point in your scriptwriting you will become thoroughly sick of many of the repetitious formatting tasks. That’s when you might want to acquire some software. The links here will take you to sites offering you a range of software, from the free template to the rather pricey package. Check out what works best for you!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scriptsmart/
http://sophocles.net/
http://www.screenplay.com/products/sv/index.htm
http://www.screenplay.com/products/mms/index.htm
http://www.film.vic.gov.au
http://www.currency.com.au
http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au