The script

The whole file, exactly as it was typed.

What you type

Title: The Eel Trap
Credit: written by
Author: Nor Sanavongsay
Draft date: 2026-08-03
Contact: hello@example.com

EXT. RIVER ROAD - DAWN

Mist on the water. A bus older than anyone riding it comes down a road that runs level with the river.

JANIDA, 15, waits at the roadside with a cloth bundle held against her chest. She does not flag the bus down. She is deciding.

The bus stops anyway. The DRIVER leans out, unhurried.

DRIVER
You getting on, or growing roots?

Janida's hand tightens on the bundle.

JANIDA
(not moving yet)
How far does it go?

DRIVER
Far as you've got money for.

She counts nothing. She gets on.

INT. BUS - CONTINUOUS

Crates of chickens. Sacks of rice. A MONK asleep against the window.

Janida moves down the aisle and stops at a seat where JANMANI, 12, has claimed both halves of it with her knees.

JANMANI
Taken.

JANIDA
By what?

JANMANI
My legs. They're long.

JANIDA
They're twelve.

Janmani moves her legs. Slightly. Janida sits.

They ride without speaking. The river slides past behind them.

INT. BUS - LATER

Sun up. The bus has climbed away from the water and the road is dust now.

Janmani has been staring at the bundle for a while before she says anything.

JANMANI
What's in it?

JANIDA
Nothing.

JANMANI
It moved.

The bundle moves.

JANIDA
(not looking at her)
Don't tell anyone.

JANMANI
Tell them what? You said it's nothing.

Janida looks at her properly for the first time.

JANIDA
It is.

JANMANI ^
It isn't.

The bus goes over something. Everyone lifts an inch and comes back down.

EXT. RIVER ROAD - CONTINUOUS

The bus gets smaller, the dust closing behind it, the river gone from view.

> CUT TO:

INT. GRANDMOTHER'S HOUSE - NIGHT (FLASHBACK)

Lamplight. GRANDMOTHER, 70s, holds the same cloth bundle out to Janida, who does not take it.

GRANDMOTHER
Two brothers. One eel trap. You know this one.

JANIDA
Everyone knows that one.

GRANDMOTHER
Then you know neither of them opened it.

She puts the bundle in Janida's hands anyway.

GRANDMOTHER (CONT'D)
That's the story. Not the eel.

> THE END <

The same script, read back

The file above is the one below, sorted by the shape of its own lines.

This is the reflowed reading view, which keeps three pages on a screen or two. On paper it sets itself in Courier at the standard length, which is what prints.

What each part of it is doing

The block at the top

Everything before the first scene becomes the title page. Title, Credit, Author, Draft date and Contact are recognised on sight. Any you leave out stay off the page.

EXT. RIVER ROAD - DAWN

A line beginning INT., EXT., EST. or I/E. is a scene heading. Nothing marks it but the words themselves.

Ordinary paragraphs

Action. Most of a screenplay is action, so it gets the shape that costs nothing to write.

DRIVER

A line in caps with text under it is a character cue, and the text under it is their dialogue until the next blank line.

(not moving yet)

A parenthetical, indented under the name. I use one when the line would be read the wrong way without it. If the dialogue needs one to land, the dialogue is usually the thing to fix.

JANMANI ^

A caret after the second speaker sets both blocks side by side, for two people talking over each other. The first name stays plain.

> CUT TO: and > THE END <

A transition, and centred text. An all-caps line ending in TO: becomes a transition on its own too.

The rest of the syntax, including the sections and synopses that stay in your file and never print, is in the Fountain format guide.

Using it as a template

Open it in the editor and type over it. Put your title block at the top, keep the scenes you want, and the pagination follows whatever you leave behind.

Three pages is a scene sequence. A feature runs somewhere near a hundred and ten, on the old rule of roughly a page a minute, which holds well enough that people still plan against it.