sw-format-adaptation

Format, Process & Adaptation (格式·流程·改编)

Output language = question language; terms are always anchored back to the original word, see sw-workflow/terms.md, do not invent translated names.

Three things:how to write it on the page(format and action paragraphs),how to go from idea to finished draft(outline/treatment/draft chain/revision),what to do when adapting someone else's material. Sources: Henson, Screenwriting: Step by Step; Walter, Screenwriting; Hicks, The Core Skills of Screenwriting; Field, Screenplay; McKee, Story; Hochstetler, The Twelve Rules of Screenwriting; Diamond & Weissman, The Business of Screenwriting in Hollywood; Bork, How to Write a Good Story. For examples and the symbol table see reference.md. For the industry and buying and selling see sw-industry-business。

1. What you are writing is a selling script, not a shooting script

Hicks: the format comes from the outdated studio shooting script;what you are writing now is a selling script (selling script), avoid useless abbreviated numerical notation;the most basic rule: make the script easy to read—do not make the reader work hard, do not make him flip back to earlier pages to check how a scene came about; "what you want to manipulate is the reader, not the film."
Milius: "I never write shot content, I never write 'we approach' or 'we can see'; that is extremely presumptuous. The format only needs to tell the reader day or night, interior or exterior, and the rest is like a novel—clear and definite, giving people an interest in reading."
Henson: if the format is incorrect no one will accept it; the reader first scans the first few pages and only reads the content if the format is right; "do not give anyone any reason not to read your script"; the script is the "blueprint" that guides production, and the audience does not read the script.
Walter's Principle 32:if you want others to treat you as a professional screenwriter, first hold yourself to professional standards; "as long as it looks like something a writer wrote" (Bork); if you faithfully observe the limits of image and sound, you can almost ignore format.
Diamond: read only scripts (good ones, bad ones, produced ones, unproduced ones); there are thousands of free scripts online; but Henson/Walter warn: most online are shot-by-shot shooting scripts, so do not imitate their shot terminology.

2. Hard format rules (Henson/Walter/Hicks/Hochstetler/Diamond combined)

Font and page count: Courier 12 (one page ≈ one minute); 100–110 pages ideal, 90–120 acceptable, <80 amateurish, >125 "everyone thinks you cannot write," 130 out of control; do not change the font size to cheat the page count.
Cover: write only the title and author (if unsigned by an agent, contact information may be added); do not write the date, draft number, WGA registration number, "original screenplay," or illustrations; two brass brads.
Page numbersfrom the top right corner of the second page; do not mark scene numbers, do not write "to be continued"; "FADE IN:" only at the beginning, "FADE OUT" only at the end.
Scene headings: INT./EXT. + location + DAY/NIGHT, in capitals; from general to specific ("INT. LAMBO FIELD, LOCKER ROOM—DAY"); details (date, time) go in action paragraphs; you may write "late night" or "evening" to help the reader understand.
Action paragraphs: Present tense, active voice ("Joe is taken by Paul" → "Paul takes Joe"); like a list, not a description; time, season, weather first, then location and physical characteristics; write only what the camera can photograph and the actor can perform ("she stands there thinking" cannot be photographed); delete adjectives and adverbs; capitalize characters on first appearance with age; capitalize props and synthesized sound effects (to remind the production manager and sound recordist); write only sound effects whose source is unseen (thunder, telephone ring, dog barking off-screen); double-space between paragraphs, "a page of script is not a wall of text."
Never mention the camera: no CU/POV/cut/dissolve/"we see/hear"; suggest shots through text (scene heading = wide shot, flag = medium shot, Darren walks to the microphone = close-up); the end of each scene is naturally a cut, do not write "cut to" (removing it can save ten pages); fade in, fade out, and dissolve are all caps in the rare cases they are needed; P.O.V. only where necessary, such as binoculars or subjective shots.
Write only master scenes(master scene): a dramatized plot with continuity of thought and action may involve multiple locations (George and Martha argue from the living room to the bedroom door to the French windows and it is still one scene, "INT. GEORGE AND MARTHA'S HOUSE"); a spy meeting at a hot dog stand is written only as a wide shot plus necessary details; breaking down shots is the editor's job.
Dialogue: a left-aligned narrow column starting about 2.5 inches from the left edge of the page and about 3.5 inches wide (not centered on the page; Hansen's original book's "3 inches from the left margin, 3.25 inches wide" is another way of measuring the same column), full page specifications are in the next section; character names in all caps; do not break across pages (interrupt with action or another character's interjection, or if absolutely necessary "(CONTINUED)"); dialogue extending past the page = "Hamlet syndrome"; parentheticals ≤3 words, verbs only (smiling/tense), 99% unnecessary, exception when a scene with multiple people requires specifying to whom it is said; no underlining for emphasis, no exclamation points, ellipses once or twice is fine, a third time is too many; (OS) off-screen dialogue and (VO) voice-over should be avoided as much as possible; do not write dialect phonetically; dialogue must be a sentence, not a moan or grunt ("S. or N.").
Character introductions: give only gender and age (Walter); describe with abstract characteristic action ("a dry, shriveled face like a dried-out persimmon"), do not write height, weight, or skin color unless the whole requires it; do not write a cast list, character biographies, or casting suggestions; names indicate gender, avoid homophones and same initials.
Basis for transitions: change of location or time, addition or removal of characters, change of dramatic purpose.
Special effectsWrite only what the audience sees; for montage, first consider avoiding it, but as a tool to simplify a complex continuous scene, you may write "chase" and list prominent features (shrinking thirteen pages to one-fifth of a page).
Flashbacks: ideally do not write the word "flashback"; if worried the reader will not understand, you may label it "EXT. BARN - FLASHBACK"—"a similar kind of cheating"; cheating (indicating this is the boss/these two are sisters) can be done naturally and sparingly; "gentle reminders" ("Janey, the woman we saw earlier vandalizing the vending machine at the laundromat") are allowed.
Email submission: PDF, not Word; do not indicate it was written specifically for television.
Spelling and punctuation: be an old pedant, use a paper dictionary; "I have never seen a script with sparkling dialogue and unforgettable characters that was a mess in format, spelling, grammar, and punctuation."

II-2. Page specifications, element-level conventions, and output format

The numbers in this section come from actual measurements of multiple professionally typeset scripts (US Letter, Courier 12) and the Final Draft default template; element-level conventions and Chinese and Japanese industry formats are common industry practice,19 source books not from this skill(proposed for inclusion via issue #2). For examples, see reference.md Section 10.

Format specification table (US Letter, Courier 12: 10 characters per inch, 6 lines per inch)

Element	Distance from left edge of page	Width / right stop	Notes
Page margins	Left 1.5", right 1.0", top 1.0", bottom 1.0"	About 55 lines per page	The wider left margin is for binding
Scene heading	1.5" (flush left)	To 7.5", about 60 characters	All caps; two blank lines before (some templates use one)
Action paragraph	1.5" (flush left)	6.0" wide, about 60 characters	One blank line between paragraphs
Character name	3.7" (about character position 22)	Not centered, fixed indent	Followed by extension (V.O.)/(O.S.)/(CONT'D)
Parenthetical	3.1"	About 2.0" wide	Single line, mainly verbs
Dialogue	2.5"	3.5" wide (to 6.0"), about 35 characters	Left-aligned narrow column, single-spaced within the column
Transition	Right-aligned to 7.5"	Starts at about 6.0"	`CUT TO:` All caps with a colon
Page number	Upper right corner, 7.0"–7.5", 0.5" from the top	Formatted as `2.`	From the second page onward

The conversion of one page ≈ one minute is built on this table; changing any item will distort the page count.

How to count a "page" for a Chinese-language draft (this point is independent of medium: it is the difference between Chinese and English layout, not between film and series)

The table above is a Western-language layout in US Letter + Courier 12.Chinese is not 10 characters per inch monospaced, there is no 3.7″ indent for character names, and all the premises of the whole table do not hold, so "one page ≈ one minute" cannot be directly used to count pages of a Chinese-language draft. Chinese-language scripts have no page-count standard, only a character-count standard, and yet clients, platforms, and all kinds of writing guides speak in terms of "pages." Convert uniformly according to the following chain,and when using it, you must state that it is a converted page：

"N pages" is first read as "N minutes of screen time"。
Chinese character count per minute:For dialogue-heavy material, use 370–400 characters/minute; for material with a lot of action and reaction (suspense, action, single-camera comedy), use 270–330 characters/minute。For the lowest band: for drafts consisting mainly of long stretches of silent action (silent-film-style passages, long-take action scenes, Ozu-style offscreen events), use 230–260 characters/minute—on such scripts, 270 is still too high and will systematically underestimate actual shooting duration. When using this band,you must state the conversion basis in the deliverable(which scenes are counted as silent action, character count ÷ characters per minute = converted pages).
Converted pages = non-blank character count ÷ characters per minute.

Both feature films and series use this rule: a 100-minute feature at 330 characters/minute is about 33,000 characters; a 45-minute series episode is about 15,000 characters; a 28-minute half-hour episode is about 9,200 characters.Do not go borrow this chain from the series skill, and do not treat the character count for one format as the standard for another— the words-per-minute figure varies with dialogue density, not with the medium.

For sources and a more detailed breakdown (measured per-episode word counts for various types of domestic TV dramas), see sw-chinese-series-practice; that gives the specific numbers for series, while the conversion principle is here.

Element-level conventions

(V.O.): the speaker is not within the scene space — narration, the other end of a phone call, a recording, interior monologue.(O.S.): within the scene space but off-screen (the next room, outside the door). TV scripts often use (O.C.), equivalent to O.S. Use it sparingly, but when you do, it must be written correctly.
(CONT'D): when the same character's dialogue continues after being interrupted by an action paragraph, add after the character name; when crossing pages, add at the bottom of the page (MORE), and after the character name on the next page (CONT'D)— writing software adds this automatically; for handwritten drafts, it is better to adjust the page break.
(PRE-LAP): sound from the next scene enters before the end of the current scene.(INTO PHONE) / (ON PHONE) as a parenthetical; when the person on the other end of the phone is not visible, use (V.O.), and (FILTERED) may be added.
Dual dialogue(dual dialogue): two people speaking at the same time, in two side-by-side columns; in Fountain, add after the second character name ^。
Montage / series of shots：MONTAGE - 标题 to start, with each item on one line beginning with -- , and ending withEND MONTAGE or BACK TO SCENE ;SERIES OF SHOTS works the same way. Still follow the earlier "avoid it if you can" principle.
Cross-cutting：INTERCUT - 甲地 / 乙地 after that, switch freely without rewriting the scene heading.
Flashback: scene heading prefix FLASHBACK - or wrap with BEGIN FLASHBACK / END FLASHBACK .
Subtitles：SUPER: "十八号"(within an action paragraph).
Sound effects and newly introduced charactersare fully capitalized within action paragraphs (English scripts); for Chinese scripts, use bold or no marking, consistently throughout one draft.

Output format contract: Fountain

Scripts produced by the agentare delivered by default as Fountain plain text（.fountain), not Markdown, not a txt file with hand-typed spaces. Reason: Fountain's elements correspond one-to-one with the table above, it can be version-controlled, and it can be rendered to PDF or exported to .fdx.

Core notation(full specification at fountain.io):

Title page: at the beginning of the file, Title: Credit: Author: Draft date: Contact: key-value pairs, then a blank line before the body.
Scene heading: lines beginning with INT. EXT. INT./EXT. I/E are automatically recognized; toforceit, use at the start of the line .(e.g. .内沈越家·客厅夜）。
Character name: an all-caps line preceded by a blank line is automatically recognized; toforceit, use at the start of the line @(e.g. @沈越). Extensions go directly after the name:@小七 (V.O.). For dual dialogue, add after the second character name ^。
Parenthetical: on the line below the character name, (……). Dialogue: the consecutive lines after the character name, ending with a blank line.
Transition: an all-caps line ending with TO: is automatically recognized; toforceit, use at the start of the line >(e.g. > 切至：). Centered:> 剧终 <。
Action: all other paragraphs; to force, use at the start of the line !. Page break ===; note [[…]]; discarded draft /* … */; section #; synopsis =; lyrics ~。

Chinese scripts must use forced notation: Fountain recognizes elements by capitalization and INT./EXT., and neither holds for Chinese; add to all scene headings ., and add to all character names @, add >to all transitions, otherwise the rendered output will be all action blocks.

Rendering paths: Fountain → PDF: afterwriting (command line), Beat (macOS, free), Highland, Slugline; Fountain → .fdx: Fade In, Final Draft import directly, or afterwriting export. Chinese rendering requires specifying a CJK monospaced font (Sarasa Mono, Noto Sans Mono CJK); Courier has no Chinese glyphs.

and sw-workflow integration: the Stage 5 deliverables follow the format—Hollywood style delivers a .fountain file, the Chinese scene-number system and Japanese style deliver plain text, and opera scripts follow the opera skill's format; story-bible records only the file name and page count.

Chinese film/TV scripts: the scene-number system

The standard structure of modern Chinese film/series industry drafts (details differ by company, but just stay consistent within one draft; see reference.md for examples):

Scene heading line：场号时内/外地点, e.g. 1. 日内沈越家·客厅; for series use 集-场（3-12). Use 日/夜/晨/黄昏 for time; there are two schools for the order, "日内" or "内日", choose one.
Character line(optional):人物：沈越、小七, list those who appear in this scene.
Action block: start of paragraph △(some also use ▲ or nothing), present tense, one action unit per paragraph.
Dialogue：人名：台词, parentheticals go after the character name 沈越（低声）：; voice-over is marked （OS）/（画外）, narration （VO）/（旁白）。
do not write transitions; flashbacks add （回忆）to the scene heading; subtitles are written 字幕：。
For series, one 40–45 minute episode is about 12,000–15,000 characters; the scene breakdown outline (one line per scene) is the predecessor of the scene-number system, the same thing as sw-story-structure 's step outline.
The scene-number systemdoes not use Fountain, deliver directly as plain text; before outputting, the agent should first ask the user whether they want Hollywood style or the scene-number system;when no one can be asked, set the default by language: projects with all-Chinese dialogue use the scene-number system, English projects use Hollywood style/Fountain, and state the format at the beginning of the deliverable. Do not stop just because you cannot ask。Opera scripts are the exception: this default applies only to film and series; the format for opera (Peking opera, Yu opera, Yue opera, Kunqu...) is singing/speech/stage business with ban-style or qupai markings, and uses neither the scene-number system nor Fountain, see sw-chinese-opera-banqiang Section 9,sw-chinese-opera-qupai。

Japanese scripts: hashira, togaki, serifu

柱 (hashira): scene heading,○地点（时间）, e.g. ○沈越の部屋・居間（夜）; the scene number can be written before ○ .
ト書き: action description, paragraph start indented three full-width characters; a character's first appearance is accompanied by age 沈越（３４）; passage of time uses 　　×　　×　　×; pauses are written （間）。
Dialogue：人物名「台词」, the character name is directly followed by full-width quotation marks, no colon; parentheticals are written after the name next to 小七（声）「…」；（Ｎ） narration,（Ｍ） monologue,（回想） added to the hashira.
Draft stage: 準備稿 → 改訂稿 → 決定稿, written on the cover; printing is vertical, a text file in horizontal is fine.
For the 企画書 (planning document) format see reference.md Section 9; it is a different kind of document from the script format.

Three, how to write action paragraphs well

McKee:absolute present tense + continuous vivid motion; specific nouns (spike is not a big nail), action verbs (pad/amble/stroll/mosey/saunter/stagger/tiptoe/creep/shuffle/waddle/trudge/lurch/hobble, not "move slowly");Never use is/are throughout("A mansion guards the head of the village"); the Hemingway method avoids Latin abstract words and adjectives and adverbs; metaphors must pass the test of "what is seen/heard on screen"; delete "we see/hear"; use single-spaced short paragraphs to suggest camera changes (wide shot -> tracking shot -> close-up of the note -> close-up of the ring -> medium shot).
Walter's symbols:Hwk?/See/Hear("This truth makes Charlene remember her mother's years of abuse"—how does the audience see it?);Ess. Det. Only / SIFYN(leave the pastrami aroma to your novel; the Hudson Valley feast -> "a lavish ball is being held on the lawn");Drekt/Akt(do not write "pauses and is thoughtful");Notnot(do not write "does not answer" or "does nothing");Prez("The room is empty" is not written as "everyone has left");Novry("very fast" -> races/runs/rushes);Conk(specific);No Tt(not like Tarzan's "picks up the gun. Walks to the window. Loads it.");4 v. 6(the ratio of words needed to words not needed; "cutting one hundred ten pages at this ratio will reduce it by fifty-six pages");Fmpmt(find the point, state the point, keep the story moving, "Harry left"—two words);NoFX(no centering, right alignment, italics, bold, or color);Clok(how much screen time does this passage take? Even a minute without drama is ponderous).
Hanson: for two weeks, every sentence at 10 words or fewer, delete conjunctions, subordinate clauses, adjectives, and adverbs, keep transitive verbs; "Pam folds clothes in the laundry room. The phone rings. Pam runs quickly to the kitchen and picks up the receiver. No one answers. Pam hangs up the phone."; learn concision from original drafts of filmed scripts (compare the two versions of Aliens II).
Diamond: "He reaches into his back pocket, takes out his wallet, takes out a 5-dollar bill, and gives it to her" -> "He takes out his wallet and hands her 5 dollars"; test: describe this scene to a friend, with no more detail than you would use when telling the story; do not do the director's, art department's, costume department's, or music department's work for them.
Hicks: write images, not pictures; "arouse the inner imagination, not describe the picture"; write action with cause and effect, a beginning, development, and ending, to give the reader a sense of rhythm (the snowmobile chase is a counterexample); expressive technique = the expression of context in tone; the first scene gives the reader a clue to how to read the script (the most common complaint in Hollywood is that scripts are misread).

IV. The process from idea to finished draft

Before writing

Bork 60/30/10: 60% of success depends on the core idea, 30% on structure, and 10% on expression; first write the idea as a one- or two-sentence logline plus a one-page summary to get objective feedback, and self-check with the seven elements of PROBLEM (see sw-premise-theme）。
Diamond process: three C's (character/concept/context) -> list of exemplar films -> one-page nine-step plot synopsis -> character action chart (tell each of the nine steps from every character's point of view) -> plot integration + transitional scenes + subplots + comic relief -> outline -> sequence -> script -> revision -> submission. "Do not start writing until the proposal/details/outline are settled with all parties."
Hanson: a statement of purpose (theme -> basic action + purpose sentence) plus a three-sentence dramatic premise (disturbing event / first-act hook / second-act hook, each with its core question) written on one sheet of paper as an outline; if writing does not go smoothly = there is a hole in the conception or you have been led astray by a subplot.
Walter: Outline ≠ synopsis (a synopsis robs the pleasure, and a synopsis of an unfinished script is not taken seriously); writing an outline "is like holding steam in a bucket" and is the most arduous and most necessary task; the outline should contain some specific dialogue;Principle 44: The outline is in the past tense; the script is in the present tense—"The real problem is not deviating but following the track"; scene cards (numbered index cards, about sixty scenes, each scene a mini-movie in itself) facilitate experimentation; when stuck at two-thirds of the way through, go back and remake the story into cards.
McKee: "from the inside out": during six months, spend the first four months writing 3×5 cardsStep outline(one or two sentences per scene, with the structural position marked on the back; the purpose is to destroy your own work, sketching a dozen versions of a scene and then discarding them) →Talk about the story for ten minutesObserve the listener's eyes →Treatment(60–90 pages, described moment by moment in the present tense, without dialogue, writing out the subtext) →Script(five to ten pages a day, dialogue is at its best at this point). Skipping the process and writing the script directly = a fake treatment, and also the slowest method; "premature dialogue writing stifles creativity."
Field's card method: one day for Act One, two days for Act Two, one day for Act Three; first make the four sections of beginning / two plot points / ending.
Hicks's draft chain: sofa writing → outline ("observation sketch") → prose treatment (present tense) → first draft incorporating everything (at least a hundred pages, more than one draft) → revised draft (delete actor directions, delete furniture, change to simple present tense, proofread) → agent draft (show only to critics who understand scripts) → market draft.
Hoxter:Outlinefor yourself (scene by scene, according to the act structure you are using);Sample(treatment) for buyers (prose, written in the tone of the film, a comedy sample should be funny, 4–30 pages); an example of August's paragraph outline for Big Fish. Diamond: a proposal document is best kept under 20 minutes; you cannot sell the details of a narrative form, the mainstream only buys a complete script.

Writing habits

Tommy Thompson: "put your clothes on properly every day"; Walter's Principle 41:Writer's block is the natural state of writing, "a writer does not have the right to write only when he feels like it"; Principle 42: the final deadline is the writer's friend; Principle 43: do not let the pursuit of perfection become a stumbling block; "where a writer writes matters less than what he writes"; each day revise one page from the previous day before writing new material, and do not revise from the beginning every day (the beginning is like brass and the back end is loose); Coppola literally turns each page face down and does not revise until he has finished writing.
Field: two or three hours a day, four days a week, three pages a day; "if you hesitate, then write"; when in doubt, make the first draft longer rather than shorter (180–200 pages); write it down in three stages (6–8 weeks) → compress to 130–140 pages → polish; when stuck, ask "what happens next," go back to the character biographies, write one scene five times from five angles.
Hoxter: start a new scene before wrapping up each day; you do not have to write in order; for major changes, revise the outline first; write it in one go. Diamond: "more haste, less speed"; before starting, allow yourself a day or two of procrastination to clear your mind; each day reread what you wrote the day before.
Bork: find ideas by making long lists and cross-pairing them, 15 minutes a day, quantity first and selection later.

Revision

Walter's Principle 46:Real writing, especially film writing, is revision; "Okay, but..." responding to the producer's demands; Principle 47: Learn to love cutting; Principle 48: When in doubt, throw it out; Experiment (confirming the need to discard is also success); Keep the anger in the script.
Diamond: The first draft "no normal person would buy it"; big concept first (the three Cs, the argument, genre expectations), then details;The Mrs. Thomas style of revision(each minor character has a unique perspective and voice, cast them in your head); cutting: trim the head and tail ("a scene only truly begins once a clear goal is introduced and is supported or obstructed"), cut aimless scenes, delete two or three lines per page without losing power (in "Guam to the Moon" several hours of cuts removed five pages and the director couldn't tell), pace matters more than page count; don't show it to industry people before you've done your best.
Hokst: technical check (typos, formatting, consistency) → creative check (tighten description, unify voice) → go through item by item against the goal (Act Two is usually the problem); save every version; print it out to revise; mark the arc against the outline.
Hansen: use a checklist for character bios; if six people read it and five like it, it's safe; if five say it's weak, start over.
Field: a "best scenes" file; "if you're not sure whether a scene works, it probably doesn't"; show it to two friends who will tell the truth, not four.

V. Adaptation

Field: "Apples and Oranges"—an adapted screenplay = an original screenplay that takes the source material as its starting point; it need not be faithful to the original, only to "the integrity of the source material"; "All the President's Men" ends halfway through the original book; Coppola was faithful to "Gatsby" word for word → "a visually magnificent failure"; novels write inner life, drama writes language, screenplays write external situations; when adapting a stage play, visualize the events mentioned in the dialogue; in historical drama the characters need not be accurate but the events and outcomes must be; for a biopic choose only a few events (the female editor uses that news story as the hook); journalism moves from the particular to the general, screenplays from the general to the particular; the disaster novel begins on page 278 with the glacier measurement, and Act Three is entirely new.
McKee: Principle One—the purer the novel (inner conflict) and the purer the drama (personal conflict), the worse the film; choose works with conflict on three levels and an emphasis on personal-versus-external ("The Bridge on the River Kwai"); method: read the original over and over without taking notes until you "smell the cologne," reduce each event to a sentence or two, ask "is this a well-told story" (nine times out of ten it isn't); Principle Two—be willing to recreate: rearrange time, step outline, cut scenes, add scenes, find visual expression for inner conflict; Foreman: "give birth to your child a second time"; "the camera cannot film thought"; novelists give their best language to the narrator rather than to scene dialogue, so to adapt you must reinvent from the inside out.
Hokst's four questions: Do you have the rights (if not, don't do it)? Can it be made into a film (visual)? What is the specificity of the original medium (the panels and pages of a comic)? Can its thematic symbolic system be borrowed? Method: first write an outline by "copying it as is," then trim.
Bock adapting true events: Reality does not have story structure; it must be organized, edited, manipulated, exaggerated, and fictionalized; two main problems—why the goal matters and how difficult the process is ("a perilous process" makes the film); the airport in "Argo" had no actual battle; Jost's method: become familiar with the material → decide what story to tell → write it in one go → go back and check against the research.
Hicks on true stories: consult a lawyer first, have the principal subject sign a "Life Story Option Agreement"; "don't assume that just because you're writing about your sister or uncle you automatically have the rights"; public figures have rights, and for non-public figures the right to privacy is extremely important.
Walter: Adapting a bestselling novel is often disappointing (film cannot properly handle fantasy; you can count the buttons on a shirt but cannot match the mind's shifting ideas); "invent sweet lies rather than the truth."
The Army's material-revision method learns five Shakespearean techniques (raise the thoughts of secondary characters, reposition the antagonist, strengthen the protagonist's intelligence and cut their forbearance, patch plausibility holes and incidentally write character, reset the ending so all characters stand on one line and wrap up rapidly), see sw-premise-theme。
Adapting into a series(novel/IP/true events/foreign drama → expansion direction for a long series) andsegment adaptation(finished film → compression direction for an 8–20 minute stage segment) are two opposite crafts, see sw-chinese-series-practice the two adaptation sections (Zhang Wei's five-source typology and "selling-point migration," Zhao Binbin's four rules and main-scene merging); for the engine judgment of series adaptation see sw-series-engine-bible。

VI. Diagnostic Checklist (divided into four groups by format)

First determine the format, then run the checklist. The old version's checklist was written entirely for Hollywood feature films; anyone writing in the Chinese scene-number system who runs it item by item will fail almost every item—that is not a problem with the draft, it is the wrong checklist. Now it is divided into four groups:Group A is run for all three formats; Groups B/C/D are run only for the one you actually use.

A. General (independent of format and medium, run for all three)

Action paragraphs: present tense, active voice, no is/are, concrete nouns and action verbs, no camera terminology, no "we see," no unfilmable inner states such as "thinks/remembers/realizes," no negations such as "does not answer," and each sentence ideally ≤10 words?
How many seconds does each action paragraph occupy on screen? Is it worth the audience paying for? Does it have purpose, value, and is it the best way to tell this (3 Strikes)?
The logic of scene headings(regardless of which format it is written in): are all elements present, moving from general to specific, with details such as time and date placed in action paragraphs rather than in the heading?
The craft of dialogue: no dialect transliteration, no hemming and hawing or groans, no reliance on punctuation for emphasis (underlining, exclamation marks, a third ellipsis), parentheticals ≤3 words and only verbs and deleted in 99% of cases?
Character introductions: give only gender, age, and one distinctive action; no character list, character biography, or casting suggestions?
Write only the main scene? Can montage be avoided, or compressed into "one subject + several salient features"? Is flashback kept to a minimum, and will readers not mistake the time and space?
Before writingis there a one-page synopsis / statement of theme / dramatic premise / character action chart / step outline? Have you talked it over with someone for ten minutes?
Handling a treatment or outlinedoes it contain subtext but no dialogue? Which step did the document chain skip, and why?
Revisionis it big concept first, details second? Have you cut the head and tail? Does each secondary character have their own voice? Does pace take priority over page count?
Adaptation: at which level does the original material's conflict mainly lie? What has been reinvented? Have the rights/option been signed? Have you found the true event's "why it matters" and "the perilous process"?
Length: which conversion is used? Has the Chinese draft been calculated according to the two-of-two conversion chain (word count ÷ words per minute = converted pages) and declared in the deliverable?
Is the format consistent throughout the whole draft?? Are two formats mixed (for example, scene lines using the scene-number system, action paragraphs using the Hollywood style)?

B. Hollywood style (spec/Fountain, English draft)

Does the cover have only the title and author? No scene numbers, date, draft number, registration number?Courier 12? Page count 90–120？
Does the layout match the table in 2-2 (left 1.5″, dialogue starting at 2.5″ and 3.5″ wide, character names at 3.7″, transitions right-aligned)?
Character's first appearanceall capswith age? Props and synthesized sound effects in caps?
Dialoguedoes not break across pages; across pages there is (MORE) / (CONT'D)？
(V.O.) and (O.S.) used correctly(not within the scene space / within the space but off-screen)?
Throughoutno mention of the camera, no writing "cut to" (the end of each scene is naturally a cut)?
What is delivered is .fountain plain text, not Markdown, not Word?

C. Chinese scene-number system (Chinese film and TV industry draft)

Scene lines written as 场号时内/外地点(for series, written as 集-场)? The two schools "day interior" or "interior day"choose one and keep it consistent throughout the draft？
Action paragraphs consistently use △(or consistently use ▲, or consistently add nothing)?
Dialogue written as 人名：台词, with parentheticals placed after the character name (沈越（低声）：）？
Voice-over and narration use （OS）/（画外）、（VO）/（旁白）, one way of writing throughout the draft?
No transitions, no camera terminology? Flashbacks add in the scene line（回忆）? Subtitles written字幕：？
Word count within range (a 40–45 minute episode is about 12,000–15,000 characters; other lengths calculated by the conversion chain in 2-2)? Does the dialogue proportion match the genre?
What is delivered isplain text(not using Fountain, not using Markdown notation)?
Are you mistakenly using Hollywood hard rules to judge your own work (Courier 12, 90–120 pages, all-caps character names)—these rules do not hold for Chinese drafts？

D. Japanese style (hashira, togaki, serifu)

Hashira written as ○地点・细部（时间）, scene number before ○ ?
Togaki paragraph indentedthree full-width characters? Character's first appearance with age (沈越（３４））？
Serifu written as 人物名「台词」(directly followed by full-width quotation marks after the name,no colon)? Parentheticals written after the name?
Time passage uses 　　×　　×　　×? Pauses written（間）？
Narration （Ｎ）, monologue （Ｍ）, recollection （回想） marked where they should be marked?
Draft number written on the cover (preparation draft → revised draft → final draft)?

What if the format is not decided

Use the defaults from 2-2:projects with all-Chinese dialogue use the scene-number system, English projects use Hollywood style/Fountain, Japanese style is used only when explicitly requested; opera scripts are not included here and follow the format of the opera skill; and state the format and conversion method in one sentence at the beginning of the deliverable.Do not stop just because there is no one to ask.

VII. Workflow: From idea to submittable draft

One or two lines of logline + one page of synopsis → find three people to give feedback on the idea (Bork/Diamond "I have to have this" or "okay, I get it").
Three Cs + example film list + one-page nine-step outline + thesis (theme).
Statement of purpose and dramatic premise (Hanson); character action chart (Diamond); three-dimensional profile (see sw-character-conflict）。
Step outline/scene cards (McKee/Field/Walter): one or two lines per scene, mark value shifts; plot integration + transitions + subplots + placement of set pieces.
Talk about the story for ten minutes; work on the treatment (no dialogue, with subtext) or a prose treatment.
First draft: count pages per day, better too long than too short, do not go back and revise more than the previous page.
Revised draft: cut director's instructions, furniture, adjectives and adverbs; change to present tense; cut two or three lines per page; trim the beginning and end; Mrs. Thomas-style revision; technical check.
Agent draft: only give it to critics who understand scripts; six people read it, five like it.
Market draft: PDF; minimalist cover; WGA registration (not written on the cover).