Lazy Bee Scripts 
Formatting Lines of Speech    

• The character's name should appear at the start of every paragraph of speech.
• It should appear in Title Case (not all in capitals)
• It should be the same all the way through the script
• The character name should, if possible, be short whilst avoiding excessive use of initials.  (For example, "Fairy Godmother" can be conveniently abbreviated to "Fairy" if there are no other fairies in your script, or to "Godmother" if there are no other Godmothers.)
• Put a colon after the speaker's name.  (Let me put this another way, the first character after the speaker's name should always be a colon.)  Then put a single tab.  Now you're ready to start the speech.
• If a speech is interrupted by a stage direction which applies to other characters (which, by definition, is placed on its own line), then when the speech resumes, the speaker's name should be restated.
• We will put the speaker's name in bold.  (If you wish to do that, that's fine!)

• The general rule is that one speech should form one paragraph.  A paragraph ends with a "return".  (So if you hit the return key before the end of a speech, then you are doing something wrong!)
• If you want lines of speech after the first line (the one with the Character's Name) to be indented, then you need to set this up as a Paragraph style with a "Hanging Indent".  (If you don't know how to do this, and you can't understand your Word Processor's help on the subject, then don't try to achieve the same effect by any combination of returns, tabs or spaces.  It will mess your text up when we reformat it, and we will get really cross.
• Exceptions to the "one speech, one paragraph" rule are:-
• Lines of verse (where it is normal to put in a return at the end of each line),
• Those occasions where a speech is interrupted by a stage direction which applies to other characters (which, by definition, is placed on its own line, in which case the speech resumes with a new paragraph, with a restatement of the speaker's name), and
• Long monologues, where it is necessary to break a single speech into multiple paragraphs.

• If your speech contains numbers, write them out in words instead of numerals
• This is a much more explicit way of telling the actors how you want them to say the lines, and it looks much better on the page
• This is clearest if you talk about large numbers and currency amounts.  How do you want the actor to say $1140.50?  English people would tend to say "One thousand one hundred and forty dollars and fifty cents."  Americans tend to omit the "and", and have a greater tendency to group hundreds rather than thousands, thus "Eleven hundred forty dollars, fifty".  Which do you want your character to say?  Do you want them to say dollars or bucks?  Fifty, or fifty cents?  Use words to make yourself clear
• The only significant exception is years, where writing 1945 is okay, unless you write it at the beginning of a sentence, where it looks horrible.

• If you want a speaker to stress a particular word or phrase, then indicate it by using italics.  (That's all.  Just italics.)  Don't use italics in speeches or stage directions for any other purpose.
• If you want a character to shout, then either use a stage direction - (shouting) - or use UPPER CASE.  In my opinion, the former is better, because the intention is clearer
• Distinguish between emphasis and shouting.  Almost any word in a sentence can be stressed.  Shouting tends to be whole phrases, words at the ends of sentences or single word sentences (usually a name, a command or a curse!)

• The first rule is to aim for self-consistency 
• All questions, even rhetorical questions should end in a question mark
• If you want a speech to tail off, or to be interrupted, use a row of three dots (...)  More than three does not add meaning, two just looks like a mistake.
• If an exclamation is interrupted, then the exclamation mark should come before the dots.  (The dots indicate a tailing off or a silence, and you can't exclaim silence.)
• Dashes can be used as hyphens in word-concatenation, or they can be used in conjunction with one space either side - this sort of thing - to separate words.  Make sure you use each one deliberately!  (Using more than one dash in a row is meaningless.)
• The semicolash is meaningless;- don't use it.
• Multiple exclamation marks and question marks don't add anything.  One is enough.  If you want to convey more information about the way a line is to be said, then use a stage direction.

• Put the character names on separate lines!  (Never put a list of characters on one line, such as "Jane and Fred:  What?")
• After the speaker's name, but a colon, a tab and a curly bracket - I mean one of these }
• If two or more speakers say the same thing, then put the stage direction (Together) after the } on the first speaker's line and start the speech after the } on the last speaker's line.
• If two or more speakers say different things at the same time, then if they are long speeches, it may be useful to add the stage direction (At the same time as <speaker>.) after the }at the start of each line

Example of people speaking together