Screenplay vs teleplay format — what actually changes

Screenplay format and teleplay format share the same DNA — Courier 12pt, the same five elements, the same one-page-per- minute math. What changes is structure: act breaks, page counts, and a small set of TV-only conventions (TEASER, COLD OPEN, TAG, ACT OUT). The differences are narrow but they matter, and most writers I know get half of them wrong on their first pilot.

This post is the working reference. If you've read How to format a screenplay, you already have the foundation. Here's what changes when you write for television.

What is a teleplay?

A teleplay is a script for a television episode. The format descends from screenplay format because the early TV writers in the 1950s were borrowed film writers. The structural differences came from the medium itself — TV is interrupted by ad breaks, episodes need to land at a fixed length, and characters carry over between weeks.

Hour-long single-camera teleplay

The dominant prestige format. Used by every cable / streaming drama from The Sopranos onward — Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Succession, Severance, The Last of Us. Single-camera means the show is shot like a movie, one camera at a time, with coverage. The format is essentially screenplay format with act breaks.

• Page count:55–65 pages. Network hour TV (The Good Doctor, Law & Order) skews 50–58 because ad breaks eat runtime; cable/streaming (HBO, AMC, Apple) skews 60–66.
• Acts: Network hour is traditionally five acts (teaser + four), with each act break engineered to land before a commercial. Cable/streaming hour is structurally more like a one-act movie — sometimes labelled as a single ACT ONE, sometimes unlabelled. The Sopranos pilot has no act breaks at all.
• Teaser: Three to six pages before the title card. Cold open (no title yet) on most network drama, standalone scene on most prestige drama.

TEASER

FADE IN:

INT. PSYCHIATRIST'S OFFICE — DAY

A waiting room with bad lighting. A man in his
forties — TONY SOPRANO — sits across from a
woman in a chair.

                                              END OF TEASER

That END OF TEASER line is mandatory in network scripts because it tells the line producer where the commercial inserts. Cable/streaming scripts often skip it.

Half-hour single-camera teleplay

The format used by Atlanta, The Bear, Barry, Fleabag, Reservation Dogs, Ramy. Pages run 28–34 — closer to a short film than a sitcom. Sluglines, action, and dialogue all use the standard screenplay grammar.

• Acts:Two acts is the modern default (one break, mid-episode). Some shows write three. Atlanta's earlier scripts ran as a single ACT ONE.
• Cold open: Optional. The Bear uses one most weeks, Atlanta rarely.
• Tag: A short scene after the final commercial — a button, a punchline, a hook into next week. Used by some showrunners and not others.

For more on cold opens specifically — what they're structurally doing, when to use one — see How to write a cold open.

Half-hour multi-camera teleplay

The traditional sitcom format. Used by Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld, Frasier, The Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon. Shot in front of a live audience on a soundstage with three or four cameras running simultaneously. The format looks meaningfully different from a single-cam.

• Page count: 40–55 pages. Higher than single-cam because multi-cam scripts are double-spaced for dialogue and use ALL CAPS for action.
• Action in CAPS: All action lines are uppercase, single-spaced. Dialogue is mixed-case and double-spaced.
• Scene letters: Scenes are lettered (SCENE A, SCENE B, SCENE C…) rather than numbered.
• Two acts: Almost always two acts plus a tag. Acts are explicitly labelled — ACT ONE / ACT TWO.

SCENE A

FADE IN:

INT. CENTRAL PERK — DAY

(ROSS, CHANDLER, AND JOEY ENTER. THEY SIT IN
THE BIG ORANGE COUCH. RACHEL APPROACHES WITH
A COFFEEPOT.)

                    ROSS

          So I have something to tell you.

                    CHANDLER

          Could there BE a worse opening line?

The TV-only conventions

TEASER and ACT breaks

Acts are labelled in caps, centred, on their own line. END OF ACT ONE is right-aligned at the bottom of the page where the act break lands.

                    ACT TWO

FADE IN:

INT. KITCHEN — NIGHT

...

                                            END OF ACT TWO

TAG

A short scene after the last act. Labelled TAG like an act header. Common in network half-hour (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Office), rare in prestige drama, situational in streaming half-hour.

COLD OPEN vs TEASER

Often used interchangeably. Strictly: a cold open is a teaser without the title card running yet. The West Wing opens cold every week; Breaking Bad opens cold; The Sopranos plays the title card immediately, so its opening is a teaser, not a cold open.

Title page differences

TV title pages add three things:

• Episode title in addition to the show title — the show title goes top-centre, the episode title beneath it.
• "Created by" vs "Written by". The series creator gets a permanent "created by" credit on every episode title page; the episode writer gets "written by". If you're writing a spec of an existing show, use the real creator's name and your own "written by".
• Episode number. Format is 102 for Season 1 Episode 2 — a three-digit code where the first digit is the season, the next two the episode.

What stays exactly the same

Most of the format. Sluglines (slugline rules), MORE/CONT'D conventions (MORE and CONT'D), revision marks (revision marks), 12pt Courier, page numbers in the top-right, parentheticals in lowercase. All identical.

Spec script vs production draft

A spec script — what you write to land an agent, a manager, or a staffing job — is cleaner than a production draft. No scene numbers. No revision colours. No camera direction. Just the script. A production draft, by contrast, locks scene numbers (which then carry their original numbering through every revision) and rotates through coloured pages as revisions land.

If you're submitting a sample, write a spec draft.

Most-asked questions

Is a teleplay double-spaced?

Multi-camera teleplays are double-spaced for dialogue and use uppercase for action. Single-camera teleplays use standard screenplay spacing — single-spaced everywhere except between elements.

Do you write FADE IN: in a teleplay?

Yes — at the start of the script (above the TEASER or ACT ONE label), and after every act break. FADE IN: marks the start of a continuous block of action.

How many pages is a TV pilot?

Half-hour single-cam: 28–34. Half-hour multi-cam: 40–55. Hour: 55–65. The longer end skews prestige; the shorter end skews network. Don't pad to hit a number — readers can tell.