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.