What's the best way to put blog text in a screenplay format?

  • Unknown's avatar
    justmereart · Member ·

    I blog now and then about screenwriting techniques, which means it’s often useful to be able to refer to lines of dialogue in screenplay format. So far, I’ve just been saving these examples as pictures and posting them into my blog posts – however, this is problematic when people share the posts via Facebook, as the thumbnail sometimes ends up as one of these snippets of dialogue, instead of a proper picture.

    Is there a recommended way for a WordPress.com user to put words in a screenplay format. I’m thinking I might have to do this all via HTML, since I can’t add the plug-in that works with WordPress.org blogs. I was just wondering whether anyone had already created this HTML coding.

    Thanks, James

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    justpi · Member ·

    Yes, you need coding in the so-called “Text” editor. If you only mean typewriter-like font, centered character names, and left-aligned lines, you can do it this way: 

    <div style="font-family:Courier New;">
<p style="text-align:center;margin-bottom:0;">NAME HERE</p>
LINE HERE
<p style="text-align:center;margin-bottom:0;">OTHER NAME HERE</p>
LINE HERE
[ETC]
</div>

    Do you also want the excerpts to be narrower than full width, and/or enclosed in a border (like the image I saw on one of your recent posts)?

  • Unknown's avatar
    justmereart · Member ·

    Thank you very much, Justpi. I’ve adapted what you sent to me, so that it fits the standard screenplay measurements (at least, for names and dialogue). Here it is:


    <div style="font-family:Courier New;">
    <p style="margin-left:42.3%;margin-bottom:0;">CHARACTER 1</p>
    <p style="margin-left:30.2%;margin-right:33.5%;">1's Dialogue</p>
    <p style="margin-left:42.3%;margin-bottom:0;">CHARACTER 2</p>
    <p style="margin-left:30.2%;margin-right:33.5%;">2's Dialogue</p>
    [ETC]
    </div>

    I hope this might be useful to anyone, although remember that things like action and parentheses haven’t been specified with this coding.

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