Arabic screenplay format: the industry standards

Format is not decoration. It is the language a producer, director and line producer read your script in — and the first thing you are judged on, before a single line of your dialogue is read.

Why does format matter at all?

Because a properly formatted screenplay carries timing information: one page is roughly one minute of screen time. Budgets and shooting schedules have rested on this rule for decades. Hand over a 95-page script and a producer instantly knows they are looking at about an hour and a half, and can estimate shooting days and cost before reading a word.

Write in an ordinary font with arbitrary margins and that information is gone — the reader has to guess. Usually they will not guess. They will put the script down.

And if you have not written your first screenplay yet, start with the step-by-step guide to writing a screenplay, then come back here when you are ready to deliver.

The core specifications

These are not matters of taste. They are settled industry standards:

• Font: Courier at 12 point. It is monospaced, so every character takes the same width — which is exactly what makes the page-per-minute rule reliable.
• Page size: Letter in the American market, A4 across most Arab and European production. Pick one and keep it for the whole script.
• Margins: one inch top and bottom, one and a half on the binding side. In Arabic the binding side is the right.
• Line spacing: single inside a paragraph, one blank line between elements.
• Page numbers: at the top, starting from page two. The title page is never numbered.

The six screenplay elements

Every line in a screenplay belongs to one of six elements, and each element has a fixed position on the page. That consistency is what lets a reader scan a page effortlessly:

What changes in Arabic?

The standards are universal, but writing direction flips the whole page. In an Arabic screenplay:

• Text runs right to left, and the wider margin moves to the right because that is the binding side.
• Transitions align left — the exact opposite of English.
• Character names and dialogue stay centred; centring has no direction.
• English terms inside action lines (equipment names, brands) stay in English and run left to right inside the Arabic line — and this is where ordinary word processors fail most often.

Five mistakes that get scripts rejected

1. Describing what cannot be seen. “He remembers his childhood and feels regret” cannot be filmed. Write what the camera catches: what does he do? where does he look?
2. Too many parentheticals. If every line needs a delivery note, the problem is the dialogue, not the actor.
3. Directing the camera. “Close on her face” is the director’s job. Write the event and leave directing to its owner — unless the shot is essential to understanding the story.
4. Long blocks of action. Four straight lines is a wall. Break it up — one visual idea per paragraph.
5. Inconsistent formatting. Margins that shift between scenes suggest an unrevised draft, and break the timing estimate.

How to follow all this without thinking about it

Nobody writes a screenplay while measuring margins. The answer is to let the software handle format so you can stay in the story. Risha was built for Arabic from the ground up: one keystroke turns a line into the right element in its standard position, and the editor handles direction, margins and page numbers, then exports a standards-compliant PDF.