Week 3: From story to screenplay

Turning a premise into scenes — screenplay form, dialogue versus action, and the director's intent behind a line

8 March 2027

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A logline and a premise say what happens. A screenplay has to say it in a form specific enough that a director can add a note to it — and last week’s premise for “Before It Stops” ends on a moment neither of those forms can carry: on the last ring before the call would go to voicemail, she finally accepts and says “Hey,” then listens. That’s a playable action, not a sentence of prose. This week is about the form that holds it, and the note that tells someone how to play it.

What you’ll be able to do after this lecture#

By the end of this lecture you should be able to:

• write one scene in standard screenplay form — slugline, action, dialogue — without describing a feeling directly in either column
• given a moment that needs directing, write an intent note that names the concrete antecedent circumstance behind it, not an adjective describing the desired mood
• tell an antecedent-circumstance note apart from an adjective note, in someone else’s writing as well as your own

Form exists so you don’t have to say how it feels#

Screenplay form has three moving parts, and each one has a job:

• a slugline (INT./EXT., location, time) fixes where and when, so nothing later has to re-establish it
• an action line writes what a camera can actually see — a body doing something, an object changing state — never a feeling, an intention, or a metaphor
• dialogue is what a character is willing to say out loud, which is usually not what they mean

The blank space around the page matters as much as the words on it: form that’s dense with description is form that’s already decided how the moment should be played, leaving nothing for a note — or a director — to add.

Weston’s “moment before”: the antecedent circumstance#

An intent note in the margin is where a director tells a performer (or a model) how a line or action should land. The single most common way notes fail is the same failure week 1 named for a wish: they name a feeling instead of something playable. Judith Weston’s directing technique for this — “the moment before” — is to invent the concrete, playable circumstance that happened immediately before the line, rather than reaching for an adjective to describe the line itself.

Two ways to note the same line:

• Adjective note: “Say it nervously.” This names a mood and asks the performer to manufacture it directly — there’s nothing to actually do, only a feeling to perform from the outside.
• Antecedent-circumstance note: “You’ve just watched your own hand move before you decided to let it.” This names a concrete event that happened one second earlier, in-world, that a performer can play the consequence of. The nervousness, if it shows up at all, is a byproduct of that circumstance — not the instruction itself.

A note that names an antecedent circumstance is playable the same way week 1’s playable action was: it’s one specific thing that just happened, not a description of how the result should look.

From premise to a two-page scene: the writing process#

Before this week’s worked example arrives already finished, here’s the process that builds one — the same sequence this week’s workshop asks you to run on your own film, using your own Week 2 premise:

premise → decisive scene → scene change → five observable beats → screenplay form → director’s note

Premise. Week 2 already gives you a want, an obstacle, and what happens if the want fails. For “Before It Stops”: Nadia wants to answer Theo’s call; years of estrangement make her hold herself back; if she fails, this call goes unanswered.

Decisive scene. A premise can cover more ground than two pages will hold. Pick the one scene where the want and the obstacle actually meet — not a scene that explains the situation, one where something happens because of it. For “Before It Stops,” that’s the kitchen in her late mother’s apartment, while the phone rings itself out.

Scene change. Name the scene’s beginning and end before writing a single line of action. At the beginning, Nadia maintains the silence. At the end, Nadia answers. The visible change is her hand moving from restraint to accepting the call. If you can’t name a beginning and an end that differ, you don’t have a scene yet — you have a setting.

Five observable beats. Break the distance between beginning and end into beats an audience can actually see or hear — not what a character privately feels or decides, which nobody in a cinema has access to. For “Before It Stops”:

1. Theo calls.
2. Nadia sees his name but does not answer.
3. The ringing continues and the opportunity narrows.
4. Her hand moves toward the phone and stops.
5. On the final ring, she accepts the call.

A beat is something the audience can see or hear — a phone lighting up, a hand moving, a ring continuing. It is not a shot, a camera move, a cut, or a choice about coverage: those decisions belong to week 4, once a scene like this one already exists to break down.

Screenplay form. Once the five beats are fixed, each one becomes a line of screenplay form, in order — a slugline places it, action lines show what’s visible, and dialogue only appears where a beat actually needs a line spoken out loud:

INT. MOTHER'S APARTMENT - KITCHEN - NIGHT

Nadia sits alone at the table. Her phone lights up: THEO CALLING.

She looks at the screen. She does not move.

The phone keeps ringing.

Her hand drifts toward it. Stops.

On the last ring, her hand closes over the phone. She answers.

NADIA
Hey.

Beats one through four need no dialogue at all — the action line already shows everything the audience needs. Beat five is the one place a line earns its place: it’s the first thing she’s said in the scene, and it’s who she’s saying it to that matters, not what she says.

Director’s note. The screenplay above is directable but not yet directed — the same distinction week 1 drew between a wish and a note. The section above already gave you the technique for writing that note; the demonstration below shows it applied to this exact scene.

Download and read the scene-planning worksheet before the workshop, so you arrive knowing the sequence it walks you through. You’ll fill it in during the workshop itself, running it on your own Week 2 premise. Nothing on it is graded by itself — it exists to get you to the scene and note the workshop actually checks.

The real demonstration#

The scene this week’s example writes is the beat the premise ended on: last ring before voicemail, and the moment just after.

Read the full scene now, before reading any further here. As you read, form your own answer to two questions: what is Nadia holding back during the held look while the phone rings, and what’s happening on the line “Hey” when she finally picks up? Decide before opening either note below.

Now compare your own reading to both notes. However close your prediction came, notice what the notes don’t do: neither one tells you how the moment should look or sound. That judgement — what a held look or a rushed “Hey” would actually communicate — is yours to make from the circumstance, the same way it would be a performer’s or a model’s to make on set.

Once you’ve made that comparison, you can see both notes back in place in the margin of the scene itself: the annotated scene shows exactly where each one attaches.

A wish for a scene, not just a line#

Week 1 taught the wish/note distinction for a single directed take. The same failure shows up at the scene level, at larger scale:

The wish names an effect on the audience and stops there. The note names a concrete fact that’s already true before the scene starts — not a description of what Nadia believes or how that belief changes over the scene, which just relocates the same result-first failure from an adjective into a sentence about her interior state. What the note gives instead is something that has already happened, off the page, that the whole scene now plays out under. Whether that produces stillness, restlessness, or something else entirely is left open — the same way an antecedent-circumstance note does for a single line.

Guided judgement: what’s the antecedent circumstance?#

A student’s scene has a character slam a door and say one clipped line. Their intent note reads: “Play it furious.” Before rewriting it, name what’s wrong: it’s an adjective note, describing the desired result rather than what happened a moment before it. A fix has to invent a concrete, playable circumstance — for example: “She’s just heard, through the door, the one thing she asked him never to repeat.” That’s something a performer can play the consequence of; “furious” is something they can only perform from the outside.

Synthesis#

Screenplay form writes what a camera can see and what a character says out loud — never a feeling directly. An intent note in the margin does the same job at the level of a single moment: it names the antecedent circumstance that produced the line or action, not an adjective describing how it should land. Both are the same discipline week 1 named — a wish gives a performer nothing to do; a note, whether it’s a playable action or an antecedent circumstance, gives them something concrete to play. This week’s scene and its intent note travel forward as-is: next week you break this exact scene into shots.