How to Format a Screenplay in Arabic

A producer, a script reader, or a competition judge decides whether to keep reading your screenplay in the first thirty seconds. Long before they judge the story, they judge the format. A script that is not in industry format signals "amateur" before a single line of dialogue is read, and in Arabic screenwriting that problem is worse, because most tools were built for English and treat Arabic as an afterthought.

This guide walks through the standard screenplay format element by element, how it works in Arabic, and the mistakes that get scripts rejected. Every example below is written the way a formatted page actually looks.

Why format is not optional

Screenplay format is not decoration. It is a shared language between the writer and everyone downstream: the reader who has to skim a hundred scripts, the line producer who budgets from scene headings, the first assistant director who breaks down the page. When the format is standard, all of them can do their jobs. When it is not, your script goes on the reject pile regardless of how good the story is.

The scene heading (slugline)

Every scene opens with a heading that answers three questions: interior or exterior, where, and when. In Arabic the convention uses داخلي for interior and خارجي for exterior, the location, then the time of day.

In English format the same heading reads INT. COFFEE HOUSE - DAY. Keep headings short and consistent. If a location appears twice, spell it identically both times, because the production breakdown groups scenes by exact heading.

Action lines

Action describes only what the camera can see and the microphone can hear. Present tense, plain language, no camera directions unless they are essential. Resist the urge to write a character's inner thoughts: if the audience cannot see it, it does not belong in an action line.

• Write in the present tense. The scene is happening now, not in the past.
• One idea per paragraph. White space on the page is a feature, not a waste.
• Introduce a character's name in capitals the first time they appear, then normally after that.

Character cues and dialogue

A character cue is the speaker's name, set above their line and inset from the action. The dialogue sits under it, narrower than the action block. In a right-to-left Arabic script the whole column mirrors: the cue and dialogue inset from the right margin instead of the left.

The short line in parentheses is a parenthetical: a brief acting or delivery note. Use it sparingly. If every line has one, none of them carry weight.

The tashkeel question

Arabic dialogue is often ambiguous without diacritics. The same consonants can be read several ways, and an actor doing a cold read can stumble on a line the writer thought was obvious. Adding tashkeel (diacritics) to dialogue removes that ambiguity, but adding it by hand to a full script is punishing work. This is exactly the kind of task that should be automated on demand rather than typed character by character. We cover the when and why in depth in a companion guide, and Alifba adds tashkeel to a selected passage in one action.

Transitions and page discipline

Transitions like CUT TO or in Arabic قطع إلى sit at the edge of the page and are used sparingly in modern scripts, since most cuts are implied by the next scene heading. More important than transitions is page discipline: consistent margins, one space after a heading, no orphaned character cue at the bottom of a page. These are the details a formatting tool should handle so you never think about them.

Do this in Arabic, not despite it

Most screenwriting software applies this format cleanly in English and then breaks in Arabic: the text direction flips wrong, the indentation lands on the wrong side, tashkeel gets mangled, and mixed Arabic and English inside one line scrambles. The format above is not the hard part. Getting a tool to apply it natively in Arabic is. That is the whole reason Alifba exists: a right-to-left editor that applies professional screenplay format as you type, in Arabic, without fighting the tool.

You can write and format a full script on the free plan before deciding anything. Compare the plans on the pricing page.