"I don't know which part was more disturbing, his descriptions of the inner core, reincarnated souls sex orgy; or the fact that the entire thing is written in screenplay format!"
— Jose Chung, The X-Files, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space"
A form of Epistolary Novel: writing a Fan Fic in the form of a script. Originated as a way of giving a sense of illusory "officialness" to a fic for a TV series or movie (Look! It can be filmed as-is!), which makes the format particularly popular for continuation fics, and/or to use narrative tricks that wouldn't sound right in prose. It also functions as a prime outlet for writers unskilled at detailed description, and who despise Wall of Text, but are talented with dialogue. Most MSTings are written in this format as well.
In addition to screenplay-type script fics, there are also those that are simply a script, without the technical terminology to describe the "filming" such as "pan", "exterior and interior", et cetera.
Though some readers think the lack of prose detracts from the story, others like the enhanced focus on the dialogue and action. A good script fic can accurately describe what is going on in the story without using prose, which is part of the challenge (to be coherent without using narrative and relying on action and dialogue to carry the story and explain what is occurring). It can be an interesting challenge for writers who want to practice writing dialogue and experiment with form.
Occasionally enough stories are made that they're accepted as so-called virtual seasons.
Compare Speech-Centric Work.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The Child of Love is a Neon Genesis Evangelion script fic. Later the author decided to rewrite it ditching the script format, but he did not go past the first chapter.
- Daigakusei No Ranma, a Ranma ½ continuation fic.
- Ishbal The Musical (links here
and here) is a freaking musical on the Ishvallan War of Extermination in Fullmetal Alchemist.
- Narrabundah 1/2 (link here), Urac Sigma's mid-1990s re-creation/reimagining of Ranma ½, is a prime example of script format taking a good fic idea and making it hard to read and enjoy. In general, the Ranma fanfic community had completely abandoned script format by the late 1990s.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion R, written by Maher al-Samkari, is an example of this for Neon Genesis Evangelion. Unfortunately, while well-written in other ways such as character or plot the writer obviously did not know how to write a script.
- Putting Your Heart In The Right Place (link here) is another script-format Ranma ½ work by John Biles. Nice WAFFic; established some fanon characterizations, most notably Nodoka's. Until 1996, Right Place was considered THE definitive Ranma fanfic.
- Suburban Senshi (link here), a comedy Mega Crossover based mainly on Sailor Moon and bringing in everything from Doctor Who to Sakura Wars, is an odd case. The regular episodes are written in prose, but it also has a few episodes marketed as "The Movie", written as Script Fic, and plenty of segments of the characters on IRC.
- Shadowjack Watches Sailor Moon takes Sailor Moon and rewrites it episode-by-episode, with the author's own jokes and interpretations (and the occasional recap comic).
- The Typical Gundam SEED Destiny by Thundermuffin is a parody that can be found on MAHQ's Mechatalk forums. It also includes a couple Mobile Suit Gundam 00 crossovers, and a parody of the (currently nonexistent) GSD film.
Films — Animation
- Cinderella: The TRUE Sequel is written in a script-like format.
- Once Upon a Studio: Version 2.0 is a huge Fix Fic written as an actual screenplay; even going as far as listing the entire cast, along with the soundtrack listing, a full breakdown of the orchestral instrumentation, and even a full credits page. Orchestrations are also described in the screenplay itself, integrated quite comfortably with the dialogue and stage directions.
- Super Mario Bros The Adventure Begins adapts The Super Mario Bros. Movie in the context of an Alternate History where Sony Pictures Animation secured the rights to a Mario movie for a November 2013 release.
Films — Live-Action
- The Amazing Spider-Man 3 (2016), a sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
- BHF 5 is a script fic all the way, allowing for tons of meta-humor as it crosses over multiple franchises like Star Wars and The Simpsons.
- Larry Boy and the Little Man of Purpleness, a Star Wars / VeggieTales crossover.
- LOTR Big Brother, a The Lord of the Rings / Big Brother cross-over, used this form. It was popular enough to run several seasons, was posted in episode form and held proper evictions based on reader feedback. Season 1 can be found here.
- MCU Rewrites by letmetellyouaboutmyfeels are written in form of screenplays that rewrite and expand on Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War as well as continue from what was established in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There are five installments: Age of Ultron: Redux, New Avengers, Black Widow, Captain America: Ghosts of HYDRA, and Avengers: Civil War.
- Michael Bay’s Rejected “The Dark Knight” Script by Dennis Hartwig (link here) for Michael Bay's The Dark Knight Trilogy would also count as this.
- Scene 24: Johnny Thunder Blows This Taco Stand is written in the formatting of a movie script based on The LEGO Movie, complete with directions on lighting and camera angles.
- Scream 5 FAN FICTION (link here) is one of several fanfics for Scream 5, 6, 7 etc. that take this form. Quite a few of these, interestingly enough, bring back Kirby. And most of them have her survive. (An outcome that ultimately became prophetic when the actual fifth film revealed she did indeed survive the events of the fourth film.)
- Star Wars REDONE by onex7805 is done in a script format with several drawings added to it.
- How To Fix The Jurassic Sequels has a script version of its rewrite to The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
Literature
- A Boy, a Girl and a Dog: The Leithian Script is a retelling of The Silmarillion tale "Beren and Luthien", rewritten as a theater play.
- In Gold Poisons, the last chapter is written like this. The three characters' dialogue is written in different colors.
- Maoyu originated as an original story on 2ch. The strict post character limits on boards like these spawned a distinctive form of the Script Fic, where virtually the entire fic is written as exchanges of dialogue and sound effects, with only the bare minimum of description, and Maoyuu Maou Yuusha was in this style as well. When it was converted into published form, the format was largely carried over.
- Where the Truth Lies (Animorphs) is written in the form of a stage play, with scene breaks and a cast list at the start.
Live-Action TV
- Ahsoka: A NZRE Star Wars Story is written as a screenplay, as a fan-made version of the 2023 Ahsoka series by Lucasfilm.
- The very old but still rather good Blackadder: Serpent of the Seven Seas (link here) is based on Blackadder.
- The Cousins Crane (link here) is a pilot script for a spinoff series from Frasier about Freddy Crane, David Crane, and Alice Doyle as adults.
- Coveralls, written about The X-Files by an AI, is written as a script.
- Father Ted And The Army Chaplain (link here) is A.A. Pessimal's script-fic based on Father Ted in which Bishop Brennan wishes a fourth priest on Craggy island. Nothing good ever comes of a fourth priest on the Island...
- FK4 is a virtual continuation for Forever Knight written in the format of a TV script with more specific details about camera angles and stage directions.
- Gallifrey Base, the largest Doctor Who forum on the internet, has an extensive subsection devoted to this kind of format. Generally produced in virtual seasons by veteran posters, they most often feature past Doctors continuing on from after their "non-Fanon" deaths. Quality can vary wildly from the not too good to the surprisingly professional.
- The short story collection Decalog 2: Lost Property by Paul Cornell hosts an unusual official Script Fic, "The Trials of Tara", which is written as the script to a Shakespeare comedy.
- This Time Round has the "Storytime!" fics, which have the stories written in script format, with the Look Who's Talking scenes written more conventionally.
- Glee The Virtual Season Four was one that was started before the actual fourth season of Glee, resulting in a fic that operated mostly on the threads left from the third season finale and not acknowledging anything that ended up in the canonical season 4, as the fanfic was well underway by then.
- Merlin: Kingdom Come is a Continuation of Merlin (2008), serving as a sixth and final season in the form of 13 scripts, seen here.
- Millenium Virtual Season Four was an entire season's worth of script fics written after the cancellation of the TV show Millennium (1996), and was generally well-received — series star Lance Henriksen even noted that he enjoyed several of them. Millenium Virtual Season Five, from a different production crew, was also aired online.
- MZP-TV is one of the largest websites/communities dedicated to original scripted fiction and fanfiction, containing many different virtual seasons, mini-series, webisodes, and movies. The site is run similar to a television network, with pitches and pilots and pickups and development staff, but in a much looser way. Users push themselves to produce quality entertainment, making every possible attempt to be a legitimate format. The community is also a place where amateur and aspiring writers can learn the craft and get feedback on their work at every stage. The site includes continuations of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Millennium (1996), Doctor Who, Star Trek and a spinoff from Alias.
- Light of the World is an interquel for seasons 3 and 4 of The Chosen which covers additional events from the Gospels, such as the Transfiguration and the Bread of Life Discourse.
- Power Rangers Take Flight, a hypothetical adaption of Choujin Sentai Jetman (and later, Choujuu Sentai Liveman), is written entirely in script format. Like an actual Power Rangers season, the storylines are even written with the use of Stock Footage from the Super Sentai season in mind.
- Season 8 Redo is, for all intended purposes, a completely different take on the eighth season of That '70s Show that keeps and uses all the original characters (even one-shot characters), ensures mainstays like Eric Forman and Michael Kelso stay in Point Place, Character Development, recycling the themed bumper of the Vista Cruiser and changing up the car intro every half-season or so, and goes into great detail with old and new scenery. Best of all, NO RANDY PEARSON!
- Still Flying (link here) is written as the "missing" second season of Firefly.
- "The Twin Towers" is a fan-made script for a Seinfeld episode set in the aftermath of 9/11; despite the dark subject matter, it doesn't hold back on the jokes and the characters act just as insensitive and selfish as ever. Such an episode would never have made it to air at the time, for obvious reasons.
- TOS Season Four is an ongoing series of transcripts for Star Trek: The Original Series which contains several scripts for an imaginary Season Four of the show that became the Trope Codifier if not Trope Namer for much of the science fiction tropes used here. Mostly in keeping with the original show's spirit, focuses on soft sci-fi in an action adventure format.
- Virtual Mutant (link here) was the sister-site of MZP, and contained scripted virtual continuations of Buffy and Angel, as well as spin-offs Faith and Slayer Academy set in the same continuity. It also hosts several "non-MZP continuity" shows set in the Buffyverse.
- The VPN hosts scripted fiction for a number of both original works and virtual continuations.
- Virtual Subtext Seasons (link here) for Xena: Warrior Princess, essentially a continuation of the show with Xena and Gabrielle's relationship as canon. While the quality level wavers, they're not all bad and the format is surprisingly well done (with some exceptions).
- The Voyager Virtual Season Project (link here) for Star Trek: Voyager. Dozens of new stories set after the televised finale. If you want the plot in smaller, less-accurate doses they're partnered with FiveMinute.net, so you can read the abridgements over on that site here.
Radio
- San Tropez (link here) by Breakinglight11 is a Cabin Pressure fan fic designed to be like just another episode of the series, and so is written in audio drama script format. Not only does it fit in with the continuity, the voices of the characters and the style of humor are a very close imitation of how original author John Finnemore writes them.
Tabletop Game
- P*R*I*M*A*R*C*H*S, a Warhammer 40,000 fic that's also a batshit insane Crossover Crack Fic.
Toys
- The Rock Raiders Meet BIONICLE, based on Rock Raiders, was written in script format, as was the standard for BZPower comedies. Initially, the first two chapters of Rock Raiders - Legacy were also written in script, but after readers encouraged Primis to start writing in prose instead, all further chapters and installments of the saga were written in prose, and Primis was inspired to rewrite the first two chapters of Legacy in prose and start writing Two Worlds, a ground-up rewrite of The Rock Raiders Meet BIONICLE in prose.
Video Games
- Brendan Namron: Ace Attorney is written in a style not unlike a transcript of an official Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game (such as this one). The author DOES attempt to open the first case with a prose format, however.
- Many Danganronpa fanfics are written this way, especially ones involving an original cast of students. These stories often involve music cues, CG pictures, and even game mechanics for trials.
- Fandemonium is a script fic featuring characters from Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog as well as a bevy of original characters..
- Hey, Ocarina! (link here), a The Legend of Zelda script fic. Being a "musical", it uses the script format to great effect where lyrics is concerned. It also spawned a nonmusical Ocarina adaptation.
- And an odd variation in Kingdom Hearts 3 (link here), a hypothetical Kingdom Hearts game, written not as a script but rather as a video-game walkthrough.
- Memories of Infinite's Past is written in prose, but has plenty of screenwriting technical terms as if it were for a potential show. In fact, it was originally written in pure script for a Sonic the Hedgehog game.
- Sonic Forces Chapter 2 is the direct sequel to Memories of Infinite's Past.
- Phoenix's SSBB Case Files, being the series that inspired the above Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney fanfic, naturally uses the same transcript method.
- All of Silver And Kaylee 15's Sonic the Hedgehog fanfics on Scratch are written in script form.
- A fanfic on DeviantArt called Super Smash Bros The Final Fight is written as a Super Smash Bros. script by Captain Mang Ringo or Captain Rebolious Mang and it's about Mario suffering nightmares fifteen years after the World of Light tragedy. Mario was worried that he might lose Peach or his kids, Rosie, Luke, and Paul (Named after Rosalina, Luigi, and Pauline). The new villain this time around is named "Beothric" (Pronounced Be-Oth-Ric) and this time, He's hunting for blood. So, Mario and the other smash bros. fighters, including new ones, stand up against Beothric and had a fight that will end all the fights and will end horribly.
- An odd example is Super Smash Stadium (based on Super Smash Bros.) which actually started out in prose but turned into a Script Fic soon after because of it focused on the fights as though it were a promotion complete with commentary. With its adaptation of Subspace Emissary, it has reverted back to prose.
Web Animation
- Red Snow Altered: For a simple Pretty Blood fanfiction, It's written like that.
- The Writer Games: Due to the small writing window, chapters don't contain stories, but simple drafts based on RWBY that summarize the main plot or multiple summaries divided into different arcs sometimes called “beats” or chapters. Subplots and other narrative elements are mostly absent including characters directly speaking. The prompts for each chapter should also be specific, but with room for experimentation. For example, College Fool mentions in the note for chapter 12 that the prompt "Jaune Who's that?" that SwordOfAllCreation proposed exemplifies well what they want, as it gives multiple ideas for writing such as Jaune or his friends having amnesia or Jaune living under a false identity.
Western Animation
By source material
- The Simpsons:
- Marijuana Simpson, originally posted on Twitter as a The Simpsons fanfic, was compiled into a lengthy 249 page screenplay.
- The Simpsons: Team L.A.S.H. is a fanfic for The Simpsons designed as a spin-off series set 10 years later; as such, it's written in a script format and structured like a TV show.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- The Puzzle of Puzzle (link here), another fanfic for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, has "Establishing shot:" and "Scene change:" at the start of each scene.
- Where I Watch: My Little Pony (link here) starts as an episode-by-episode review of My Little Pony 'n Friends and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and gradually evolves into a script fic parodying the show in the style of abridged series.
- The Vinyl Scratch Tapes are transcript fics for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, but close enough.
- The Puzzle of Puzzle (link here
- Total Drama
- My Ridonculous Race uses this style in its reimagining of Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race
- Total Drama All-Stars Rewrite, a Fix Fic for the much-hated All-Stars season of Total Drama, is written in a script format.
- Total Drama Pahkitew Island Rewrite, is written in a script style.
- Alternate Universe Fic Total Drama Do Over is written like a script, as it's designed to be like a television series in itself.
- Total Drama Returns is well-known for its use of script-format in the Total Drama series.
- The Boy Who Cried Idiot is written out like a script for The Loud House.
- Dimension Twist: The Cut Sequence (link here) is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic crossover with Kim Possible and has a script version and a prose version.
- The Rod Squad is Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers Historical AU in 1979, re-imagined in the style of an episode of a typical contemporary TV show.
- Threadbare South Park is written in a script format about the same length as a regular episode of South Park.
- Toons (link here), a Massive Multiplayer Crossover of Western animation such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Scooby-Doo, has this as it's main style.
- Xerrooreborn's Megas XLR details the continued adventures of Coop and the gang in a script format.
Other
- teller.jp, a whole website dedicated to this kind of writing, original and fanfic. Stories are formatted as text messages.
- Every fanfic written by Cheyenne89 is in script format.
Real Life
- Purple SUV is an ABBA fanfiction and funny parody of Yellow Submarine which is sadly not available anymore.
