Indian cinema is not one industry. It’s six or seven industries operating in parallel, each with its own conventions, gatekeepers, and production culture. A Malayalam script that gets greenlit in Thiruvananthapuram or Kochi will read differently than a Hindi script submitted to a Mumbai production house — even if both are formatted to the same technical standard.
This guide covers what professional Indian screenwriters need to know about formatting, submission conventions, and how the industry is changing.
The baseline: Fountain format works everywhere
The good news is that Fountain format — the international standard for screenplays — is understood and accepted across all Indian industries. Scene headings with INT./EXT., action in present tense, character names in ALL CAPS above dialogue — these conventions are universal.
If you’re submitting to a production house, an OTT platform, or a competition, a properly formatted Fountain script (or a PDF generated from one) is always acceptable. Learning the format once means you can write for any industry.
How Indian scripts differ from Hollywood conventions
Language mixing is normal. Hindi scripts routinely mix Hindi and English. Malayalam scripts may switch between Malayalam, English, and the kind of Manglish (Malayalam+English) code-switching natural to Kerala urban dialogue. Tamil scripts similarly blend Tamil and English. Unlike Hollywood, where non-English dialogue is rare and typically italicised, Indian screenplays treat language switching as a stylistic tool, not an exception.
A typical approach: write dialogue in the language it will actually be performed in. If your characters code-switch, the script should too. If you’re writing for dubbing (common in OTT productions that release in multiple languages), note the intended language at the top of the script.
Song sequences have their own conventions. Songs in Indian films aren’t incidental background music — they’re narrative sequences with their own visual grammar. Many screenwriters mark song sequences explicitly, either with a SONG SEQUENCE heading or by attaching the song number as a note.
Action lines tend to be longer. Hollywood screenwriting orthodoxy demands short, punchy action lines. Indian scripts, particularly for commercial cinema, often use longer, more descriptive action blocks. This isn’t wrong — it’s a style difference. For prestige projects and OTT scripts, shorter action lines are increasingly preferred.
Formatting for songs and dances. If your script includes a song sequence, the convention is:
SONG SEQUENCE #1 — "VEYYON SILLI"
[Montage of Karthik and Meera through the seasons.
The mood shifts from playful to tender.]
END SONG SEQUENCEThe actual song lyrics are usually in a separate document, not in the screenplay.
Industry-specific notes
Malayalam cinema (Mollywood): Malayalam cinema has a strong literary tradition, and scripts often read more like literary prose than technical documents. Character psychology and subtext are described in the action lines rather than left implicit. Namaskaram-style politeness registers and the rhythms of Kerala urban dialogue (often Manglish — Malayalam mixed with English) show up on the page as they’d be spoken. This is increasingly diverging in new wave Malayalam filmmaking, which trends toward minimal description and tighter scene structure.
Tamil cinema (Kollywood): Scripts are often submitted in Tamil or as bilingual Tamil-English documents. Many established directors prefer detailed scripts; emerging directors in the new wave tend toward leaner, more visual writing. The OTT boom (Netflix, Amazon, Disney+Hotstar) has created demand for structured three-act scripts that weren’t always required for theatrical features.
Telugu cinema (Tollywood): Commercial Telugu scripts often have detailed technical notes — specific shot types, action choreography descriptions — built into the action lines rather than in separate documents. This is a writing style, not a formatting requirement.
Hindi cinema (Bollywood): Mumbai production houses typically want scripts in PDF format with a separate scene breakdown document. Dialogues are sometimes submitted separately for dialogue writers to develop. For OTT platforms (especially Netflix India and Amazon Prime Video India), the expectation is a tightly formatted script matching international standards.
What OTT platforms actually want
OTT platforms — Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+Hotstar, SonyLIV — have transformed Indian screenplay expectations significantly. Their script submission requirements are typically explicit:
- Properly formatted PDF or FDX file
- English or bilingual (primary language + English)
- Three-act structure, with clear act breaks marked
- Character list attached as a separate document
- Logline and synopsis attached (usually one page each)
Several Indian OTT platforms have launched writers’ rooms modelled on American TV production — structured, multiple writers, a showrunner. For these, the script needs to follow television formatting conventions (acts marked, cold open if applicable, B-story clearly tracked).
Formatting tools for Indian screenplay writers
The major challenge for Indian language screenwriters has been tool support. Final Draft and Celtx were built for English — Indian language input has always been awkward.
This is changing. ScriptDraft supports Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and other Indian languages natively — you can speak or type in your language and get properly formatted Fountain output. For voice input specifically, the app uses on-device speech recognition so your audio is processed locally.
Export to PDF and Final Draft FDX means your script can move into any professional workflow, regardless of what tool the production house uses.
The one rule that crosses all industries
However your industry’s conventions differ from Hollywood, one rule holds everywhere: a screenplay should be easy to read and easy to shoot from.
Format is service. It exists so that a director can find scene 47 immediately, a producer can estimate the budget from the page count, and an actor can find their character’s first line without a search function. The more effortlessly your formatting serves those needs, the better chance your story has of being read rather than set aside.
Good formatting doesn’t make a bad story good. But bad formatting makes a good story much harder to sell.