Montages and Series of Shots

Montages and series of shots let you compress time, cover a sequence of related events, or show parallel action without writing a full scene for each moment. They come with formatting questions that trip up many writers. There is no single "official" format for montages. What matters is clarity: the reader should always know where they are, what they are seeing, and when the montage ends.

The Montage

A montage is a sequence of brief visual moments edited together to condense time, show a process, or create a thematic impression. The classic example is the training montage: Rocky punching meat, running up stairs, doing one-armed push-ups. Each image is a fragment, and together they build a cumulative effect that no single scene could achieve alone.

Montages work well for showing the passage of time (a relationship growing over months), a character's transformation (learning a skill, falling apart, building something), or the scope of an event (a city reacting to news, a disease spreading, an army mobilizing). What they should not do is replace scenes that need to be fully dramatized. If a moment is important enough to carry dialogue, conflict, and emotional stakes, it deserves a real scene, not a montage bullet point.

MONTAGE - ELENA LEARNS TO FLY
A) Elena sits in a cramped cockpit, overwhelmed by instruments. Her instructor points at gauges. She nods, understanding nothing.
B) Elena's hands shake on the yoke during a simulated takeoff. The instructor grabs the controls.
C) Elena studies flight manuals at a kitchen table, empty coffee cups accumulating around her.
D) In the air. Elena banks the plane smoothly, a grin spreading across her face. The instructor lets go of the controls and leans back.
E) Elena walks across the tarmac alone, keys in hand, toward a small Cessna. She does not hesitate.
END MONTAGE

Each beat is a complete image. The reader can see the shot. The sequence covers weeks or months of training in half a page. Notice that every moment is visual, not internal. Montages show what the camera sees. If you find yourself writing "Elena feels more confident," you are narrating, not montaging.

Series of Shots

A series of shots is similar to a montage but typically occurs within a single location or a single continuous event. Where a montage compresses time across multiple settings, a series of shots breaks one scene or location into quick, specific images. The distinction is not rigid and many writers use the terms interchangeably, but knowing the difference helps you choose the right label.

SERIES OF SHOTS - THE DINER CLOSES
-- Hank flips the OPEN sign to CLOSED.
-- He wipes down the counter with a rag, revealing the old Formica underneath layers of grease.
-- Chairs go up on tables, one by one.
-- The fryer gets drained. Hank watches the oil pour into a metal bucket.
-- He stands at the register, counting bills. His face says the numbers are not good.
-- Lights out. The diner sits dark. Through the window, Hank's truck pulls away.
END SERIES OF SHOTS

This series stays in one location. It does not compress weeks into seconds like a training montage. Instead it captures the rhythm and texture of a routine, building mood through accumulated detail. Each dash is a shot. The reader can feel the quiet, the exhaustion, the failing business, all without a word of dialogue.

If your "montage" takes place in a single location and covers a short span of time, labeling it SERIES OF SHOTS is more precise. If it spans multiple locations and compresses significant time, MONTAGE is the better label. But no reader will reject your script over which term you choose.

Formatting a Montage

There is no single enforced standard for montage formatting. Different screenwriting books and different produced scripts handle it differently. The two most common approaches are lettered items (A, B, C) and dashed items (--). Both are widely accepted. Choose one and be consistent within a script.

Lettered format

MONTAGE - SAM AND ALEX'S ROAD TRIP
A) Sam drives. Alex sleeps with her feet on the dashboard. The desert stretches ahead.
B) They eat gas station burritos on the hood of the car, laughing at something we cannot hear.
C) A flat tire. Sam kicks it. Alex takes a photo of him mid-kick.
D) Night. They lie on a blanket in a field, pointing at stars, talking quietly.
END MONTAGE

Dashed format

MONTAGE - SAM AND ALEX'S ROAD TRIP
-- Sam drives. Alex sleeps with her feet on the dashboard.
-- Gas station burritos on the hood. Laughter.
-- A flat tire. Sam kicks it. Alex photographs the moment.
-- Night. A blanket in a field. Stars. Quiet conversation.
END MONTAGE

If the montage moves across multiple locations and you want the reader to track where each beat takes place, you can include mini scene headings within the montage:

MONTAGE
INT. GYM - DAY
-- Davi fails a bench press. The bar pins him. A stranger lifts it off.
EXT. TRACK - DAWN
-- Davi runs laps. He stops after two, hands on knees, gasping.
INT. GYM - DAY
-- Davi completes the bench press alone. He racks the bar and sits up.
EXT. TRACK - DAWN
-- Davi finishes ten laps. He doesn't stop. He doesn't gasp.
END MONTAGE

Always end your montage with END MONTAGE or END SERIES OF SHOTS. Without a clear terminator, the reader may not know when normal scene structure resumes, and confusion on the page is the one thing a screenplay cannot afford.

Intercut

INTERCUT lets you cut freely between two locations without writing a new scene heading every time. Its most common use is phone conversations. Without it, a phone call between two characters in two locations would require a new scene heading for every line of dialogue, which is tedious to write and exhausting to read.

INT. NORA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT
Nora paces her kitchen, phone pressed to her ear.
INT. HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM - NIGHT
Jonas sits under fluorescent lights, hunched forward, phone in hand.
INTERCUT -- PHONE CONVERSATION
NORA
How bad is it?
JONAS
They won't tell me anything. I've been here three hours.
NORA
I'm coming. Don't leave.
JONAS
Nora, don't. There's nothing you can do here that I can't --
NORA
I'm coming.
She hangs up and grabs her keys.

The INTERCUT heading tells the reader that from this point forward, we cut between the two locations freely. You do not need to specify which location each line takes place in because the reader already knows where each character is.

INTERCUT is not limited to phone calls. It works for any two parallel actions happening at the same time: two characters preparing for a confrontation, a heist team executing a plan in multiple locations, two storylines converging. Establish both locations with scene headings, write INTERCUT, and let the action and dialogue flow.

INT. BOXING GYM - NIGHT
Cole wraps his hands, shadow-boxing in front of a cracked mirror.
INT. LUXURY HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT
His opponent, DRAKE, gets a massage from two trainers while watching film on a wall-mounted TV.
INTERCUT -- COLE AND DRAKE PREPARING
Cole does pull-ups on an exposed pipe, counting under his breath.
Drake eats a steak dinner, perfectly plated, while his manager reviews contracts at the table.
Cole sleeps on a cot in the back of the gym, alarm set for 4 AM.
Drake sleeps in a king bed, silk sheets, city lights through floor-to-ceiling windows.

This intercut builds contrast between the two fighters without a single word of dialogue. The reader understands that each new action paragraph alternates between Cole and Drake because the INTERCUT established that pattern.

You do not need to write END INTERCUT. The next standard scene heading (INT. or EXT.) naturally ends the intercut and returns to normal scene structure.

When to Use Montages

Montages are a form of summary. You are telling the reader "these moments happened" rather than dramatizing them in real time. That trade-off is worth it when the alternative would be a bloated, repetitive sequence of full scenes. It is not worth it when you are skipping past material that actually matters.

Good uses:

Training and preparation. A character learns a skill, builds something, or prepares for a challenge. The individual steps are less important than the cumulative arc from beginner to ready.
Passage of time. Days, weeks, or months pass. Seasons change. A city transforms. A relationship evolves through small moments.
Scope and scale. A news story spreads across a city. An epidemic takes hold. A movement grows. The montage shows breadth that no single scene can capture.
Parallel action. Two or more storylines unfold simultaneously, cutting between them to build tension or draw contrast.
Emotional accumulation. A series of small moments that individually seem minor but together create a powerful emotional impression: the loneliness of a daily routine, the joy of falling in love, the slow erosion of a friendship.

Poor uses:

Skipping character development. If a character's transformation is the heart of your story, the audience needs to experience it in real scenes, not watch a highlight reel.
Replacing conflict. If two characters have an important disagreement that changes their relationship, dramatize it. Do not reduce it to a montage beat: "C) Sarah and Tom argue in the kitchen."
Covering plot holes. A montage cannot substitute for a missing piece of story logic. If the reader needs to understand how a character got from point A to point B, they need a scene, not a montage.

A common mistake is using a montage as a crutch to avoid writing difficult scenes. If you notice that your montage contains the most important moments of your second act, those moments probably need to be full scenes. Montages are for time you can afford to compress, not time your story cannot afford to skip.

Keep your montages short. Five to seven beats is usually the right range. More than that and the montage starts to drag. Each beat should be a single, clear image the reader can see instantly. If a montage beat takes more than two sentences to describe, it is probably a scene trying to escape.

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