Screenplay transitions: CUT TO, DISSOLVE, FADE OUT

What each transition does, which ones are now considered obsolete, and where they go on the page. The consensus: fewer is better.

A transition is the line that says how you get from one scene to the next. It is capitalised and set flush right. The rule is simple: ones ending in "TO" take a colon, ones ending in "OUT" take a period.

First the bad news: skip most of them

Every source agrees — the fewer transitions the better. Final Draft's own blog calls CUT TO: redundant and says professional writers simply do not write it. The logic holds: a new scene heading already means a cut, so CUT TO: adds no information and only pads the page.

Story Sense goes further and treats WIPE TO: and IRIS IN: as obsolete. On the opening FADE IN:, Final Draft is blunt: nothing flags a novice spec script faster.

The ones worth writing

• SMASH CUT TO: — when the abruptness of the cut is itself part of the storytelling.
• MATCH CUT TO: — when you are drawing a visual rhyme between two images. The classic is the bone-to-spacecraft cut in 2001. Use it sparingly.
• DISSOLVE TO: — to show time passing or two scenes bleeding into each other.
• FADE OUT. — at the end of the script or an act.

Where does a transition go?

After the last line of the scene, with a blank line before it, flush right. The one exception is FADE IN: — it sits flush left, because it is not really a transition but a starting mark.

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