How K-Drama Scripts Are Formatted: S#, Jimun, (E) and (N) Explained for International Writers

This guide is for writers outside Korea who are adapting, co-writing, translating, or simply curious about what the scripts behind the shows they watch look like on the page. It explains the four things that define the format (scene markers, jimun, dialogue, and the tag system), gives a side-by-side conversion, and covers the tooling reality that surprises most foreign writers.

A caveat up front: Korean writers' forums are explicit that there is no single official standard. One widely shared piece of advice on a screenwriting community board translates roughly as "there is no unified format, so use whatever you are most comfortable with". Broadcasters such as KBS and MBC developed house styles in the 1980s and 1990s, and individual writers vary. What follows is the common core.

A note on the examples: Korean lines in this guide are romanized (Revised Romanization) and followed by an English translation, so you can see the shape of the page without reading Korean.

1. Scene markers: S#

Every scene begins with a scene marker on its own line:

S#1. Eoneu doro (N)
S#12. Geosil – bam
S#13. Byeongwon bokdo (D)

In English:

S#1. A road (N)
S#12. Living room – night
S#13. Hospital corridor (D)

The parts are:

• S# followed by the number. Numbers run continuously through the episode. Unlike an American spec script, where scene numbers are added only for production, a Korean drama script has them from the first draft, because scene numbering is how everyone (writer, director, assistant directors, actors) refers to scenes.
• The location, in plain language: a road, the living room, a hospital corridor. There is no INT./EXT. prefix. Interior or exterior is obvious from the location, and if it is not, the jimun will say.
• The time, as an abbreviation in parentheses or after a dash: D (day), N (night), and transitions such as D→N or N→D for a scene that runs across the boundary. Some writers spell it out in Korean (nat for day, bam for night). Either is acceptable within a script as long as it is consistent.

A period after the number is common but not universal. Some writers write S#12 and some S#12.; some put a space and some do not. Consistency within one script is what matters.

2. Jimun: stage directions in prose

Jimun is the Korean term for stage directions. It covers everything an American script puts in action lines: what the audience sees, who enters, how they move, what the camera catches. It is written as prose paragraphs.

Where jimun differs from American action lines is register and density. American action is terse, present tense, and avoids anything unfilmable. Korean jimun tends to be fuller, more willing to describe emotional state, and sometimes literary in tone, because the script is read by a director who will translate it rather than treated as a shot list. A jimun paragraph may say that a character "looks at the photo with a face that has decided something", where an American writer would be told to cut "has decided something".

Formatting-wise, jimun is indented less than dialogue and is set apart from it by that indent rather than by a blank line in some house styles, though many writers add blank lines for readability. In the word processors Korean writers use, jimun and dialogue are usually assigned to two paragraph styles with different indents.

3. Dialogue: name, colon, line

Dialogue is the most immediately recognisable feature. Instead of a centred character cue above a narrow column, the character's name is followed by a colon and the line, on one line, indented deeper than the jimun:

    Jeonghyeon: Yuri-ya, gwaenchana?
    Yuri: (gogaereul jeonneunda) Ani.

In English:

    JEONGHYEON: Yuri, are you all right?
    YURI: (shakes her head) No.

Parentheticals go inside the line, after the colon, in parentheses, and can carry a short action as well as a delivery note: (shakes her head), (quietly), (on the phone). Korean scripts use them more freely than American ones because the jimun and dialogue are so closely interleaved.

Long speeches wrap under the name with a hanging indent so that the name stands out on the left. This is the reason Korean scripts are written with paragraph styles rather than manual spacing: the hanging indent needs to be a style.

4. The tag system: (E), (N), O.L. and friends

After a character's name, or inside the jimun, a small set of abbreviations carry the equivalents of American extensions and transitions. The common ones:

(E) is broader than (O.S.). An American writer distinguishes a character physically present but off-frame (O.S.) from one not present at all (V.O.). Korean scripts fold most of that into (E), reserving (N) for actual narration. A telephone voice, which an American script would tag (V.O.) or (filtered), is (E) in Korean.

Side-by-side conversion

Here is a short scene in American format and the same scene in Korean broadcast format. The content is identical; only the container changes.

American:

INT. MARA'S KITCHEN - NIGHT

MARA (30s, hospital scrubs) drops her keys on the counter. A sink full of dishes that weren't there this morning.

A floorboard CREAKS upstairs.

                    MARA
               (barely audible)
          Who's up there?

                    JIN (O.S.)
          Don't.

She freezes.

Korean broadcast format (English content for illustration; a real script would of course be in Korean):

S#7. Mara's kitchen (N)

Mara (30s, hospital scrubs) drops her keys on the counter. In the sink, dishes that were not there this morning. She notices them and stops.

A floorboard creaks upstairs.

    MARA: (barely audible) Who's up there?
    JIN(E): Don't.

Mara freezes.

Observe what changed: INT./NIGHT became a location and (N); the parenthetical moved inline; O.S. became (E); the character name is no longer capitalised on first appearance (some writers do capitalise, but it is not a rule); and the jimun is slightly fuller.

The same scene as it would be written in Korean, romanized for reference, since the shape of the page is the point:

S#7. Maraui bueok (N)

Mara(30-dae, byeongwon geunmubok), yeolsoereul kaunteoe deonjideut nonneunda. Singkeudae-e achimen eopdeon geureutdeuri ssayeo itda. Mara, geugeoseul bogo meomchunda.

Wicheung-eseo marutbadak ppigeogineun sori.

    Mara: (gyeou deullil deut) Nuguya?
    Jin(E): Haji ma.

Mara, eoreobunneunda.

Read line by line, it is the scene above: "Mara's kitchen (night)"; "Mara (30s, hospital scrubs) all but throws her keys on the counter. In the sink, dishes that were not there this morning. Mara sees them and stops"; "The creak of floorboards upstairs"; "Who's there?"; "Don't"; "Mara freezes".

Episode structure

Korean broadcast dramas have traditionally aired in roughly 60 to 70 minute episodes (streaming originals vary), and writers' guides commonly describe an hour of drama as four to six sequences, each made of several scenes. There is no fixed act-break convention like the American commercial break, but writers structure toward an end-of-episode hook because weekly serial retention is what the format lives on. If you come from web novels, this will feel familiar; the episode cliffhanger is the same instrument. Our K-platform web novel guide covers hooks on the prose side.

Scripts are typically 16-episode series for prime-time broadcast, with the writer often working only a few episodes ahead of air, which is why the format prioritises readability by a large crew over the polish of a spec.

The tooling reality: HWP, not Final Draft

This is the part that most surprises foreign writers. Korean drama scripts are, in the main, not written in screenwriting software at all. They are written in Hangul (HWP), the Korean word processor from Hancom, using outline numbering for automatic S# renumbering and two paragraph styles (commonly bound to keyboard shortcuts) for jimun and dialogue. Community guides for new writers advise using Tab rather than spaces for the indents and never typing scene numbers by hand, so that inserting a scene renumbers everything after it.

Final Draft, WriterDuet and Arc Studio do not natively produce this layout; their output is the Courier column format. A few tools address the gap: the free Korean web converter dramaformat.kr accepts a lightly marked plain-text file (a line beginning with # becomes S#1, Name: becomes dialogue, Name(E): and Name(N): carry the tags) and exports to DOCX and HWP. As of September 2026, Laper offers an "Asian convention" export to PDF, DOCX and TXT alongside its Hollywood format, though its documentation is English-only and it does not export FDX for the Asian layout. Among Korean AI writing tools, the research we have seen shows scene auto-numbering and HWP export split across different products rather than in one place.

The practical consequence: if you are delivering a script to a Korean broadcaster or production company, deliver DOCX or HWP in the S#/jimun/name-colon layout, not a Courier PDF. If you are only sharing with an English-speaking collaborator, either format works, but they will need to understand the tags.

Film versus broadcast

Korean film scripts are closer to the international format than broadcast drama scripts are. The Korean Film Council has a standard scenario layout, and many film writers use INT./EXT.-style headings (the dramaformat converter accepts both). The S#/jimun convention described here is strongest in television, which is where most international interest in Korean scripts lies.

Writing in Korean format as a non-Korean writer

If you are co-writing or adapting for a Korean production, three habits will make your pages usable:

1. Number every scene and never renumber by hand. Use a style or a tool that does it.
2. Keep jimun and dialogue visually distinct with indents, not with capitalised names.
3. Use (E) and (N) rather than O.S. and V.O., and put delivery notes inline after the colon.

Beyond format, expect Korean collaborators to read jimun for emotional intent in a way American readers are trained not to. A little more interiority in the direction is not a mistake here; it is the convention.

Try it in SparkLore

SparkLore's script mode has a Korean drama format alongside the American one: S# numbering is automatic, jimun and dialogue are separate elements with the right indents, and (E)/(N) are tags rather than text you type. The export produces a DOCX laid out for Hangul word processors as well as Word. The free drama script formatter converts plain text in either direction without an account, and the AI script generator can draft a scene straight into the Korean layout. Projects with a shared story bible across a novel and its adaptation begin when you sign up.