Reader Question: What can I do if I am an overwriter?

Do you write long scripts… long scenes… long dialogue?

Question from Benjamin:

i am an unabashed over-writer. my scenes always seem to run long-
often times 4–5 pages and my first drafts are easily 150 pages. that
doesn’t really bother me for a first pass but as i re-write and try to
cut down- what can i keep in mind as an over-writer to help me pull in
the reins and cut this thing down to size. i.e. approx how many scenes
should i shoot for total? what should my average scene length be page
wise? average montage length? how many lines of dialogue for each
character? i know all of this varies greatly but thought it would be
good to have a general reference point. THANKS!

Benjamin, I suspect you are in good company with many other GITS readers and at least one writer-director: Nancy Meyers (It’s Complicated, Something’s Gotta Give) whose interview is featured in this post. Here is a relevant excerpt:

“My first draft was exactly 250 pages. I didn’t have brads deep enough, long enough to get through the script. It took me about eight or nine drafts [to edit]. Just keep going, I think from the first draft to the second, I cut about seventy pages. It’s just like making the movie. I’m now editing it, and I thought, ‘How am I going to get two hours and forty-five minutes down to two hours?’ It was the same king of thing again. How do you do it? You just start tearing away at it, and you can’t do it all at once. It’s impossible to see what it is at first. You just keep taking away and taking away, and it begins to shape up. Story, you know — you just keep following the story.”

Two salient points. First, “you just keep following the story.” When you’re in that initial pass at the material, there is nothing wrong with writing long. In fact, there are very good reasons to turn off your page-count editor so you don’t restrict yourself from going here and there to surface (hopefully) great story material. Second, notice she’s talking about a “first draft.” By the time you get to your final draft, you will have had to edit the thing down to size.

I suspect part of the emotion here for you is the frustration of writing long, then slogging your way through a dreadfully hard edit process. Frankly that’s the most significant downside, I think, to writing long: we get attached to our words. I’m sure the GITS gang will have other suggestions about how to accomplish the editing process, but it seems to me the most important question you can ask about every scene is this: Is this scene absolutely necessary to advance the story? Drill down into each scene: What is the point of this scene? Why is it here? How does it tie into the Plotline? Themeline? And finally, is there a way to tell the story without this scene? Focusing on the function of each scene takes your process out of sheer ruthlessness and into a more logical and aesthetic process.

Once you get to the final draft, there are all sorts of ways to reduce page count without pulling out scenes. I provided some tips here. Here are three of them:

1. Eliminate all parentheticals.
2. Eliminate most transitions.
3. Eliminate ‘orphans’. 

Hit the link for more info re those three tips.

Finally what you are really talking about is what kind of writer are you… and what kind of writer do you want to be. Those are not static questions, it’s not as if the writer you are now is the writer you will be in 5 years, 10 years, and so on. So I’m not suggesting that your task is to determine once and for all the core essence of your writing persona. However there’s no reason you can’t sit with yourself for a few days and ponder the thought. Perhaps you really need to write long. If so, why fight it? On the other hand, it could simply be some poor habits you fell into along the way. And if they’re habits, then you can change them.

You asked about page count and scene length. Perhaps this info will provide the necessary shock to your system to jolt you out of your overwriting ways.

It used to be that an acceptable length for a ‘typical’ script was 120 pages. Figuring 1 page per screen minute, that equaled a two-hour movie. However page count has come down in the last three decades. Nowadays depending upon the genre of your script, you may be looking at 105 pages, all the way down to 90 pages. Given that trend, it would behoove you to learn to write shorter.

Also scenes are shrinking. I used to tell students that scenes were 2 pages long (on average). Now I think you’re better off targeting 1 1/2 pages per scene. We’ve had discussions elsewhere about the reasoning — largely about younger generation growing up on quick cutting editorial styles in everything from music videos, reality TV, movies, etc.

But the main thing I encourage you to do, as noted above, is sit with yourself and ask, “What kind of writer am I… what kind of writer do I want to be?”

Other previous discussions in this arena:

What about submitting a 187-page script?

Is an 80-page script too short?

GITS readers, what advice do you have for Benjamin re overwriting?

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