Trimming Tricks of the Trade
A four-part series to help you cut script pages without sacrificing your story.
A four-part series to help you cut script pages without sacrificing your story.
Page count. A screenwriter must be cognizant of it. Even if you don’t subscribe to the theories of screenwriting gurus like Syd Field, who asserts that the typical Act I ending plot point falls between P. 25–27 and Act II ending plot point between P. 85–90, the fact is you will run up against those who do subscribe to this thinking — producers, agents, and studio execs who have all been schooled in the mysteries of screenplay paradigms. So if your end of Act I plot point is at P. 40, that is likely to be a subject at a notes meeting ala “Act one feels a little long.”
A screenwriter not only confronts page count per each plot point, but also and importantly with the script’s total page count. Although movies vary widely in terms of budget, one page of a script can translate into a production cost of several hundred thousand dollars. So if your comedy script logs in at 125 pages when a typical comedy movie times out nowadays at 90 minutes, multiply 35 pages times, let’s say, $100K and you get $3.5 million in additional expenditures. That monetary concern could prove to be the difference between a spec script sale and a pass.
Beyond that, there’s always that hugely important Hollywood threshold guardian — the script analyst. I doubt any script reader relishes the prospect of slogging through a 140+ page script.
Plus, you know it’s inevitable: someday you will write a long script. And you will need to cut it down to size.
A long script can be the result of structural issues, so that’s where you should look first: make sure every scene, every character, every subplot is necessary. If not, figure out ways to jettison them.
Next you review every line of dialogue and bit of business within each scene: if the dialogue or action is extraneous, unless it’s hugely entertaining, consider excising it.
Let’s say you’ve done both those things. And you’re still stuck with a 135 page script. You don’t want to hack out whole sides of dialogue, scenes or bits of business, not if they’re intrinsic and important to the script or add to its entertainment value.
That’s where you can look for small edits and stylistic choices you can make which taken together can reduce your page count without messing with your script’s integrity.
Hence this four-part series: Trimming Tricks of the Trade.
Part 2: Minimize parentheticals
Finally remember the advice of Paddy Chayefsky:
If it should occur to you to cut, do so. That’s the first basic rule of cutting. If you’re reading through and stop, something is wrong. Cut it. If something bothers you, then it’s bad. Cut it. If you can cut inside the speech, you’re really cutting most effectively. It’s purifying, it’s refining. Making it precise. Precision is one of the basic elements of poetry. My own rules are very simple. First, cut out all the wisdom; then cut out all the adjectives. I’ve cut some of my favorite stuff. I have no compassion when it comes to cutting. No pity, no sympathy. Some of my dearest and most beloved bits of writing have gone with a very quick slash, slash, slash. Because something was heavy there. Cutting leads to economy, precision, and to a vastly improved script.
Cut the dross first. If your script is still long, trim as described above.