Mid July: Nine Goals Accomplished

Earlier this year I finished my 1st draft of a script, “The Mermaid Outside the Window.” I knew I needed to come back to it to make some edits, but that I had to take time off from it to gain perspective. How better to do that then go work on the 1st draft of some other script idea? I came back to this, reread, took notes, made edits, and completed the next draft! Nine goals down!

I try to take that approach to making edits whenever I can now, taking time between completion of one draft to beginning of next draft. And if I can work on an entirely different project in between, even better. When I work on something, I am so immersed in it, so in love with it, that it is hard for me to see any flaws. After time away, and falling in love with a new project, I can come back to the old one with fresh eyes and see all the flaws that I need to see… and make my edits.

It was no different in this case, and in reading the script from start to finish while not actively working on it, I could get a better sense of the flow. See what works, what doesn’t work, what was missing. So, I went through and completed that next draft… 109 pages.

For scripts they say that the rule is, 1 page equals 1 minute of screen time. So, an hour and a half comedy, or 90 minutes, is 90 pages. A 2-hour movie, 120 minutes, 120 pages. It’s usually accurate. Now, everyone knows… if you’ve ever watched a Martin Scorsese movie, or a Quentin Tarantino movie, or even a Judd Apatow movie… plenty of movies go over 2 hours. But as you’ll also notice, I mentioned a few names that you definitely know. Successful people get wiggle room and can make longer films, directors, screenwriters, etc. But as an unknown… nope, not allowed.

There’s a few “rules” when you are an unknown screenwriter. Well, there's a lot, but I'm talking about page count here. The first one, and this one is completely accurate, don’t write ANYTHING over 120 pages. 120 is your limit. If you are unknown and try to get someone to read your 135-page screenplay, if they aren’t related to you, they just won’t. And even then they still might not.

Another rule is, as an unknown writer, really, try not to write anything over 110. Exceptions could be scripts with a lot of action, thrillers, etc. This one feels pretty accurate. While you can write something up to 120 pages, it’s clear many people would prefer that you be considerably under that.

And then there’s another rule. You'll hear this one from plenty of people out there. 100 pages. That’s the cap. I get it to some extent, and that’s probably a better threshold to shoot for with certain scripts… but not all. Also, if you have a lot going on with your script, it’s hard to wrap it up in 100 pages. The ending can feel rushed.

So, 110 pages usually is what I shoot for. If it’s a straight-comedy, I hope to get it quite a bit under. If it has action and the like, I feel alright with it being closer to 110 or even longer. But I also feel like it’s never a bad idea to have shorter versions of your scripts.

I try to do this, write a script, reread, edit, polish, get to be exactly where I want it… save that draft. If it’s 110 pages, excellent. I’ve kept all the scenes and jokes that I like, this is the best I think this script can be. But what if someone would be interested but they want it to be a few pages shorter? What I do, especially if it’s a comedy, is find scenes, jokes, pieces of dialogue, anything that can be removed and won’t affect the integrity of the script. The extra stuff. For a comedy, or any movie with considerable comedy, the extra jokes that are good but could easily be clipped.

I go through and find all of those, and if it isn’t a comedy, maybe it’s even a slight comic relief at the end of the scene, or a clever piece of dialogue that I realize isn’t completely necessary. I get them all. Then, I rank them from my least favorite to my favorite. And then I copy and paste my script into a new document, and I start removing those things from least favorite to favorite. It works in an interesting way with screenplays because they’re formatted a specific way, and there’s so many different aspects that are formatted differently… the action, the scene heading, the character name, the character dialogue, transitions… so when you’re removing stuff, depending on where in the script it is and how much it is, it may not make a dent in the total length at all. I’ve removed two lines of dialogue from a page and have seen the position of The End on the last page not budge an inch… still ¾ of the way down the page. I’ve removed two lines of dialogue and seen it move from ¾ of the way down the page to ½ way down the page.

So, I’ll go through and do this with my least favorite, second least favorite… check to see how the page count has been affected, and keep going on like that. If I’m lucky, sometimes removing three things may drop the page count a whole page. If it does, I save that version. Now, I have my next favorite version of my script, I only sacrificed a few things, and it’s a whole page shorter. Then, I get back to it, and I remove things until I can get another version that’s a whole page shorter. Save that. And I keep going.

This is great because I may have several versions of a script that vary between 105 pages and all the way up to 110 pages. If someone thinks 110 pages is too long but closer to 100 is preferable, and they’re happy with 105, then I have that version. Who knows, they may even want to know if I have a version with any more jokes, but that doesn’t lengthen the script too much. “May I interest you in either our 106 or 107 pager, good sir?”

I had an action comedy I had written that I needed to get down to 120, because of the rule. And I did. But I saved my versions with fun action and jokes and everything, so I have several versions that are several pages longer than 120. If anyone was interested in my 120-page script, and was so pleased with it and felt a longer version would be not only acceptable, but fantastic, then I didn’t lose those versions and I have those options.

So, of course, I did the same thing with this script. It’s a thriller/horror so there wasn’t quite as much to trim, but there’s some comedy laced throughout, so I was able to come up with some versions with less jokes. Who knows, maybe someone would like a more serious, slightly shorter version. But in the end, I’m extremely pleased with my 109-page version of the script, and I believe that will be the version that I will be submitting to screenwriting contests soon enough. I have several marked that I could submit this script to. Hoping it can do well somewhere. But at the very least I’m happy to have completed it and happy that I can add it to my ever-expanding library of stories and scripts.