The Writing Week (Vol. 5) part 238 - Reducing Page Count and Tentpole Scene Placement

Two weeks ago, our 30 Day Screenplay Challenge ended. I decided to work on my demon thriller for the month in question, despite the fact that I went into it with an incompletely revised outline. The end result, though, was a full draft of a script I probably would have still been putting off otherwise, so who can complain with that?


One of the very first things I do after I finish writing a draft is I reread the script from start to finish. Well... first I take a few days to a week off and enjoy being done. Then I print and read through the script. My finished scripts tend to come in somewhere between 95 and 105 pages. Drafts, much like this one did, come in about 10 pages more than that on average. When the Challenge was over, I had a 114 page draft to contend with. The page count didn't matter to me quite as much as the placement of key scenes did. 


For example, of 114 pages, my midpoint came in at 65. Frankly, that's 7 pages too late. A midpoint is often not one specific instant or line in a script, but rather a scene or even sequence that can be drawn out over 5 or more pages. I came to terms with the fact that my "midpoint" would not be an altercation between the antagonist and protagonist, but rather the event that immediately preceded and led to their fight. The fight concluded on page 69; the earlier event on 65. There was no way I could have 65 pages before the midpoint and only 49 after it. That would just be way too unbalanced. Also, the moment of despair (which Blake Snyder likes to say should come around page 75, and I now agree with him) - the low moment when everything that didn't crumble at the midpoint just comes crashing down, leaving the protagonist with little to nothing - hit on 80. My Act Two turn into Act Three was about on target at 92, but considering the fact that the inciting incident was not a traditional one and ran onto page 12, I knew that I needed to get those big beats in place. Standard format dictates the inciting incident should come on 10, Act One should end on 25 or 30, the midpoint should be on 60, the moment of despair is on 75, and the turn into Act Three falls on 90. I had to achieve that, yet I didn't have a lot of wiggle room that I saw in the first half - there weren't many gratuitous scenes at all.


So how to go about shrinking the script and getting the beats to land where I wanted them? First, I went through and took a fine look at the dialogue. I often over write lines, reiterating things to make sure that the point comes across, saying in three lines what I really only need one or two to do. Step one: excise extraneous dialogue. Next, I went through and looked for any hanging words. Basically, those are words that sit on a line of dialogue or description by themselves, especially short words. If I see a "one" or "car" or "her" or "did" or anything of the sort taking up its own line in the script, I do back and find a way to trim a few characters out of the lines above in order to consolidate. There's no reason those should hang alone. And it's pretty amazing what cutting a few of those will do.


I use Movie Magic 2000 when I write, which affords a maximum of 57 lines per page. Depending what comes next after a page break, stripping one line of text from a page can bump up nearly a tenth of a page. For example, if a new scene begins on page 10, the program might cut page 9 off at line 53 in order to preserve the intro to a scene. The software won't allow a slugg line with no text after it on the bottom of a page. I can't ask page 9 to end with INT. BAR - NIGHT and start page 10 with the scene description. Even if it's only one line of action or description after the slugg line, the program is designed to require something immediately following the slugg line. Scenes that open with a lot of description will necessitate more space at the bottom of a page. That's why, of 57 lines, if 4 are free but I need 5 to accommodate the intro to a new scene, I will go back and look for hanging words. 


All in all, merely by consolidating some dialogue and cutting out most hanging words, I was able to drop the script from 114 pages to 106. More than that, my inciting incident came to a close on 10, the midpoint bumped down to 59, the despair point hit perfectly at 75, and Act Three began on 89. This was huge for me and made me much more comfortable with both the presentation and the structure of the script. Though the beats themselves might need work (I'll get the League's feedback in two weeks), at least I know they're where they should be. And that is always good.

The Writing Week (Vol. 3) part 142 - How to Use Slugg Lines

I really can't tell you how great it feels to be working on something new after so much time dedicated to my post-Apocalyptic spec. Not that I disliked working on that script - in fact, the complete opposite is true. I loved writing (and re-writing) it. After a while, though, my "new script" muscles were beginning to atrophy, so a change to an unexplored project was a welcome one. 

While I was writing this week (almost to page 50 of an intended 90), I got to thinking a lot about slugg lines and the way that they're best utilized. I'm pretty content with the way I handle them, but considering this blog is primarily intended to share our experiences and discoveries with other aspiring writers, I figured it couldn't hurt to talk about them a bit this week. After all, we all use them every day in our writing, and I certainly have a number of them in my week's pages, so why not.

To recap quickly in case you're not 100% sure what I'm talking about, the slugg line is the heading that appears before each scene, usually formatted like this:  INT. HOSPITAL ROOM -- DAY (or something very similar). The "INT." or "EXT." offer the environment (i.e. inside or outside). "HOSPITAL ROOM" is the specific location, with "DAY" being the time of day the scene is set. It's generally understood that the time of day be written either as day or night, with few exceptions leaning either way between or outside those general markers (afternoon, morning, evening). You can also use "LATER" or "MOMENTS LATER" or "CONTINUOUS" in place of day or night. For more on Continuous, check out this earlier post.

The reason that Day and Night are the most typical time indicators is that, for the most part, there are other people who will go through your script and prep it for production, a task that involves determining the shooting schedule. Unless it is absolutely imperative that a particular scene occur in the wee hours of the morning or at sundown, unnecessarily adding anything other than day or night makes planning the shooting schedule that much more difficult. The last thing you want to do as a new (or any) writer is make other people's jobs more difficult. Sticking with those two should not hinder your writing in most cases. 

As for Later, Moments Later, and Continuous, these are a bit different. In theory, all action is "continuous" (the movie doesn't just stop between scenes), so you do not need to use it all the time. If things are happening at the same time, you can do it - or "SIMULTANEOUS" if you want. For Later and Moments Later, I like to use them as such: both are used to denote a scene that takes place on the same day as the previous one. For example, something occurs during the day, and the following scene is still during the day, only a bit later on, I would use Later. If it is within the same 24 hours but now it's dark out, go with Night. If something happens during the day, and the following scene is a continuation of it that we have jumped to (perhaps set up to fifteen minutes later) but the locale, characters, and beat are the same, instead of writing in JUMP CUT TO, I go with Moments Later. There can even be a change of location here. If action is the next day (i.e. two "day" scenes back to back with 24 hours between them), I would use Day again in the slugg line, but specify "The next day" at the beginning of the description/action.

Your last option - and one that I like a lot - is to use Secondary Headings, especially in cases where action continues in the same location. Basically, these are modified slugg lines, which contain neither the interior/exterior designation, nor information about the time of day. You don't have to bog down the page with extra text to describe a scene set in a house, for example, in which the characters go from room to room. Rather than constantly typing INT. BILL'S HOUSE, [SPECIFIC] ROOM -- CONTINUOUS for each subsequent room, start with an overview - INT. BILL'S HOUSE -- DAY - and then follow the characters into the... DINING ROOM and then into the... LIVING ROOM and so on and so forth. "DINING ROOM" stands alone on the slugg line, followed by the action or dialogue, and then LIVING ROOM taking us into the next chunk. It reads quicker and looks cleaner. Some writers even use secondary headings almost exclusively. I like them quite a bit myself.

Remember, slugg lines are malleable. They involve words that you still have to type out, and therefore, you can change them as need be. However, there's also an accepted format to them, which you would do well to work within for the most part.