Page Count Lipo

So you’ve read the Rouge Wave installment about page length. Idly, you flip to the back of your script – great Gatsby! – 139 pages! What has gone wrong? Sure, Miss Smarty-Pants Rouge Wave recommends keeping the page count down but it’s too late!

Readers, it is never too late. Here is a search and destroy check list guaranteed to trim that script down to a manageable page length.

Action lines: Is your script full of dense action lines? Remember, screenwriting is a bit like haiku; can you go through every page and reduce by half the action lines, distilling them down to only the juiciest, most evocative, most pithily descriptive words in all of humanity? Do try. It’s fun. And easy.

Scenes: This is a heartbreaking one; is every scene absolutely necessary? As I am wont to say, real estate in scripts is very, very expensive. Think of script pages as the Boardwalk of writing. Every inch is priceless. Review each scene and give it the scene test: Does it move the story forward? Does it reveal character? And ideally – does it do both? Can you jump into that scene late? Are you getting out early enough? Is there too much exposition? Are you telling us something you could show us? Here’s a little exercise I was taught in the UCLA Writer’s Program: Cut out the first and last line of dialogue in your scene. Don’t think. Just do it. Now revisit the scene. Did that just make it more powerful? Often, it can and it does improve the scene.

Act One Set Up: Is your inciting incident happening on page ten-ish? Or is there too much preamble in your set up? Remember the epidemic of ADD in Hollywood; if there is no giddy-up by page ten, Houston, you have a problem. Many writers mistakenly think that they need to take some time to set the scene and the characters up. False. You can set the story up and introduce character as you go along. This is not a story book in which we have the luxury of saying: This is Jane. Jane works at Starbucks. Work, Jane, work. Jane has a boyfriend, Dick. Dick likes coffee. Drink, Dick, drink. No. We can open on Jane in the Starbucks and stage right, enter Dick: Jane, I’m leaving you for a transvestite hooker who works at Peets. Run, Dick, run.

Belly-Crawling Over the Finish Line: Is your third act sluggish? Good question, Rouge Wave-inatrix, but if I knew, don’t you think I’d fix that? Now, don’t get cheeky. Third acts have, over time, grown shorter and shorter. In years past, the third act was about as long as the first act. No more. Really, after that second act pinch, or second plot point, or Dark Night of the Please-God-Let-This-Script-Be-Over-Soon, you really only have about fifteen to twenty pages to draw things to an exciting conclusion. Whoever said that scripts are like a rollercoaster was right; you have about ten pages at the top of the script to get that rollercoaster to the top of the hill and then whooooosh – the script moves faster and faster as it goes. By the time we reach the third act, we are experiencing G-force wind; the third act is no time for polite conversations, introducing a new character or smelling the roses – regardless of genre. Everything has been established and in the third act, we just want to see what in the heck is going to happen. Think of this as the don’t-you-dare-get-up-and-go-check-the-parking-meter act. Audiences should be glued to their seats.

Review your script for act breaks throughout; Is your inciting incident on or about page ten (if not earlier)? Is your first plot point which takes us into the second act on or about page 25 to 30? How ‘bout that midpoint? Page 50-ish? And the second plot point should be around page 85 to 90.

The page-count markers above are ideals. The Rouge Wave-inatrix is in no way suggesting that writers strive for cookie-cutter structure, but don’t come crying to me when you wind up with 139 pages, ink stained fingers and a dazed look in your eye.

Go for the usual suspects: action line density, over-long scenes and a sluggish first act. Once your work there is done, how does your page count look now? If the problem persists, lift the hood and check the placement of your plot points. This will help you narrow down where your script may be lagging a bit.

And if absolutely everything else fails, I think we all know the dirty little “loose, extra loose, tight or extra tight” setting on Final Draft. Admit it. You’ve done it. We all have.

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