How To Write A Screenplay:
Features Writing Tips How To Shorten a Perfect Script? How To Shorten a Perfect Script? |
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Q. How do you take out 10-20pgs of a script that you KNOW is perfect, and has to be the way it is, but you must do so with the knowledge that it is too long the way it is? A. Before you start editing it, what is your reason for asking? Are you working on the basis of one page is equivalent to about one minute’s screen time? Have you formatted your screenplay into the industry standard layout? Now, is it still physically too long? If you need to edit content and are finding it difficult because you know the script intimately and can justify every word, your objectiveness is getting clouded. Don’t forget that even though you know what was in the original script, what matters is what the audience sees. So providing you don’t cut out any plot development points, and the edited screenplay can still emotionally engage the audience, you will still have a successful screenplay. Put your screenplay away in a drawer for a week or a month and forget about it. When you get it out again, read through it with fresh eyes, and see where your attention is drifting or where you have mentioned something for a third time. Which scenes are not so essential – they add colour and flavour but do not drive the plot forward? They can go. And which scenes have you built up where some plot information is revealed, but much of the scene is padding rather than crucial? Can this piece of information be spliced out and appear as part of another scene, or be referred to by a character rather than acted out on screen? For example have the mother of the bride smiling over a postcard from her honeymooning daughter rather than a whole wedding sequence - or even the newly-weds declaring their undying love while walking on the beach. You could also ask someone to edit your work for you – someone whose opinions you trust but who is not emotionally attached to the work in the way you are. Get over the pain of seeing your script being hacked to pieces and discuss (not argue) why your friend has suggested the cuts they have.
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Since 1995 Phil Gladwin has written or edited screenplays for all of these people:
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