20pp -> 4 pp -> 1 page beat sheet (ugh! hard!)

[Randall_Oelerich]

I have been sequencing a new feature screenplay, creature horror, for months now. Have a nice 20 page beat sheet of scenes, using Kate Wright's 12 sequence method. Today I pared that down to 4 pages and that was hard! Then I just finished paring down the 4 pages to a single page. Man that is just plain ugly reducing a story down to one fricken page. I feel like I had to let so much of the story go, not the beats per se, just the explanations of what is in each beat. But I think it is a good exercise in clarifying a story. Wondering if any of you all go through this, what your experience is? ~randall

 

[Eximious]

Funny that you mentioned this, because I seem to work in the opposite way. I'll brainstorm and then devise a broad beat sheet with the major sequences and important character arcs. Sometimes it takes on more of a scriptment feel, sometimes it's more of a scene outline. From this I slowly plug away, scene by scene, fleshing it out with as much magic from my bag of tricks as I can.

I guess if you have lots of humor, cool reveals, and other devices that pay-off mostly in the microcosm that condensing a feature into a short synopsis could be hard. But I'd wager that you have a pretty solid macro-structure with a cool premise and some insightful character arcs. Why didn't you just go back to your logline and build up a page from there instead of breaking down twenty pages of beats?

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

The 20 pages actually has the exact same beat names as the four pager, or the one pager. Just that the 20 pager has fully fleshed out scenes, action, characters. But I wanted to zoom out to a one pager to get see if I had the right number of beats (Syd Field 10+20+10 or something close to that), and it looks like I am right on track. Plus I wanted to shorted my 20 pages to something more manageable for my mentor to look at, and also for Alesandra if I work with her (she wants a one page). Sidebar: I am fleshing out character bios now too and damn I am liking that software Character Writer!