Features - learn to cheat your pages

[Charli]

Bill Martell, screenwriter who's had over 17 movies produced for cable tv, gave us
advice when writing a scene that I hold most valuable - cheat your
scenes to the end of the page.

I may start my scene at the top of the page and will stretch it to the bottom. I
rarely do 1/3 or 2/3 of the way down the page for a new scene locations. Okay, what this means, when you write a scene and it's a complete 1-3 page scene, let's
say you want to just RIP that puppy out of your script, you don't have to adjust
the entire script since you've thrown out whole pages.

I know this may not sound like that big of deal, but when you are rewriting, it can
be a very big deal. Sometimes you need only part of a page for a particular
scene and then change to a new location, well, that's understood.

Then if you throw out that small scene, you'll need to readjust your entire script.
Again, if you are not a screenwriter this may not mean a thing to you, but rewriting
is so much smoother when, if you are able, to cheat your scenes into whole pages.

Well, it's saved me.

Charli

 

[Mike Poindexter]

Basically insert a page break at the beginning of each scene to make sure it starts on a new page?

 

[Owen]

Yeah, are you talking page breaks or is the suggestion to actually write more into the scene to fill the page?

 

[EJ Pennypacker]

It's about keeping the reader turning the page.

EJ