How many pages a day do you get done?

Well there was my new record. I'm more exhausted than exhilarated right now, to be honest. But I'm still a bit in awe. It will probably take me a few days to process it all.

I just started, and finished, a feature-length screenplay in a 24-hour period. 4 p.m. Saturday, finished at 1:47 p.m. Sunday. I slept 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday night. The script is 95.5 pages long. It has four protagonists, alternating stories between them. I wrote them separately. I had outlined this screenplay over the previous 6 days, spending most of my time each day doing that. It was actually, as usual so far for me, much more intense than writing it. The outlining process is really where everything came together, and was often more stressful because of fitting the pieces together, figuring out technical details, etc.

But I'm pretty stoked. This is a goal that I wanted to see if I could achieve -- an entire screenplay in a single day, or 24 hour period. I really didn't believe it was possible. Especially not without a ton of shortcuts. Yet this was a much better, more polished rough draft than the last screenplay I wrote, where the outline carried the script to 76 pages, about 10 to 14 short of where I wanted it. This one will end up around 105 pages I believe, because of an introductory segment left off, and a few other details here or there. It was tightly constructed, though, and scenes had to be very brief. Almost no scenes are above 2 pages, and quite a few are shorter, which isn't bad for an indie project where you usually try to maximize locations. This one has quite a few locations... none overly difficult, but just so many.

Phew. Ok, time for some rest!
 
JonathanLB said:
Well there was my new record. I'm more exhausted than exhilarated right now, to be honest. But I'm still a bit in awe. It will probably take me a few days to process it all.

I just started, and finished, a feature-length screenplay in a 24-hour period. 4 p.m. Saturday, finished at 1:47 p.m. Sunday. I slept 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday night. The script is 95.5 pages long. It has four protagonists, alternating stories between them. I wrote them separately. I had outlined this screenplay over the previous 6 days, spending most of my time each day doing that. It was actually, as usual so far for me, much more intense than writing it. The outlining process is really where everything came together, and was often more stressful because of fitting the pieces together, figuring out technical details, etc.

But I'm pretty stoked. This is a goal that I wanted to see if I could achieve -- an entire screenplay in a single day, or 24 hour period. I really didn't believe it was possible. Especially not without a ton of shortcuts. Yet this was a much better, more polished rough draft than the last screenplay I wrote, where the outline carried the script to 76 pages, about 10 to 14 short of where I wanted it. This one will end up around 105 pages I believe, because of an introductory segment left off, and a few other details here or there. It was tightly constructed, though, and scenes had to be very brief. Almost no scenes are above 2 pages, and quite a few are shorter, which isn't bad for an indie project where you usually try to maximize locations. This one has quite a few locations... none overly difficult, but just so many.

Phew. Ok, time for some rest!
Click to expand...

Can I ask how long your outline was? I didn't do an outline before I started and it showed. How indepth was your outline?
 
I still am not asleep... what is wrong with me, who knows. But I'm still a bit pumped. I'm going to bed soon just for a nap, lol, then it's Yankees vs. Red Sox. God what I do for my hobbies.

My outline was a total of 12 pages, well, it crept onto the 13th. But the first 3 pages I would say basically ignore, because they were kind of generalized notes moreso than the real outline. The real outline was of course scene-by-scene. So that was 9 pages.

It was single-spaced, so I would say it was quite detailed overall, depending on how much detail I thought the scene needed. One of the toughest things was that I had four protagonists, and not one of them was doing anything I really understand well. I'm not a politician, I've never ran for office, I've never even helped a campaign in a serious way. Fortunately, a friend of mine worked for the Bush administration, so she was a valuable resource in getting some details inside of how a campaign functions as she's kind of done it all. Same was true with the other characters -- it was all research-based.

While I agree with the "write what you know" policy, the basic, overarching plot IS something I know quite well, and involves my background in philosophy, especially political philosophy and religious study (I'm not religious...). It was just the characters, the most essential part, who I really had to study, haha. So that was... time consuming, to say the least. But I've done 6 months of research for a non-fiction book before. Research is all about how well you know how to organize yourself.

For my first non-fiction book, I spent 6 months at least doing research, but cited about 900 articles in my bibliography.

For my second book, I spent just 3-4 weeks researching, but cited 1,500 articles in a book that was more than 55% longer than the first.

For this screenplay, I only spent 6 days doing research formally. But a lot of the research and knowledge I had of this subject came from 3-4 years of interest in the subject matter, and reading, research, etc. It's just I never looked at it that way because it was merely fun to me.

I hope that helps a bit. I even included in my outline quotes that came to mind that I really liked. I would say maybe 60% of them made the rough draft, in some form, but usually not as written. They were merely thoughts, after all.
 
I seem to break all the rules when it comes to my screenwriting. I can't just sit down and write. I normally have to think about my scene for ages, planning it in my head — when the words do actually get put to paper, re-drafts are normally more tweaks. I may exchange a sentence or two, change some syntax for others, but in general no big changes.

I don't write my scripts in linear format either, which is apparently another big no-no, but write circular. If I have key scenes in my head that I've worked out all the specifics or it's the scene I love the most, I don't force myself to write all the preliminary scenes before I write the one that is clear. I write the one that is clear first and then go back and fill in the gaps, this allows me to give each scene my full attention in the moment rather than worrying about where it is going. As I work from a refined treatment (which I agree is one of the hardest but most useful tools in scriptwriting), I've never found this method to be a problem and I think it's each to their own, as long as it works.

I also edit as I go - another no-no. I will always go over the writing I've done the day before (but only the day before, I do limit myself to that) and tweak it before moving on. This does mean though, that if someone said, "show us your stuff right now", I've got something I'm happy to show them.

I average about 3 pages a day of clean and tight script.
 
There is nothing wrong with that at all, Yeddi. Anyone who tells you that you're doing something wrong, without even having seen the writing, is just being silly.

I have done the same thing. I definitely did not write my non-fiction books in sequential order. To me, that would make no sense. I wrote whatever I felt most motivated to write at the time. The chapters were strung together in logical order later. The only thing I made sure of was that I had a chapter outline, and knew where everything fit together. I find it better sometimes to write non-sequentially, because it's better to keep writing than to be stuck just because you don't want to write whatever is next. Sometimes, that means you are stuck with the toughest thing last, but it becomes easier when you know it's all that remains.

I was guilty of a little bit more editing-as-you-go with my second non-fiction book intentionally. The first, it happened by accident, I didn't know better. But on the second book, it's not like I doubted my ability to write a book, so it wasn't as much of a concern to me. I knew I wouldn't just give up or something. I edited that just the way you describe, only usually I would actually write a paragraph, read it over, edit it, then write the next paragraph. Then at some point I would kind of skim over that chapter and see what I could fix there.

Even so, I completed 13 drafts of that book, the last of which had only 3 minor changes in 140,000 words... I can't really settle for something that isn't as perfect as it can be.
 
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