length of 1st draft : length of final draft

Randall_Oelerich

Randall_Oelerich

Veteran
Curious. When you all write a first (vomit) draft for a spec, how does its length compare to a final draft. For example, if you are shooting for a 100 page final spec script, what is your typical length you spit out for a first draft?
 
I typically winnow out about 20% overall length between first and writer's final drafts.

I'm really undisciplined in first-draft mode, but get pretty vicious in seeking things to cut out as I polish.
 
My first word vomit draft was 115 pages. I didn't even think I would reach 90 pages. Reading it over and over made me realize all the things I can add and subtract to make it stronger.
 
The features I've written tend to stay fairly close to the 120 page range give or take maybe 15 through most of the process.

For the short I'm almost done with now (while acknowledging that the OP was probably asking more in terms of features), once I wrote a treatment in Word to work out the story, I just let it rip in FD - no concern for page count whatsoever, and ended up at 26 pages - which was *way* longer than I was willing to let it be. Second draft was 16 pages, and the third draft (current) is about 17. What was different for me this time is I made a conscious choice to let myself overwrite so I could have the luxury of cutting all but the best stuff if I needed to (and boy did I - almost 40% of it, the first five or so pages being the most notable chunk). I think it resulted in a far better script than if I had forced myself initially to stay closer to a page goal. Lazier, more self-indulgent stuff might have stayed in as a result. Ick...

Another thought regarding short films in particular is that I think the "one screen minute per page" guideline gets a whole lot less accurate the fewer pages there are. I think it's why many short films are actually underwritten, and as a consequence, underedited and, well, boring, which has been an ongoing puzzle to me. If you've only got a few minutes of screen time, how could you possibly allow yourself to bore me? Yet I find myself getting bored with many short films in well under a minute.

By not editing myself initially, I hoped to avoid this. I'm imagining that with a nice tight no-nonsense edit my 17 page script could become a 12-14 minute movie, which I think is a manageable length, especially if it *is* edited crisply. Pacing is *so* key...

My $.02
 
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My current script started at about 70 pages in the first draft and is currently at 118 for a just-about-final draft. If anything it might fall back to 100 or 110 depending on whether I trim a particular scene or replace it entirely with something more streamlined.

But I think that any information you might gather from the various answers are dependent on writing style and genre, as well, to an extent. For instance, my script is a crime drama with some action/thriller elements woven into it...so my first draft represented only character and action...which I had to go back and reflect upon in order to connect my scenes with a cohesive story.

Which...sort of...in turn...provides some insight into how I write. Not that I wouldn't rather have a nice clean outline to conscientiously follow!
 
I shoot not to exceed 110 pages on first draft and trim it down between 100-110 pages in final draft. The 120 pages is a day gone by.
 
I aim for a tight 80-90 pages. Once you have a good story at 90 pages, it's very easy to add "air" (to use an audio engineering term) to fill the story out to 120 pages. It's a lot easier to add than to take out.

Also, in the days of indie budgets a 90 page script is 30% less expensive to shoot than a 120 page script.
 
pmark23 said:
I aim for a tight 80-90 pages. Once you have a good story at 90 pages, it's very easy to add "air" (to use an audio engineering term) to fill the story out to 120 pages. It's a lot easier to add than to take out.
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I respectfully disagree about that...IMO an awful lot of movies I see (of all lengths) are overwritten on the page, slow-paced on the set, and underedited on the screen. I would think "air" is among the least desirable things to have in a movie unless it's specifically needed as some sort of relief from too much intensity (as in, for example, the relentlessly brain-numbing second half of "Transformers").

Almost all of my own personal favorite films basically move along like greased lightning, or at least well oiled machines, and I'm not just talking modern action films. I would include "Casablanca", "The Wizard Of Oz" and "It's A Wonderful Life" in that category as well. Not an unneeded frame in any of 'em, 'far as I can see.

In my experience it's the *removal of everything that isn't great* that really polishes the effect. If something that isn't altogether great is necessary for clarity or continuity, then fine, but keep it as brief as is practicable.

I think a cardinal rule for screenwriters/directors/editors should be:

YOU MUST NOT BORE THE AUDIENCE. EVER.

As well as this reminder:

IT IS EXTREMELY EASY TO BORE YOUR AUDIENCE.

My $.02
 
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Ted Spencer said:
I respectfully disagree about that...IMO an awful lot of movies I see (of all lengths) are overwritten on the page, slow-paced on the set, and underedited on the screen. I would think "air" is among the least desirable things to have in a movie unless it's specifically needed as some sort of relief from too much intensity.
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I sort of almost agree with you 100% Ted.

The problem is that you'll be asked to add things to the story by the producers, and if the 90 page story is bullet-proof, then all you can do is add scenes to flesh-out the story some more, or perhaps give some more detail to a couple story-lines. If they end up sucking then they can always be cut in the editing room and the main story is unaffected.

This happened to me on one of my scripts that got picked up. One of the producers wanted 120 pages to "get their money's worth"(!), and adding 30 pages was quite easy, and I was able to go into more detail into some of the character's motivations. Plus I could add some of their "notes" (which made no sense to the story) and not worry about making them upset by ignoring them.

I wrote the additions without touching the original 90 pages so they could be cut out if later they decided it was too long or too stupid.


On the other hand, "air" is useful in films that allow your mind to wander to pick up subtle impressions that would be too hamfisted to portray otherwise. A lot of Soviet films (esp. Tarkovsky), Soderbergh, and our own Zak Forsman employ "air" in a successful way. The only way to do this successfully is to have a tight film to begin with (ie: not overwritten) so it doesn't turn into meaningless slush.
 
pmark23 said:
I sort of almost agree with you 100% Ted.

The problem is that you'll be asked to add things to the story by the producers, and if the 90 page story is bullet-proof, then all you can do is add scenes to flesh-out the story some more, or perhaps give some more detail to a couple story-lines. If they end up sucking then they can always be cut in the editing room and the main story is unaffected.

This happened to me on one of my scripts that got picked up. One of the producers wanted 120 pages to "get their money's worth"(!), and adding 30 pages was quite easy, and I was able to go into more detail into some of the character's motivations. Plus I could add some of their "notes" (which made no sense to the story) and not worry about making them upset by ignoring them.

I wrote the additions without touching the original 90 pages so they could be cut out if later they decided it was too long or too stupid.
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Reminds me of a co-rewrite experience I had where the other writer wrote the first draft and was also the director. While I ended up with half the credit (which was perfectly fair), he still had final say. The effect was somewhat the reverse compared to yours though - I felt I had added some key material that really gave the story dimension (which it seriously lacked) but much of it went unused, to the detriment of film IMHO.

I think your comments on and approach to the initially tight script being forcibly "padded" later by questionable demands from on high makes a lot of sense though. Point taken...
 
I think something to consider, at least something I always think about in terms of screenplay length... is what kind of film am I writing? For example, some stories just run out of gas before others do.

Take a horror film. Do audiences really want to sit through a 3 hour slasher flick?

On the flip side, something more epic in scope like Lawrence of Arabia or Lord of the Rings needs the extra length to flesh things out and build the vast cinemascopic worlds that its characters inhabit.

This to me is the most annoying thing about being an aspiring pro screenwriter or filmmaker. Sometimes a script might need a few extra pages to properly tell the story, but the gatekeepers of Hollywood (the readers) will flip to the last page, gasp, and chuck your masterpiece into the trash bin if it isn't 110 or less (from what I've recently heard, 120 is considered too long now).

Now, I can understand where they are coming from, but at the same time they have many other ways to gauge whether a script is pro or amateur without spending large amounts of time per screenplay. They can look at formatting. They can read the first two or three pages. They can flip to anywhere in the script, start reading, and see if they get sucked into the fictional world the scribe has created. Even if the script then gets bought, the studio can always ask the original writer to shave off some stuff to get it down to a more manageable size.

Obviously, if the script is 200 pages then fine, throw it in the trash. If it is 130 to 140 pages, I don't know, I would think that if everything else is kosher then give the writer some slack if he or she clearly needed those extra pages to tell their story in the best way possible.

Sorry, end mini-rant on Hollywood B.S.
 
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Maybe I'm getting old, but I can't sit through a two hour movie. I always stop a movie halfway through and finish it later. 90 minutes is perfect.
 
At the risk of spinning out into OT world here:

The "luxury" of watching movies at home on DVD has really altered the experience for me, and not entirely in a good way. I often watch a film over a couple of days or more, and sometimes skip around between more than one movie, especially if the first isn't floating my boat, which is all too often. It's almost a relief to go to the theatre because I know I'm gonna be planted in that seat for the duration (I don't think I've ever left the theatre early, no matter how bad the film).

Watching a movie in 'chunks' is certainly user-friendly, but it takes a toll on the texture of the experience, and of course it's not the experience the filmmaker intended. It seems only the very best films can hold my attention for their entire duration, and there aren't many of those...

I watch a *lot* of films at home, btw, as part of my ongoing effort to self-educate as a filmmaker. I usually finish watching a film even if it's pretty bad (like "Nights In Rodanthe" which I completed the slog through last evening - the movie is really awful, but in a lot of very object lesson-rich ways, like ridiculously overthought lighting, (evidently) bad directing of good actors, etc.).

If I've rented too many mediocre-to-stinkers in a row I'll pull out a fave from my collection (the most recent of which was Cronenberg's superb "A History Of Violence") for a breath of fresh air. Ahh...
 
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I'll jump on the OT train with you.

I was suckered into going to see Transformers 2 in the theaters, in spite of reading all the terrible reviews and not wanting to go. Anyhow, I was mildly entertained for about thirty minutes. After that, when the "freshness" of the storyteller's world quickly faded, I basically just twiddled my thumbs and people-watched in the theater. This was easy, because there were so many explosions and desert vistas that everyone's face was constantly illuminated. But, I could've been reading scripts, writing, having a beer, etc.

I shouldn't have to force myself to stay in the seat. But since theater-going is usually a communal affair, I did just that to appease my friends. If I were watching a DVD, I would have felt no desire to suck it up for the remaining two hours. Now, I'm not saying that DVD's are a better medium, but I am saying that you guys shouldn't apologize for getting bored. Now, if you're watching a DVD and your family comes to bother you (even though you're enjoying it), then that's a different subject. But if you stop watching a movie because it's not floating your boat, then that's perfectly fair.

These aren't documentaries about how to save the world. They're narrative entertainment. Sometimes we need to commit to understanding a work as fellow media producers. Some things that are very successful might not directly appeal to our tastes, but we need to understand its success nevertheless.

But, if we're just media consumers, we shouldn't have to force ourselves to watch unappealing entertainment.
 
Ted Spencer said:
The features I've written tend to stay fairly close to the 120 page range give or take maybe 15 through most of the process.

For the short I'm almost done with now (while acknowledging that the OP was probably asking more in terms of features), once I wrote a treatment in Word to work out the story, I just let it rip in FD - no concern for page count whatsoever, and ended up at 26 pages - which was *way* longer than I was willing to let it be. Second draft was 16 pages, and the third draft (current) is about 17. What was different for me this time is I made a conscious choice to let myself overwrite so I could have the luxury of cutting all but the best stuff if I needed to (and boy did I - almost 40% of it, the first five or so pages being the most notable chunk). I think it resulted in a far better script than if I had forced myself initially to stay closer to a page goal. Lazier, more self-indulgent stuff might have stayed in as a result. Ick...

Another thought regarding short films in particular is that I think the "one screen minute per page" guideline gets a whole lot less accurate the fewer pages there are. I think it's why many short films are actually underwritten, and as a consequence, underedited and, well, boring, which has been an ongoing puzzle to me. If you've only got a few minutes of screen time, how could you possibly allow yourself to bore me? Yet I find myself getting bored with many short films in well under a minute.

By not editing myself initially, I hoped to avoid this. I'm imagining that with a nice tight no-nonsense edit my 17 page script could become a 12-14 minute movie, which I think is a manageable length, especially if it *is* edited crisply. Pacing is *so* key...

My $.02
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My stuff has generally gone the opposite direction -- one page has never been one minute, more like one page is a minute and 20 seconds or something. The last short worked out alright except the credits and outtakes ruined that idea, so it was I think 7.5 pages and 9.5 minutes. With no outtakes and extremely shortened credits it may have been more like 8:15 so pretty close really. It came in closer than anything else. In the past, though, maybe it was just bad editing or something but the films always seemed to come out longer.

I am curious to see how this works out in the future as the last short I did was the only pro short, so I wonder if my better experience now has just made that 1 page, 1 minute thing work better, or what.
 
Ted Spencer said:
At the risk of spinning out into OT world here:

The "luxury" of watching movies at home on DVD has really altered the experience for me, and not entirely in a good way. I often watch a film over a couple of days or more, and sometimes skip around between more than one movie, especially if the first isn't floating my boat, which is all too often. It's almost a relief to go to the theatre because I know I'm gonna be planted in that seat for the duration (I don't think I've ever left the theatre early, no matter how bad the film).

Watching a movie in 'chunks' is certainly user-friendly, but it takes a toll on the texture of the experience, and of course it's not the experience the filmmaker intended. It seems only the very best films can hold my attention for their entire duration, and there aren't many of those...

I watch a *lot* of films at home, btw, as part of my ongoing effort to self-educate as a filmmaker. I usually finish watching a film even if it's pretty bad (like "Nights In Rodanthe" which I completed the slog through last evening - the movie is really awful, but in a lot of very object lesson-rich ways, like ridiculously overthought lighting, (evidently) bad directing of good actors, etc.).

If I've rented too many mediocre-to-stinkers in a row I'll pull out a fave from my collection (the most recent of which was Cronenberg's superb "A History Of Violence") for a breath of fresh air. Ahh...
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I agree, I find myself doing exactly the same thing. Probably how I broke my PS3 I guess, but that's their fault... anyway I digress, the point is I left the thing on a lot overnight on pause, and then finished movies the next day. I rarely ever watch anything straight through, I always pause to do other stuff, unless I'm working out (BowFlex) while watching a TV episode, then I usually watch more or less straight through except a pause for the bathroom or something.

But I agree it's not the way you're really supposed to experience something. I have I think gotten a lot shorter attention span lately than I ever had before. I used to watch movies in our home theater back in the day, and that was like a real theater experience, not these "home theater systems" that are not home theater systems (a home theater has a dedicated non-windowed room with sound-padded walls and many tens of thousands in equipment -- a theater in a home; not a 50" TV with speakers, everyone has that now days practically). Then, I would watch straight through. Now I find it borderline impossible even in a real theater not to be distracted by my iPhone. I always check my e-mail every 15 minutes or so, it's just habit, I feel like at any time an important e-mail could arrive and it's hard / distracting to focus on a film for two hours thinking I could have missed some important e-mail. Even if it'll be there after the film is done I like to have everything now, know everything as soon as possible, etc. It's bad, haha, but it's reality in this connected age.

PS: Transformers 2 was awesome. Only indie filmmakers complain about a film like that -- everyone on my Facebook friends agreed it was freakin' sweet, and so did the box office. It was just a lot of fun, I'm going to back to see it again in the next week for sure. Who cares if the plot was pretty ridiculous, some acting was bad (you get a pass when you're that hot, ahem, Megan Fox), etc. It's a summer blockbuster, why is that lost on people now days? I don't get what in the heck these people expected, didn't you see the first? The plot was retarded. Oh yay they're coming to earth to get some stupid cube. It was just an excuse for big robots to destroy each other and everything else -- and it was awesome. That's what great summer entertainment should be. I'd be in an arthouse theater seeing some obscure French film if I wanted that, but when you go to see Transformers you know what you're getting yourself into.
 
Same here. I usually watch bits of several films at the same time, and it's very rare that I can sit through a film in one sitting.

I don't blame myself though -- I blame modern filmmaking and especially writing based on established structure paradigms ("oh, that's obviously the end of the turning point for Act II, so I may as well stop here since I know what's going to happen next").

The only films I watch in one sitting are those where I really don't know what's going to happen next, and that's very rare these days.
 
Ofcourse if you have alot of back and forth dialogue then you're going to have a much longer script. Basically take as long as you need to take to tell the story effectively and don't bore the audience. Obviously there's the rule of thumb page count but different people work differents ways, some over write and over write and then on later drafts dump stuff that doesn't work or is pointless and make it a more polished script. So it's not ALL about page count remember Clerks is about a 140 script and only a 90 minute movie.
 
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