How to cut pages
One page of screenplay translates to one minute of movie. Since most movies are a little under two hours long, most screenplays should be a little less than 120 pages.
That’s an absurd oversimplification, of course.
One page of a battle sequence might run four minutes of screen time, while a page of dialogue banter might zip by in 30 seconds. No matter. The rule of thumb might as well be the rule of law: any script over 120 pages is automatically suspect. If you hand someone a 121-page script, the first note they will give you is, “It’s a little long.” In fact, some studios will refuse to take delivery of a script over 120 pages (and thus refuse to pay).
So you need to be under 120.1
Which usually means you need to cut.
Before we look at how to do that, let’s address a few things you should never do when trying to cut pages, no matter how tempting.
Don’t adjust line spacing. Final Draft lets you tighten the line spacing, squeezing an extra line or two per page. Don’t. Not only is it obvious, but it makes your script that much harder to read.
Don’t tweak margins. With the exception of Widow Control (see below), you should never touch the default margins: an inch top, bottom and right, an inch-and-a-half on the left. 2
Don’t mess with the font. Screenplays are 12-pt Courier. If you try a different size, or a different face, your reader will notice and become suspicious.
All of these dont’s could be summarized thusly: Don’t cheat. Because we really will notice, and we’ll begin reading your script with a bias against it.
There are two kinds of trims we’ll be making: actual cuts and perceived cuts. Actual cuts mean you’re taking stuff out, be it a few lines, scenes or sequences. Perceived cuts are craftier. You’re editing with with specific intention of making the pages break differently, thus pulling the end of the script up. Perceived cuts don’t really make the script shorter. They just make it seem shorter, like a fat man wearing stripes.
Fair warning: Many of these suggestions will seem borderline-OCD. But if you’ve spent months writing a script, why not spend one hour making it look and read better?
Cutting a page or two
At this length, perceived cuts will probably get you where you need to be. (That said, always look for bigger, actual cuts. Remember, 117 pages is even better than 120.)
Practice Widow Control. Widows are those little fragments, generally a word or two, which hog a line to themselves. You find them both in action and dialogue.
HOFFMAN
Oh, I agree. He’s quite the catch, for a fisherman. Caught myself trolling more than once.
If you pull the right-hand margin of that dialogue block very, very slightly to the right, you can often make that last word jump up to the previous line. Done right, it’s invisible, and reads better.
I generally don’t try to kill widows in action lines unless I have to. The ragged whitespace helps break up the page. But it’s always worth checking whether two very short paragraphs could be joined together.3
Watch out for invisible orphans. Orphans are short lines that dangle by themselves at the top of page. You rarely see them these days, because by default, most screenwriting programs will force an extra line or two across the page break to avoid them.4
Here’s the downside: every time the program does this, your script just got a line or two longer. So anytime you see a short bit of action at the top of the page, see if there’s an alternate way to write it that can make it jump back to the previous page.
Nix the CUT TO:’s. Screenwriters have different philosophies when it comes to CUT TO. Some use it at the end of every scene. Some never use it at all. I split the difference, using it when I need to signal to the reader that we’re either moving to something completely new story-wise, or jumping ahead in time.
But when I’m looking to trim a page or two, I often find I can sacrifice a few CUT TO’s and TRANSITION TO’s. So weigh each one.
Cutting five to ten pages
At this level, you’re beyond the reach of perceived cuts. You’re going to have to take things out. Here are the places to look.
Remove unnecessary set-ups. When writing a first act, your instinct is to make sure that everything is really well set up. You have a scene to introduce your hero, another to introduce his mom, a third to establish that he’s nice to kittens. Start cutting. We need to know much less about your characters than you think. The faster we can get to story, the better.
Get out of scenes earlier. Look at every scene, and ask what the earliest point is you could cut to the next scene. You’ll likely find a lot of tails to trim.
Don’t let characters recap. Characters should never need to explain something that we as the audience already know. It’s a complete waste of time and space. So if it’s really important that Bob know what Sarah saw in the old mill — a scene we just watched — try to make that explanation happen off-screen.
For example, if a scene starts…
BOB
Are you sure it was blood?
…we can safely surmise he’s gotten the necessary details.
Trim third-act bloat. As we cross page 100 in our scripts, that finish line become so appealing that we often race to be done. The writing suffers. Because it’s easier to explain something in three exchanges of dialogue than one, we don’t try to be efficient. So you need to look at that last section with the same critical eyes that read those first 20 pages 100 times, and bring it up to the same level. The end result will almost always be tighter, and shorter.
Cutting ten or more pages
Entire sequences are going to need to go away. This happens more than you’d think. For the first Charlie’s Angels, we had a meeting at 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon in which the president of the studio yanked ten pages out of the middle of the script. There was nothing wrong with those scenes, but we couldn’t afford to shoot them. So I was given until Monday morning to make the movie work without them.
Be your own studio boss. Be savage. Always err on taking out too much, because you’ll likely have to write new material to address some of what’s been removed.
The most brutal example I can think of from my own experience was my never-sold (but often retitled) zombie western. I cut 75 pages out of the first draft — basically, everything that didn’t support the two key ideas of Zombie Western. By clear-cutting, I could make room for new set pieces that fit much better with the movie I was trying to make.
Once you start thinking big-picture, you realize it’s often easier to cut fifteen pages than five. You ask questions like, “What if there was no Incan pyramid, and we went straight to Morocco?” or “What if instead of seeing the argument, reconciliation and breakup, it was just a time cut?”
Smart restructuring of events can often do the work for you. A project I’m just finishing has several occasions in which the action needs to slide forward several weeks, with characters’ relationships significantly changed. That’s hard to do with straight cutting — you expect to see all the pieces in the middle. But by focussing on something else for a scene or two — a different character in a different situation — I’m able to come back with time jumped and characters altered.
Look: It’s hard to cut a big chunk of your script, something that may have taken weeks to write. So don’t just hit “delete.” Cut and paste it into a new document, save it, and allow yourself the fiction of believing that in some future script, you’ll be able to use some of it. You won’t, but it will make it less painful.
- But! But! you say. In the [Library](http://johnaugust.com/library), both Big Fish and Go are more than 120 pages. I’m not claiming that longer scripts aren’t shot. I’m saying that if you go over the 120 page line, you have to be doubly sure there’s no moment that feels padded, because the reader is going in with the subconscious goal of cutting something. Go is 126 pages, but it’s packed solid. Big Fish meanders, but those detours end up paying off in the conclusion. ↩
- Page numbers, scene numbers, “more” and “continued” are exceptions. ↩
- I try to keep paragraphs of action and scene description between two and six lines. ↩
- While I rag on the program, Final Draft is smart enough to break lines at the period, so sentences always stay intact. It’s a small thing, but it really helps the read. Other programs may do it now, too. ↩
Filed under: Big Fish, Charlie's Angels, Dead Projects, Formatting, Go, How-To, Words on the page
Articles
June 18th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
One piece of advice I heard: If your hero’s name is Robert, shorten it to Bob. That will save you a page or two.
Incidentally, what is the current, wanted script length? Closer to 100 or 110, or are we back to 120 again?
June 18th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
“But by focussing on something else for a scene or two — a different character in a different situation — I’m able to come back with time jumped and characters altered.”
It may amuse you to know that this trick also works in comics, and I use it all the time. It makes for a lot of very short one-page scenes, but even that’s enough.
June 18th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Ono! Don’t let Blake Snyder hear that you want to cut the hero Saving the Cat (kittens).
June 18th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
I translate a lot of English-language screenplays to be shot in Spanish, and vice versa to be sent to English-speaking producers. Narrating in Spanish is so much harder and longer, so it’s forced me to reevaluate every single word to try and keep both languages at a very similar length. It’s been amazingly helpful when writing my own stuff. There isn’t a widow that doesn’t suffer under my merciless DEL key.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Great tips, thanks for sharing!
June 18th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
@Scott:
If you can deliver a great 110 pages, do it. That’s long enough that it feels substantial, but well within the safety range.
The Nines is only 98 pages, but it’s obviously pretty unconventional.
Comedies aren’t necessarily shorter, particularly if they’re very dialogue-driven. Go is 126 pages, but clocks in at 103 minutes.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
John, thanks so much for the tips. I’ve just finished my first screenplay and on the second draft I hit 126 pages. The tips you just shared will ensure that my third draft won’t break the 120 page mark. Thanks again!
June 18th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I run the same version of Final Draft on the PC and the Mac. A typical script (and I mean exactly the same document) opens up a page or two shorter on the Mac than on the PC. No idea why. Subtle font difference maybe?
June 18th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Another trick to file under “I’m a cheating cheater, and I don’t really care”: if you have a dialog-heavy script, changing the Final Draft template to “Cole and Haag” will save you up to 10% of your script length. As far as I can tell, it has narrower action lines but much fatter dialog lines, therefore packing more dialog into fewer pages.
And for you novice cheaters out there, you can easily change the template on an existing script by going into Final Draft’s Format -> Elements submenu and click “Change Template.” Subtle on a page-by-page basis, but substantial changes on page count.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
@Jon:
I can guarantee that whatever system/program the studio opens the file in will make it longer. The toast always lands butter-side down.
That’s why I deliver .pdfs.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Hey John,
I rarely, if ever, use CUT TO: anymore . . . using I just go to the scene and figure the director will take care of it . . . I use
SUBHEADINGS
a lot for action scenes, close ups (without saying CLOSE UP) and cuts . . . I like how they look and read . . . but for transition scenes, I mainly do FADE IN and FADE OUT and SUPER . . .
My question for you is . . . is not using CUT TO at all a bad thing? Should there at least one or two in there?
June 18th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
“So don’t just hit “delete.â€? Cut and paste it into a new document, save it, and allow yourself the fiction of believing that in some future script, you’ll be able to use some of it.”
Nice to know I’m not the only one who does this. I read it and smiled, until I read, “You won’t, but it will make it less painful.” Why must you shatter my illusions, John? Why??
One other thing I do is look for any lines of action description that are only a few words long and see if I can rephrase to get them up to the previous line.
As far as cutting numerous pages, many, if not most, of the scripts I’ve read could use some dialogue trimming. Particularly when the dialogue isn’t driving the story forward or a character is telling us what he plans on doing. It’s virtually always better to see things unfold without the prelude.
Great read, John. Thanks.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
John,
Thanks! Love the Charlie’s Angels example. Proves that nothing is precious — not even the things that work — and that there’s always another way to skin a cat (or save a kitten — oh, wait, we don’t have time to save a cat!).
June 18th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I personally find trying to take out entire chunks of scenes works best for me. I always feel like the script can’t do without certain parts, but sometimes just taking them out forcefully makes you realize it wasn’t quite essential.
My advice would be to just try and take things out sometimes, with the intention of putting it back in… just so you can see what it reads like without.
I guarantee most times you won’t put it back in. It’s the actual removing that’s the hardest part.
June 18th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
I’ve heard that we should start orienting screenplays in landscape mode to prepare for the shift to high-definition format.
How does this effect page count?
PS –
Also, what kind of high resolution fonts would you recommend? I know that high def can be unflattering.
June 19th, 2008 at 5:33 am
Great post! For your suggestion re: widow/orphan control (the dialogue chunk) my tactic would be to delete the word “he’s” so the dialogue reads: Oh, I agree. Quite the catch, for a fisherman. Caught myself trolling more than once.
June 19th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Look: It’s hard to cut a big chunk of your script, something that may have taken weeks to write. So don’t just hit “delete.� Cut and paste it into a new document, save it, and allow yourself the fiction of believing that in some future script, you’ll be able to use some of it. You won’t, but it will make it less painful.
SO TRUE.
As usual, great post. I love reading your writing advice, because even as a fiction writer (non-screen, that is), I find so much to take away.
June 19th, 2008 at 7:42 am
@Joshua James:
No one says you have to have CUT TO: If the script reads find without them, just don’t use them.
@DougJ:
I’m 88% sure you’re joking.
@Sabine:
I actually had to add the “he” in order to force the widow on the example.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Well, I feel really good that things I am doing are done by John August. I always trim those widows before I even proceed. Usually, a slight grammar or vocab change will do it. I can’t think of an exact example right now, but my dialogue-driven drama ended up at 115 pages by eliminating widows.
I, too, only use TIME CUT TO: to show that we are not linear but jumping over some things. I haven’t yet used an intermediate scene, but I can see how it can fill some space.
I think the biggest key to that is imagesound transitions. I like to use a pull in to an object and then a pull back to reveal the changes. Like, you can end on a porch with one newspaper and come back in with several.
Or you can use a hairdo or wardrobe change (my favorite). But then I am OCD about scenesequence transitions involving a visual auditory cue, so excuse me.
Nice article. The discourse is great.
June 19th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Occasionally I remove a short line of description and insert it into parenthesis within the dialogue. This removes the two lines of empty spacing from before and after it. For example:
Delete scene description: ‘He lights up a cigarette’ and add: (lighting up) into the dialogue.
I’ve heard conflicting views on whether this is acceptable. Do you think it’s a crime John?
June 20th, 2008 at 9:01 am
John,
To piggyback on James’ question and go in a slightly different direction… I’ve seen this done to good effect in the occasional screenplay for a produced movie. The example I’m thinking of made for a much better read (for flow reasons) and it was actually done at the end of a line of dialogue (which I’d not seen before). And, of course, it’s often done mid-dialogue stream, which sometimes reads better than if you plant that info in an action line.
Obviously when you’re working on assignment no one’s gonna penalize you for that, but I’m finishing a new spec and am going out to new agents, which are a different audience altogether.
My general approach is to favor the read over being a stickler for the rules (especially where the rules don’t actually serve the script. So, what’s your advice on this use of parentheticals and on (skillful) rule breaking in general. Thank you!
June 20th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
With regards to the usefulness of deleted sequences, there’s been plenty of times when I’ve gone back to a previous draft and copy/pasted the best part of that sequence, two drafts later… I wound up needing the same exact moment, having gotten there through completely different means.
Most of the time, it isn’t deliberate – I’m definitely that DELETE guy. Let it go.
At the same time, it surprises me how often I wind up needing that one particular moment – and usually it’s the one that made me love the sequence in the first place!
June 20th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Rules or no, I feel the challenge of trimming pages is just good in principle. These days, some really great hour and a half-long summer movies are being spread thin to two or two and a half, Big Gulp-style.
Excessive context can kill the emotional impact of scene, just as well-placed context can amplify it. When you telegraph or build up to a moment long enough, the audience peaks emotionally. By the time the film gets around to showing what it wants to show, the audience is over it.
More is not better.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
John,
What about mini-series? I’m working on a project I’d like to go to HBO or Showtime, and is in two perfect parts: 103 pages for Part One, and 120 for Part Two. Any advice on how to get someone to read 223 pages?! Dangle Part One as a carrot? Pitch first?
June 20th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
How bad is it if you have say, a couple of page 102s and maybe a couple of 94s. As a reader you’re just looking at the last page for page count right? And by page 80 or 90 you’re either into it or not. Just kind of curious how that would go over.
June 21st, 2008 at 6:52 am
Great post…good advice…As a script supervisor, I have timed many scripts throughout the years and while your readership is of the high end writer types I thought these tidbits from a newbie screenwriter might make you laugh
In his script I found:
a scene description:”This scene introduces the character Missy” at the end of one scene he writes “Make sure we get a good shot from the top of the house looking down” and at least NINE references to “Insert Montage here”, and my personal favorite “She closes her eyes (very Yoda like)â€? Very Yoda like! How is that exactly?
To Doug comment #15 Thanks for the laugh!
June 21st, 2008 at 1:07 pm
John
Any comment about cole & haag? Will people notice this too?
June 21st, 2008 at 1:47 pm
For the film I’m producing now, the draft I got was 109 pages. But when it was time to make the one liner, we noticed that there were a tremendous amount of the word “beat” after each sentence. For example:
She turns and looks at John.
Beat.
Their eyes meet.
It was even within dialogue:
Beat.
When we eliminated all of those “beats” we lost 6 whole pages.
June 22nd, 2008 at 1:10 am
Am wondering if anyone (John?) ever employs the hyphen at the end of a line (splitting a word into two syllables) in order to eliminate widows or orphans that occur at the end of the paragraph. I’ve found that one every now an then doesn’t seem too noticeable. Any hard and fast rules here…?
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:26 pm
My question is in reference to the studio cutting ten pages in Charlie’s Angels. Is it is wise to leave questionable/on the fence scenes in your script because you know the studio or TV network will want to kill or note something.
thanks
June 24th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Which is the preferred Courier? In Final Draft, there is a “Final Draft Courier� and a regular Courier. The default is “Final Draft Courier.� It can make a difference of several pages on the total page count.
June 24th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Thanks to your advice, John, I’ve trimmed my 126 page script to 116 pages. Trimming the fat off the dialog and descriptions helped a lot as well as the tips on helping out those poor orphaned lines.
Thanks again!
June 24th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
What’s your opinion on the scriptwriters network database?
http://www.scriptwritersnetwork.org
June 25th, 2008 at 6:01 am
I use the scenes that I’ve cut for rehearsal.
I find that working with them allows the actors to explore the characters in a way that doesn’t commit to a single performance and the missing scenes become incumbent in the performance that remains.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:53 am
@ Anthony (#30), I personally don’t recommend it. They aren’t cutting for their health — In the Charlie’s Angels example they were cutting for budget reasons. Earlier it may be because something isn’t working. They may correctly identify what that is or they may not, but if they’re pointing to a problem its’ because either there’s an actual problem or there’s a gap between what you’ve done and what they intend (and if they’re paying you, what they intend matters more than what you intend).
Also, leaving things that you know are questionable in a script is unprofessional. And, if you deliver something that contains pages that a professional writer should know not to leave in there, you send the message that maybe you’re not the person for the job. Why not deliver your best work and work on developing the insights (into what they’re up to) and skills (at responding to notes that may seem, at first glance, to be capricious) that you need to excel in your career.
Maybe it’s because I started life in another line of work that it strikes me how often we writers undermine ourselves by failing to remember that, if we’re being paid, it’s a job (and that includes if they pay you for your original script). And in a job, professionalism and quality of work matter, even in the free-fall that is Hollywood.
June 28th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Thank you for the notes. As a strict formatarian, I appreciate any advice you can give.
John