John August

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How to cut pages

Big Fish, Charlie's Angels, Dead Projects, Formatting, Go, How-To, Words on the page

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. ((But! But! you say. In the 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.))

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. ((Page numbers, scene numbers, “more” and “continued” are exceptions.))

* **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 don’ts 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 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. ((I try to keep paragraphs of action and scene description between two and six lines.))

**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. ((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.))

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](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/a-movie-by-any-other-name)) 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.

The six-hour scene

Writing Process

I spent the end of last week in Des Moines, where I had a trustees meeting for [Drake University](http://www.drake.edu/). It was also a good excuse for barricading myself in order to get some more pages written on my current project. (The thing I [went to Maine](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/northeaster) to research.)

In [How To Write a Scene](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/write-scene), I explained my basic process for getting a scene on paper, which consists of looping it in my head, doing a “scribble version,” and then writing up the final thing. But like all workflows, there’s something a little best-case-scenario about the way I described it. So in the interest of myth-busting, I want to explain how some scenes are a lot more work.

(Note that I’m only promising to explain “how,” not explain “why.” After a decade doing this, I’m still sure not why some scenes are exponentially more difficult to write than others. Many times, you don’t see the monsters coming.)

In this case, it took six hours to get one scene written. And it wasn’t, on the surface, a particularly challenging scene: Two characters in a room, talking. A very clear in and out point, with the bookending scenes already written. But it was a beast to get on paper.

In general, when I reach a scene that seems unyielding, I’ll happily skip ahead to write another scene. ((Actors and directors generally have to shoot the scene listed on the schedule, whether it suits their mood or not. The writer, working independently, can check his inner barometer and determine which scene would be most fun to write. “Fun” being relative. At some point, all the easy scenes are finished, and it’s only the sight of the finish line that gets those last scenes written.)) But in this case, I knew I needed to crack this scene before writing any others, because it introduced a major character’s primary goal, his cri de coeur that would set the tone for much of the movie. That’s something you don’t get in an outline — the emotional drive. I needed to feel it in order to write any of the major scenes later in the script.

So I needed to write it.

The scene looped in my head pretty well. I could see the basic action, and had a sense of what the characters were saying. But when I tried to do a scribble version, it refused to come together. I had a notepad full of dialogue, mostly just single lines, with arrows trying to arrange them into a meaningful sequence. I spent two hours on the flight to Des Moines trying to make the pieces fit before finally putting it aside.

After writing three comparatively easy scenes, I took another stab at it. I asked some obvious-but-necessary questions:

* Was I starting at the right place?
* Was I ending at the right place?
* Could another character drive the scene?
* Would changing the location help?
* Did it need to be two scenes, rather than one?
* Did the scene even need to exist?

The answers confirmed my frustration: it was the right scene. It was just a bitch to write.

I went back to looping it in my head, and tried to forget about the half-written dialogue. If you’ve ever watched a movie with the sound turned off, that’s basically the effect: you don’t know what they’re saying, but you know they’re saying something. And you can tell what the tone is.

Tone ended up being the variable that needed tweaking. By cranking one character up to a near-manic state, his leaps of thought made a lot more sense. I did a new scribble version on a clean sheet, this time with half the arrows.

On the flight back to Los Angeles, I finally wrote the scene itself. It was still tricky, but it hit all the points in an agreeable way. It felt like a scene you could see used as a clip on a TV review show, in that it embodied the tone and ambition of the story.

So now it’s done, and I can continue on the remaining 60-odd scenes left.

Why screenwriters have it so good
—–

Here’s the thing: You don’t always have six hours to write a single scene. In television, that level of output would get you fired. Even on features, there is real time pressure. Spending six hours on two-and-a-half pages is a luxury problem.

So what do you do if you have to write the scene, and you only have an hour?

You muscle it. A good writer with enough experience can get a version of the scene on paper that will range from unobjectionable to pretty damn good. Particularly on production rewrites, I’ve had to muscle scenes that in a perfect world would have been handled more artfully. But [the results](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163025/) aren’t terrible. Given the needs of the director, cast, production and studio, you do the best you can with resources you have. Time is finite. So is mental energy.

But when it’s your own script, you owe yourself the time and effort to let each scene be the best it can be. The first 10 pages of Big Fish took three solid weeks of work. I’m convinced that almost any lesser version would have significantly hurt the movie.

The six-hour scene is now typed up, and I’m happy with it. In the cold light of Courier, I know it still needs tweaking, but I’m pretty confident it will remain in the movie in largely the shape I wrote it. If I’d brute-forced it, I’d always wonder if it was the right scene.

Pencils down

Film Industry, Strike

A few minutes ago, the WGA announced plans for the strike. Barring dramatic progress in negotiations over this weekend, it’s happening.

pencilI’ve largely avoided talking about contract negotiations and the strike, ((At least now we can retire the term “looming strike.”)) because I have no particular insight. I’m not on the WGA Board, nor the negotiating committee. But because I’m one of the higher-profile screenwriters, people give whatever I say unwarranted authority. And you know, I’m [all about authority](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/writing-digital-age).

Now that we’re at the 23rd hour, I can clarify a little bit more about what’s going on, and where I stand.

Last night, I went to the largest WGA meeting in history, held at the Convention Center downtown. The negotiating committee explained the progress (and lack of progress) in negotiations with the AMPTP, and confirmed that a strike would be occurring. Representatives from helpful allies, including SAG and the Teamsters, also spoke. I was encouraged by the thoughtfulness of the negotiating committee, who are dedicated to achieving a fair deal without unwarranted suffering.

If you know absolutely nothing about the issues — or if you have to explain it to your grandmother, who’s upset that her favorite soap opera is off the air — here’s my very short summary of the situation.

* Writers for film and television are paid a small fee when the things they write (movies and television shows) are shown again on re-runs or DVD. These are called residuals, and they’re much like the royalties a novelist or a songwriter gets.

* Residuals are a huge part of how writers are able stay in the business. These quarterly checks pay the mortgage, particularly between jobs.

* There’s widespread belief that the rate paid to writers for DVD’s is too low. It was set 20 years ago, when DVD was a nascent and expensive technology. DVD’s are now cheap and hugely profitable, yet the rate remains fixed.

* Downloads will eventually supplant DVD’s. That’s why it’s crucial to set a fair rate for them now, and avoid the same trap of “let’s wait and see.”

* There are other creative and jurisdictional issues (such as animation and reality television) which are also on the table. According to the AMPTP, residuals are the major stumbling block, however. ((Nick Counter: “The companies believe that movement is possible on other issues, but they cannot make any movement when confronted with your continuing efforts to increase the DVD formula, including the formula for electronic sell-through,” he said. “The magnitude of that proposal alone is blocking us from making any further progress. We cannot move further as long as that issue remains on the table.” Link to Variety.))

Yesterday’s Variety and Hollywood Reporter featured [this ad](http://www.wga.org/subpage_member.aspx?id=2529), in which showrunners from almost every drama and comedy on American television made it clear that they and their staffs would be doing no writing during a strike. Television will feel the impact of a strike long before features, because the season is only half-written.

But if there were an equivalent ad for feature writers, I’d sign it. As would every feature writer I know.

I’m contracted on two scripts right now, but they’ll be sitting unopened in their folders until the strike is resolved. I have a [deal to write a spec for Fox](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/the-big-fox-deal), but that will also have to wait. Pencils down means pencils down. I’m not writing any features or television until there’s a contract.

So what will I do in meantime?

First, I’ll man the picket lines.

After that, I’ll turn my attention to the 100 other things going on in my life that don’t involve movies, television, or 12-point Courier.

Over the last five years, the craft has become a smaller proportion of my daily life. I’m a father, a technology nerd, and a trustee of my university. I’d like to [get married](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/dear-governor-schwarzenegger-marry-me). I’m helping to raise money for the new School of Cinematic Arts at USC. I’m starting an American arm of [FOMO](http://fomo.us) to help the orphans of southern Malawi.

I also write a lot of things that aren’t movies or TV shows. I really enjoyed the [magazine](http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=guy.wisdom&category=life.lessons&conitem=03044e632f144110VgnVCM20000012281eac____) [writing](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/the-advocate) I did this past year, and plan to do more. I wrote a play that I need to workshop. And I have this website, which is desperate for some re-tuning.

So I’ll be busy. And when the strike’s over, I’ll be excited to go back to the job I love.

Writer/Directors and Co-Ops

Film Industry, News

This weekend brought two stories of interest to screenwriters, particularly those of the Hollywood bent.

The first was [Rachel Abramowitz’s article](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/business/la-ca-writers18mar18,1,5043214.story?ctrack=1&cset=true) in the LA Times about the recent batch of screenwriters-turned-directors, which included bits about Scott Frank, Mike White, and Charlie Kaufman, among others. I spoke to her about *The Nines*:

“Most of what I do never makes it to the screen,” he says, voicing a common lament. “I feel all this responsibility to those characters and these stories. They’re half alive. They’re trapped in 12-point Courier.”

“The Nines,” he says, deals with “the responsibility of a creator to his creations. You can look at it from a religious point of view. If you create this whole universe, are you responsible for making sure it sticks around?”

The second story comes from today’s Variety, in which Michael Fleming breaks the news of a new [“Writer’s Co-Op”](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117961371.html?categoryid=13&cs=1) formed by writer/producer John Wells and others.

I’ve read the article three times, and many of the details aren’t clear. But here’s the basics: Nineteen established screenwriters are agreeing to cut their up-front fees in exchange for first-dollar gross on the projects that get made. In addition, the screenwriters would have additional controls over their material. The deal is set up at Warners; it’s unclear whether any other studios would match the terms.

Will it work? I hope so. While the Writers Guild plays a crucial role in enforcing minimum standards for payments and practices, I’ve long felt there was room for improvement at the top end of the feature screenwriting continuum. By banding together, big-name scribes can get more leverage.

Which leads to the awkward issue of which names are on that list of 19. Mine isn’t; I wasn’t asked.Insert whichever “wouldn’t join a club that would have me” rationalization you’d like. Did I feel a little slighted? Sure. Did the realization that other big names weren’t on the list comfort me? Yes. Is it awkward admitting this? Certainly. Readers might remember a similar-sounding agreement at Sony/Columbia several years back. I was part of that, and despite making several movies for the studio during the time, found that it never amounted to much.Word around the virtual water-cooler is that David Koepp likely made some money through the Sony deal, because his original Spider-Man grossed so much that the deal’s profit definition must have kicked in. For whatever reason, he’s not part of the Writers Co-Op deal. Many of the writers who were part of the Sony deal are participants in this new venture, so it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.