I was one of the students in the class that Scott is mentioning here. It was a one-week class, and I took it because I am just finishing my first feature-length screenplay, which is my thesis project for my MFA at UBC (that's British Columbia). The second draft of my script was due today - I just uploaded it! I managed to get my 165-page first draft down to a 134-page second draft! I know that's still a bit too long - but it's not the final final draft, either. What I am excited about is that I was able to shorten it without sacrificing anything from my actual storyline. Using the techniques in those 4 articles of Scott's (above) I was able to not a quick ten pages off. Then I went through very carefully and painstakingly, and made every little thing more concise - as short and lean as possible without sacrificing meaning (both scene description and dialogue). Then went through the whole thing again - losing orphans, assessing parentheticals, etc. So, I am still there. I will probably have to sacrifice one of my sub-plots to get down to a decent length. But that's way better than I was, at 165 pages - feeling like I'd have to sacrifice almost everything that matters to the story. Thanks Scott - it was a great course. And to anyone thinking of taking one of his courses - well, that was my first, and it was really worthwhile. I'll be back for more. (After the thesis is submitted, though...)

Whether it be scene description or dialogue, I'm constantly muttering, "What's the point?" What is the core need/reason to get across? Boil it down to the core then write clear, concise, creative. P.S. Twitter is an excellent writing practice tool! 140 characters?! Verbose need not apply. ;)

Hi Scott, What if the screenplay is shorter then 90 pages, say like 87 or 88 pages. Do we have to have screenplay more then 90 pages to be able to get anybody to read them? Cheers Mragendra

Mragendra, there are no hard and fast rules on this. For example, the script for the movie Drive clocked in at 87 pages. However that's a shooting script, not a selling script, so the writer didn't have to worry about the perception in terms of page count. On the production side of things, that is so when movies are increasingly in the 100 minute and less range. That said my guess is if your script is less than 100 pages and certainly 95, that would raise a little yellow flag for a professional script reader. There is some wiggle room in terms of genre, I suppose. For example a horror script or perhaps action project may clock in with less and be okay on the perception front. The larger question is if you come in at 87 pages, use that as an opportunity to step back from your script and ask this question: Have I dug deep enough into the story? Are my characters rich enough? Have I explored them enough? Does my plot have enough twists and turns, or have I perhaps taken the easy way out at key junctures? Is this big enough to be a movie? I'm not talking about padding your story, but rather seeing if there are areas you could use to enrich and enliven what you've already written.

One trick is sometimes you'll have a limp scene -- a scene that really doesn't work. But you'll keep it in because of one vital piece of information that you just have to have. A lot of the time combining the dialogue of this one scene into the action of another goes a long way in solving this problem as well as getting rid of on the nose dialogue (and minimizing page count). Another trick with scenes that aren't working is to simply cut it. Cut the entire thing. See if the story works without it. If it does, it's a really fast, easy fix. Often things that are "necessary exposition" aren't that necessary when put in context of the whole. The audience will do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to working out the story for you. This also helps in another fashion -- if the audience is ahead of you in solving things then the scene you thought was necessary comes off as tedious to the audience. It would better be replaced by mindless entertainment than unnecessary exposition (or better yet, replaced by a twist they didn't see coming). Less really is more in terms of screen story. On the flipside -- there's generally lines in a script that are for the read. Just things that make the read smoother, because let's face it -- we can't really visually solve problems in a screenplay as easily as we can on film. "Hey, isn't that the guy we're after?!" Lines like these pop up in screenplays from time to time, but really need to be excised in the final cut of the film. They're not terrible on the page, and in some cases necessary for the read. But we've all seen it when a random badguy says something he obviously already knows as does the audience. You just want to slap him!