Trimming, Slimming, from the Beginning

Trimming pages is a normal task, one that writers are asked to do regularly for budget reasons, pacing reasons, or because a directors style may trump one's dialogue.

Or maybe your first draft came out to 160 pages. Don't laugh, it happens. And for those of you not laughing, I guess I'm talking to you. It's certainly happened to me. Some writers write exactly to the page count, others don't. Regardless, all will be asked to cut something at some point.

(I was once told by a friend who was on a board meeting at the guild, as writers were sharing their war stories, that one team related their first draft usually came out to 250 pages, which was normal for them, and then they started cut. Wow.)

But how do you actually do it?

There have been various definitions of what screenwriting is in books, on this blog, and on the other writing blogs out there that are all excellent. It starts with Hitchcock's observation that movies are "life with the boring parts taken out" and goes from there. Every moment matters, every word matters, because every second on screen matters. And if an image carries more power for your story, write the image and hold the silence. Writing doesn't necessarily mean make your characters speak non-stop for 90 minutes.

Another definition on this blog that I love came from The Thinking Writer
which essentially remarked that good scene writing starts as late into the scene as possible, and leaves before the scene ends. It marries posts on this blog where I talk about maintaining tension, and to never resolve tension, which means - don't resolve all your scenes in a nice little package and tie it up with a bow. Scene can end, abruptly if need be, tension continues.

Now, some have to write a whole scene to get to the meaty part in the middle and figure out that's what they need, others go right to it. But it's a great way to start trimming.

So here are my first three go to spots for the trim:

First place to go: There's plenty of excess set-up, exposition, talking without saying anything, and overly ornate description to clog up any script, and that happens to writers on every level, which is why you don't see a lot of first draft scripts shared on the internet. They often suck. That's the first place you go to trim.

But a story beat that happens on page 40 of a fat script, may seem perfect landing on page 30 after you cut and condense what comes before it.

The second place to go: Kill repeated action. Often young writers hit the same beat two or three times in one script. The same joke in a comedy (hey look, this time the pie hit my dad!), the same threat in a thriller (okay, this time I'm really going to kill you if you don't tell me where the &$%! is), these are important to cut as they hurt your story anyway, you can't build a drama on repetition. (caveat: in comedies the "running joke" is a piece of gold and doesn't count as repetition.)

The third place to go: Visit the idea of multiple action to condense story. We tell stories linearly, meaning we walk them out on a straight line as we weave them into the world. That often means single events happen in each scene, then we move to the next scene for a new event or piece of information, etc. I have written here before about the "one new piece of information a scene" idea, which I think is important so you don't lose your audience. But if an idea/character/element has already been introduced, there's not reason it can't double up in the same scene. So rather than have your hero and his best friend have a falling out at lunch, and then in the next scene have your hero meet his love interest for the first time and embarrass himself because he's nervous, you can place both events in the same scene, perhaps using the first moment to help affect the second moment.