I have been totally neglecting the blog this week, but…

It’s due to the fact that I’ve been focused like a laser on writing the script.

I’m happy to say that the focus has paid off because I now have completed the draft. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I have a TON of editing to do. This draft came in at a hefty 150 pages. I printed it out yesterday, and it felt like it weighed 10 pounds. I figured as I was writing the script that it was going to come in at around 130-140 pages, so I’m emotionaly prepared to do some cutting, however I didn’t think it was going to have to be this much.

The silver lining her is that with around 30 pages to cut, there should be plenty of good material in the script.

I would expect that there will be scenes that I don’t want to cut, but have to for the oveall success of the script. That would, indeed be a good problem to have. My gut instinct is that most of the cutting will come in the second act. I almost completely rewrote the first act, and I feel pretty strongly that it does a much better job of setting up the story. Once I got into Act 2, and especially the first half of Act 2, I may have gotten a little lazy, and kept things in from the original draft, while also injecting new material, without doing any cutting while I was writing, as I did in Act 1. By the time I got to Act 3, I was largely putting in original material and dropping what didn’t work from the original draft.

Another thing that’s going to have to get cut waaaaaaayyyy back is the dialogue. The end of Act 1 and the beginning of Act 2 are especially dialogue heavy as new characters are introduced and spend a lot of time and page space through dialogue introducing themselves. It wouldn’t shock me at all if I cut 10 pages just by cutting unnecessary dialogue. In fact, that will probably be my first pass.

I will cut all unnessasary dialogue before I get into cutting any scenes.

Actually, the first thing I have to do is read what I have from front to back. Once I’ve read it once, I need to re-read it to determine what needs to be put on the chopping block.

However, none of this is going to happen for a couple of days, as I have been sent 3 scripts by clients for coverage. So my weekend will be spent doing that, and I will probably pick up the script early in the week.

Check back later for more movie quotes.

Happy writing.