In a post on the Stage 32 blog, S.K. Valenzuela offers advice for keeping your scripts short and sweet. “Many writers want to know how long their scripts should be,” Valenzuela writes. “And the answer is almost always, ‘Shorter than you think.'”
According to Valenzuela, overwriting is the biggest culprit in lengthy scripts. “When we overwrite, we end up obscuring what’s really important, and this runs counter to our objective: to deliver a story that is clear and powerful,” Valenzuela writes. She offers four tips for avoiding it.
- Plan for Success. “One of the best ways to avoid (or minimize) this problem – and to save yourself time on the rewrite process – is to start with a plan for the story,” Valenzuela says. “Even if all you map out are the big moments in the script, this will still help keep you on track during the writing process.”
- Use the Iceberg Theory. “Ernest Hemingway…described this approach in his work Death in the Afternoon, and the idea, in a nutshell, is that the writer should leave most things unsaid,” Valenzuela explains. “Only about ⅛ of an iceberg is visible above the water, after all – and writers should strive for the same kind of economy.”
- Find the Heart of the Scene. “You’ve probably heard the advice to get in and out of a scene as quickly as possible,” Valenzuela notes. “But this is impossible to do if you don’t know the purpose of the scene in the first place.” To get to the heart of the scene, find the climax. What explosive thing has to happen to move your story forward? Once you have that, cut away everything else.
- Cut Extra Words. “Cutting the extra words sharpens the focus and keeps the pace moving,” Valenzuela writes. “Trimming down your descriptions by cutting extra words or rephrasing bulky passages is also an often overlooked opportunity to cut down your page count. But if you can tighten up your phrasing and cut 2 ½ lines down to 2 lines, and you can do that over the course of the script, you would be surprised how quickly it adds up!”
