Page Economy: How to Keep Your Script Lean

Get ready to absolutely murder your darlings because we are going to talk about page economy. There is no definitive page count for a screenplay in any format — but there are guidelines that should be adhered to unless you have an incredible reason to go long. Why? Because people don’t want to read a long, boring script. I mean, people don’t want to read a boring script, but they really don’t want to read something that is amateur and overwritten. 

So what are those guidelines?

• Shorts: I really, really recommend 10 pages and under, but, fine, go up to 20. Some competitions will give page limits like 5-40 pages…but if someone pushed a short script to 40 pages and they weren’t the best 40 pages ever written, I’d very much question their judgment. 

• Comedy Pilot: 22-40 pages (remember, it’s a half-hour show)

• Drama Pilot: 45-70 pages (this is a one-hour show and some competitions will restrict to something more like 55-65 pages). 

• Feature: 90-120 pages is the general zone, but this is really where you should be aware of what you’re writing; if you want to produce it yourself as an indie project, 90 is better because 90 is more affordable to shoot. If Disney asked you for a Star War, then, well, use up those 120 pages and may the Force be with you

Why does page count matter? Almost Famous plays like an indie and is 110 pages long! In fact, why do any screenwriting rules matter? 

Again, they’re guidelines because when you are an emerging writer, you are higher risk than someone whose work is proven. This means that you want as few strikes against you as possible. Adhering to common formatting guidelines, including standard page length, means having fewer reasons for someone to doubt your understanding of the craft and business of screenwriting. 

Also, shorter scripts take less time to read and people have short attention spans these days. 

So here are a few tips to tighten your writing and cut pages without losing emotion. 

START LATE. LEAVE EARLY. 

This goes for your story and your scenes. How late into your protagonist’s journey can you begin to tell this story? What are the most important emotional beats to set your stage and introduce the inciting incident? And how soon can you wrap up the emotional conclusion and roll your credits? Remember the seventeen hundred endings in The Return of the King? Yeah, you’re not Peter Jackson, yet. Keep it simple, sexy. 

As for your scenes, this is really where you can trim the fat. Notice how in television and film, people rarely do pleasantries? Or say goodbye on a phone call? No one has time for that! You don’t need your protagonist to walk in to work and have a full conversation with the receptionist about their weekend and their morning drive. You need them to notice people crying on the elevator, reach the reception desk, and find out that the CEO is dead. 

When reading through your draft, chart the emotional beats in each scene and compress moments that linger without meaning. Even if your storytelling style is one where you want to amble, amble with purpose. 

Challenge yourself to start your scenes earlier or end them earlier. Trimming one or two lines of dialogue on each page throughout a 120 page script will really add up. 

REDUCE WITHOUT LOSING EMOTION

You may have some moments that are fun but ultimately detract from your protagonist’s journey. In Sorry, Baby, writer/director Eva Victor talks about a moment where Agnes was confronted with the pain of what had happened to her. Originally the screenplay cuts to some college kids playing hacky sack in the courtyard outside the room. She ended up cutting the game because she didn’t want to give Agnes a chance to disassociate or escape her discomfort; she needed the emotional turmoil of feeling trapped. 

You might love a scene or a scenario or even a side character’s subplot…but if it arrives at a time that does not serve the emotional journey of your protagonist or your story engine, copy that baby and paste it on a scratch document. Use it in a different episode or screenplay. But kill it for now. You don’t need it and if you keep it, it will hurt you.

LET’S TALK ABOUT SHORTS

A very easy mistake to make is to write a short film that plays like a mini feature film. A feature film needs a full story and it has the time for it, for all that lenient back story and filler. A short film must be short. It must be poetic. There must be a reason it is a short film and not a feature film. 

My favorite example is to compare the Whiplash short with the Whiplash feature. The short is literally one scene: a new drummer shows up to practice and gets reamed by the art director. We don’t need to know what year of school the drummer is in. We don’t need to know what his family thinks of his music. We don’t need him on the phone with a friend talking about the stakes of his first day in that room. We get the stakes by seeing how the energy shifts as soon as the art director walks in. We see the intensity rise when one kid plays out of tune. And we witness the abusive dynamic of the art director and desperately crave his approval. That’s all we needed.

Make every page matter desperately, your reader is smart and they will tune in if you give them a curated emotional journey. 

Have fun and happy writing.