Good morning, fellow artists! Welcome to another exciting edition of my weekly Hollywood blog. This past week, I decided to go through the first half of my latest feature film script one more time to continue tightening up the story. Now that I’ve finished that pass, I’m excited to jump into the second half of the script and keep applying my Slamdance coverage notes—working out of both my home office and car office to get it done!
I wanted to share some quick, fun numbers with you:
- The first draft of my script: 109 pages
- After applying Slamdance coverage notes to the first half of my script: 117 pages
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I was prepared for the page count to go up initially. At the time, I wrote:
“At the same time, I realized that the script length increased by five pages. I have to remind myself that it’s okay—this is just part of the rewriting process. If anything, it’s better to have extra pages to cut down later than to fall short. It’s also likely that as I move onto more scenes, I will naturally delete things that decrease the page count. I should be prepared for the number to fluctuate as I continue. Ultimately, I won’t know my final page count until I finish this second draft, but I will be ready to edit appropriately to strengthen the story and bring the script to a manageable length.”
By going through the first half of Act Two a second time to make targeted edits and cuts, I’ve already trimmed seven pages and brought the total down to 110! I cut out elements that felt repetitive, long-winded, on-the-nose, and unnecessary to the scenes as a whole, while making dialogue, action descriptions, and game plays more specific to paint a clearer picture. As I jump into the second half of the script, I fully expect the page count to shift again while I incorporate the rest of my Slamdance coverage notes. Once those notes are fully applied, I’ll take another pass from the top of the second half to edit and tighten the story.
See you next week!
