I envy those who write too much

[Mike The Mover]

I've heard people complaining about how they need to cut pages. Lucky you! I have trouble coming up with enough pages. Sheesh.

[cree]

Don't envy them. It's harder to 'kill your darlings' than to make them stronger. :)

[dpaterso]

What do you think the root of that problem might be?

Does not enough pages = not enough story?

Does your protagonist have a tough problem to solve, and does he trip and fall and skin his knees, then get hit in the face with a frying pan, then fall down a flight of stairs and break his legs, and have to crawl all the way back up to the top while elephants trample him? (Metaphorically, that is.)

Do you use outlines, beat sheets, any kind of template -- or do you just wing it and hope for the best?

-Derek
My Web Page - sci-fi, fantasy, horror, cyborgs, AIs, dragons, vampyres. (http://hometown.aol.co.uk/DPaterson57)
Last time you spoke to me like this you were ten years old and you'd just stolen father's horse. What have you done now?

[Mike The Mover]

I write outlines and treatments before I start the actual screenplay. When I dont have enough pages that usually means I don't have enough story like you said. When this happens I go back to the outline and create more story, then translate that into more pages.

[cree]

From what I've seen from others:
Too few pages often = too little character development and (secondarily) too little scene development.

[Goodwriterguy]

I write outlines and treatments before I start the actual screenplay. When I dont have enough pages that usually means I don't have enough story like you said. When this happens I go back to the outline and create more story, then translate that into more pages.
Well, there's certainly nothing wrong with this. It's always difficut to gauge a page count from an outline or a treatment so if you find yourself ten or twenty pages short then by all means go back to your story outline or treatment and beef it up. Seems like a normal process of development to me.

Many writers end up "writing too much" simply because they've yet to achieve an appropriate degree of economy in their writing or their story crafting skills have a ways to go yet.

Writing is rewriting.

[wordmonkey]

I would say that the writing "too much" isn't really too much.

When I was at college the class was split into two production crews and told to make a 30 minute TV show. (It was a TV & Video production class)

My group was filled with just an amazing group of people and we had so many ideas that we just had to cull them down. The other group has this really cool concept, but they very clearly only had about 20 minutes of material. They worked it, but it showed that they were stretching and padding. On the other hand, ours finished and the reaction was "It's finished already? I want more."

I think, my point is that if you have written a script and you are seriously lo on page count, don't look at places you can add to, scenes you can lengthen, that kindof thing. Instead, go back to the start of the writing process for that project, look at your characters, look at plot, look at subplots and start to build it again but with the extra material.

It really is like building. And if your wall isn't high enough, it's really difficult to try and force bricks into the existing structure and still retain the integrity. You have to go back down to the foundation.

That old nugget that writing is rewriting is a cliché, but sadly, it's true. It can be frustrating when you start out on this journey, but (and I NEVER thought I would feel this way when I started) I have found I like the rewriting part. That's where the skill comes in. That's the challenge. The hard part.

[scripter1]

boil down to conflict. There isn't enough butting of heads, wishes, goals, wants and needs to carry over 110 pages.

Plenty of times it is because the goals are not big enough. They get solved too easily, like about pages 75 to 85. The writer ends up resolving the conflict at almost the exact moment where things should be the hardest and most trying for the protag.

Make sure that there is one last big surprise that can be thrown in there from the antag. Something that really twists the protag around and just ruins his/her day.

It doesn't matter what type of story it is, even if the conflict is internal and all about one character. The want should be big enough to cause trouble and events for 115 pages.

There are other things that can be looked at as well to strengthen and fill out a script as WM mentioned. Subplots could be advanced, character arcs for slightly lesser but interesting characters can be built up. And don't forget theme. Sometimes working the theme better will add solid story points and pages.

[scripter1]

don't envy the writers who write too much.
Depending on the scripts you are reading.

Plenty of novice writers overwrite in the worst kind of ways.
They load up a script with bulky descriptions. They start scenes at the beginning and run them through frivilous dialogs or lame every day actions. And then they drag the scene on far past the real conflict. Or they have scenes that don't tell us anything at all, they just show us some character spending a boring day at work. They add in too many characters. They skew off on little scene tangents or indulge a subplot for too long.
Or the worse ones resolved one story at about page 75 and then start a new one with the same characters from there till page 150.

Just because someone can slap a ton of words down on a page doesn't make them enviable. They likely have the same type of fits trying to learn to cut, cut, cut as you have to create, create, create.