Only My Scriptwriting

It's Not as Bad as It Reads

It’s Not as Bad as It Reads

Don’t panic. I haven’t changed my mind again. It’s not that bad. In fact, it doesn’t affect my Story or Scene Outlines. Well, in a way, they do. They don’t directly. But when it comes to writing the scripts, they do. What does that mean? It means that I have changed my mind about the length of my scripts. I did some calculating. And I can go with the average of fifteen lines, seconds, long per scene with the Establishing Shots being about five seconds, lines long.

I have been thinking about this for quite a while. And I never liked nine, eleven, or fifteen lines per scene depending on which scene number they were. Fifteen would have been fine. But the nine and eleven wouldn’t have been as easy to write. Especially, the nine. Eleven wouldn’t have been a lot better, though.

Making the logline, what I call the Location Heading, separate from the number of lines in each scene means that there are four more lines per scene depending on what the scene number is. In other words, instead of nine, eleven, and fifteen, they will be thirteen, fifteen, and nineteen. With thirteen, fifteen, and nineteen, it won’t be as hard to write each scene.

Like I wrote above, I did some calculating. And by doing it with thirteen, fifteen, and nineteen, the scripts will be sixty-two pages long. Sixty-three with the title page. Most contests, production companies, agents, etc. say that sixty-five to seventy is an acceptable length. Some even say the length is unlimited. But very few say unlimited. there are some that say sixty. Like unlimited, there aren’t too many of them either.

Why am I writing about scripts instead of my Scene Outline that I did yesterday at work? Am I trying to stay away from it because it wasn’t that good? The answer to the second question is no. I didn’t do as well as I wanted to yesterday at work because it was a typical very busy Friday there. But it wasn’t all that bad either.

I wrote fifteen single paragraphs yesterday at work. Eleven numeric scenes and four Establishing Shot scenes. five of those paragraphs ended Act Four of Part One of my Water Wars scriptwriting project. The other six started my Tag Act. That only leaves fourteen more single paragraphs to finish Part One of my movie introduction to this television series.

Will I finish Part One at work today? It’s a Saturday. So, I should be able to get fourteen single paragraphs written today. Even if none of them are Establishing Shots. I should even be able to get started on Part Two of this movie introduction today too. It may only be a few scenes and Establishing Shots. But even a few is better than none. A lot depends on how busy it gets at work today and if something happens with who I work for.