Day 363: A Completed Script Not Finished

It's Day 363 and I made my weekend deadline of completing The Devil's Tramping Ground. But to throw a little water on the celebration, it is by no means finished. Still, let's gloat just a little.

After the terrible month that was July - only two pages written - and a really slow start to August, I kicked into high gear for the later half of the month and managed to make it through 60 pages of script material. Some of that material is completely new, some rewritten and some repurposed, but it is 60 pages nonetheless. That makes my minimum for August plus makes up for the deficit in July. In fact, with the two pages from July factored in, I'm two pages ahead for the two months combined.

The script came in at a whopping 118 pages. I'm hoping to get that page count down close to 105, so there will have to be some major edits and cuts. I've already made it about halfway through the script focusing on the action. By simply trimming the action in bits and pieces I have already cut two+ pages out of the script. If I can keep up that pace, I should remove another 2 over the second half and bring the count down to 114, maybe even 113.

I also have two versions of one scene - the repeat of the cold open - that should bring the page count down by another page once I combine the two existing versions. I will then go through the large action blocks and work to trim them down, giving only the information necessary for the reader to move forward in the story - no extra embellishment. That should lose another 2 pages from the script overall. That would get me down to around 110 with only 5 pages left to cut. I will then look at my dialogue and see what I can lose to make the scenes tighter and more concise among the characters.

5 pages is still a lot of material to find and lose, and all my estimates are just guesses until the work is complete. But for the moment, I have a script that tracks from a beginning through a middle to the end. That in itself is no small feat.