“My first draft was exactly 250 pages. I didn’t have brads deep enough, long enough to get through the script. It took me about eight or nine drafts [to edit]. Just keep going, I think from the first draft to the second, I cut about seventy pages. It’s just like making the movie. I’m now editing it, and I thought, ‘How am I going to get two hours and forty-five minutes down to two hours?’ It was the same king of thing again. How do you do it? You just start tearing away at it, and you can’t do it all at once. It’s impossible to see what it is at first. You just keep taking away and taking away, and it begins to shape up. Story, you know–you just keep following the story.”
– Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give)
This is exactly how it is. I love writing, once you have the plethora of material. To rewrite is to edit, and for me, that's where the real fun begins once you get through the beast of burden that is the first draft.
There's something to be said, to just plow through as best as you can. Shit, or not. (It's always shit.) But the rewriting, when you whittle away, is EDITING. Just like movie editing, and probably while I love the edit bay so much. You slap your scenes together, all your accumulated footage the best you can, just to get it on the damn timeline; i.e. a draft. Then look to see where the holes are. A little snip here, a tuck there, a lift over here… until, just like a final draft, a final idea emerges. Then, as in showing a script for comments, you show the movie to a few choice viewers. Get feedback, decide what comments are apropos, then back in you go, armed with the knowledge that in cinema and in scripts, less is always more… and you continue to finess. Until your deadline. Or you are satisfied.
As always, and will forever be: writing IS editing. Such is why the two are inextricably linked both in process as well as theory.
Amen to Nancy. A 250 page draft is for the worker, not others, and we use it, like a sculptor. What was once a large lump of clay now has features, nuances, meaning, and voila, life.
250 pages? That's incredible. I could never write that much without checking to see where I am.
I'm having major headaches trying to cut 6 pages, let alone 150. That's a whole other movie…
JamesHutinson, as the beautiful AND talented Nancy Myers proves, writing long isn't fetal. One guru I know (well sort of know — I visit his blog) encourages pre-pro writers to write beyond their drafts.
One story I wrote clocked in at 281 pages, but guess what? I got it down to 114 pages by the time I felt it was ready to show… Currenly I'm working at refining a sports comedy whose 1st draft clocked in at 159 pages.
The goal is to end up with something good, NOT to put in the bare minimum to meet a given page count and be able to say, "Gee, look everybody I was able to bang out 95 pages on my computer; I'm calling it a screenplay!"
I'm with Nancy. She makes AMAZING movies. Goooooo girl power! Gooooo, Nancy Myers!
- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA
Am I alone in writing first drafts that tend to be much shorter than the latter ones?
For me, the beginning of the writing process is all about jumping from one main beat to the next. It's only in the next handful of drafts that I begin to expand the plot and the characters – looking at what needs to be developed or added.
I know that the process is different from person to person, but it seems that whenever I hear writers talk about their first drafts they talk about them being monsters.
I usually don't follow the write everything the first draft then cut because I've learned I'm not good at cutting. So I tend to usually write pretty tight first drafts. I outline a lot and stick pretty close to the spine if I can help it. 250 is umm wow.
IMO, this is a terrible and ill-advised way to go about it. Maybe Meyers has had success using this method, but it's just not the best way.
It sounds all creative & artsy to say "I'm following the story blah blah…", but you're playiing with fire, and making unnecessary work for yourself.
This is why students are advised to outline 1st, BEFORE you write scenes, so you don't have a 250 pg draft that you have to spend the next 6 months wittling down.
I would advise NOT to follow her lead.
My 1st draft pg counts are close to later drafts. I tweak more than edit out big chunks.
James, I've only written a couple of scripts, but so far I seem to have the same approach as you. My first draft normally comes in around 85 pages, but I find by the final draft I'm having to cut stuff to keep it to around 100-105 pages.