Script managment

Huh?

DoubleIT said:

90 pages is a lot. 120 is even more. How do you keep sane in your script? Any tips or tricks? It can be a bit overwhelming just having that many pages in FinalDraft.

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You may need to reword your question ?????????????

Dunno if I got your question right, but ...

DoubleIT said:

90 pages is a lot. 120 is even more. How do you keep sane in your script? Any tips or tricks? It can be a bit overwhelming just having that many pages in FinalDraft.

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I just finished a first draft, it came in at 106 pages, a very pleasing outcome and certainly not a "management" issue. Now, I don't use FD so I dunno about that software (I used it briefly but never finished a script in it). I use Sophocles, which is basically the same idea as FD but a much better implementation, IMHO, and easier to deal with.

If you're talking about managing your story, and keeping things all straight and tidy on that score, that's another deal. I think that ability comes with experience, the more you write the better you get at it. It helps also to possess a clear vision of your story before you begin screenwriting it, which means a good Treatment of it or an outline or a beat sheet or something that can represent a roadmap to guide you through those 90-120 pages and help keep you from getting lost.

Doing this without a roadmap of some kind can lead to myriad story "management" issues and frustrate you to heck and gone. The real secret is, though, to know your story backwards and forwards and inside out, every last turn and twist and relationship and inter-relationship -- you have to know it fully and cold. When that's the case, you can proceed apace and not encounter a whole lot of story management issues.

IF you are crafting your story as you go, uh oh, you will suffer dreadfully from story management issues. This is not a recommended approach. Craft your story first, then screenwrite it. A much more pleasant experience, believe me.

Keep writing!



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Agree with Goodguy on this one for personal experience. My first two scripts didn't complete. My 3rd finished but was written for the most part from a write as you go method, I did have several scenes noted and were typically the easiest written pages. But I ran into all kinds of plot problems and other things forcing me to go back and restructure again and again and again. Then my story ended up long. I knew it would as I was not writing a SPEC script.

My 4th script I practically knew every scene and had a rough idea of dialogue or what I wanted to appear in the scenes. i did come up with extra stuff during the write or after to enhance it but for the most part it was all pre-written as notes in my notebook. I don't go anywhere without my notebook nowdays. I even go as far as buying different colored notebooks for each script I am working on.

My new story I am still working on the ending. I have a plot but not sure what type of ending I want to put on it at this point. I also have several character developement issues I am working out or flushing out basically. I want to start writing on it but I know it will suffer setbacks. So I am still grinding out notes and ideas until I get a semi-solid idea functioning. Then it's to the scriptwriting we go!

Wow, be glad you aren't writing a novel where 350-400 pages is SOP.

I would suggest as others that you outline.

It can be as simple as:

Jake is nervous, a first date.
Meeting Karen.
They hit it off.
A wonderful evening.
Karen "I had a great time. Why didn't we do this earlier?" (for snippets of dialog you can think of)

Driving home.
Truck slides into their lane on ice.
Jake - waking up - Karen's dead.
Jake has spinal damage.
Working through the pain - therapy.
Feeling the guilt.
Jake "I'm sorry, Karen."

So on and so forth.

I use Sophocles, and that has a navigation pane on the left. I can jump from any scene to any other scene with a simple click. it divides the sp by acts as well. very easy to navigate.

I believe Final Draft has that ability also. Whatever software you are using might include the feature. I think it's color coded if I remember. Personally I don't use the feature.

I thought that's what the sluglines were for. To set off the scene, seperate it from dialog and action, give the new scene location. I must be missing something because that's enough for me. I break it up into scenes using the sluglines to show me what is happening in each section.

*shrug*

i think we share the same problem.

as a new writer i was so concerned with structure that my story escaped me. all those screenwriting books scared me into buying writing software. But it was still in the back of my mind wether or not i was in the right scene on the right page, and how do i keep the first act under thirty pages?

when i posted my first 10 pages it was so obvious to me from the feedback that i had received. all my characters were flawed because i wouldn't allow myself to get into them. i'm trying to rework the whole script because of the new twist and plot developments now that the characters have life.

so i say f it. if you have your outline and know your characters let the software do its thing and let the pages flow. sort out the dead ones from the live at FADE OUT.

DoubleIT said:

I did a 13 page outline and 50 pages of notes on character and plot. I knew where I was going pretty much the entire time.

I guess I mean some sort of scheme to keep things organized - like having ACT I be in red, ACT II in green or something like that - so that you can quickly get to parts of your script. I didnt like having the font color anything but black so that didnt work.

It's not a matter of knowing the story, but of just organization within the program.

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Maybe U want to go from here and do a simpler outline w/ either 20 or 10 points on a list. If you think your going to need to move a lot of scenes around index cards of each scene and its purpose may help.

Jennifer

This is one of those "each to their own" things... it works for me, but of course I'm not claiming it'll work for you.

I do the sequence thing -- I write what are essentially 8 or maybe 9 "loglines," one for each sequence in the screenplay. Just glancing at each logline or sequence heading allows me to focus on what lies ahead for the next 10-15 pages. So Sequences A (setup/intro/protag stubs toe) and B (bash protag on face with frying pan) form Act I, while Sequences C (set fire to protag) and D (break protag's legs) takes the story to Act II midpoint, etc.

As you can tell from the technical analysis I have no idea what I'm doing, but sometimes, against all odds, this helps me get the script written. Advocates of the sequence approach to screenwriting say each sequence is meant to have a discernible beginning, middle and end, like a mini-story with its own character or event arc, which all add together to form the big picture.

-Derek
My Web Page - shameless vampyre fiction & other shameless writings.
Nice shooting, Reverend. It's like I always say, put a fox in the henhouse, you'll have chicken for dinner every time.

DoubleIT said:

I did a 13 page outline and 50 pages of notes on character and plot. I knew where I was going pretty much the entire time.

I guess I mean some sort of scheme to keep things organized - like having ACT I be in red, ACT II in green or something like that - so that you can quickly get to parts of your script. I didnt like having the font color anything but black so that didnt work.

It's not a matter of knowing the story, but of just organization within the program.

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I'm happy to hear you weren't story crafting while you were screenwriting!

But, I'm still not exactly sure of what you mean. Organized or organization within the script? A script has its own organization, which takes the form of

ACTS
SEQUENCES
SCENES

You ought to go to www.sophocles.net and download the demo of this writing program so you can see the navigation functionality it provides and how you can use headers on acts and sequences that show up on the screen whilst you're writing but which do not print, a feature I don't use.

I find the scene list on the L/H side of the editing window to be of sufficient flexibility for my purposes. On the screen, Sophocles distinguishes scene captions and slugs, character cues, dialogue, and action by color coding. Scene captions are dark red, cues are black, dialogue is green and action is black. Scenes can have sticky notes attached to them for brief scene synopses or notes, if present, these display when a scene in the scene list is clicked on, which also displays the scene's text in th editing window, naturally.

The editing window remains freely scrollable as well, so one can navigate up or down (front to back) by merely scrolling or grabbing the scoll bar and sliding it up or down.

I write a screenplay in four drafts usually and by the time I've finished draft two I know the script pretty much by heart ... by scene captions, and so can navigate from one scene to any other scene merely by scrolling the scene list until I see the caption text I'm looking for. This only becomes a little tricky when there's a bunch of scene captions that are identical, which is the case in the script I'm presently working on. But soon enough I can find the particular one I want by knowing what comes just ahead or just behind that scene. Or, I just do a little hunt and pecking until I come to the one I'm wanting.

You can also split the screen in Sophocles and have two different parts of the script displayed and work on them both at the same time, well back and forth but they're both right there in front of you ... say for example a scene from page 23 and a scene from page 56, or whatever.

You can also display all the speeches of a given character so that you can review them for consistency. Great for dialogue polishing.

I also use the time strip that Sophocles displays along the R/H edge of its editing window as a navigating device ... by remembering at what points in time scenes occur, not every scene mind you but several. I know for example, that the plane crashes at one hour and ten minutes, so just scroll the editing window until I come to 1:10 on the time strip. I know that Act 1 ends at 27 minutes, and so on. By the time I'm developing my first draft into a second I know this stuff pretty cold.

The time strip is helpful because with it you always know exactly where you're at vis-a-vis running time. If I find myself at 36 minutes and I haven't finished Act 1 yet ... I know I have a problem. Or if I'm at 90 minutes and am still in Act 2 I have a problem.

All of this notwithstanding, I do think there is an experience factor that comes with writing more than one script. I've written 11 screenplays and I'll tell ya, I have very few problems of the kind you describe, and that tells me there's something about the experience of doing it repeatedly that teaches you how to "manage" the work after the fashion of which you speak.

I think in terms of act and scene, and sometimes sequence. "Oh that's the sequence where Billy dies" or "the one where the truck goes off the cliff," or whatever. In Sophocles too you can do standard word searches ("find" command) and search and replace, which comes in handy when you change a character's name for example.

I do think a look-see at Sophocles would be of benefit to you. Get the demo and use it for a few days to get down its learning curve a ways and become familiar with its various features and navigational functionality. Use its HELP system to learn about features.

The first draft I just finished, which I mentioned in my last came in at 106 pages, has 154 scenes; the rewrite of another script I'm working on involves a 118 page script that has 275 scenes, a rather marked difference. I must say that "managing" the former was noticebly easier than managing the latter. Those additional 121 scenes and 12 pages adds a noticeable volume. The 106 pager has 19.9K total words, the 118 pager has 26.7K words, about 25 per cent more material to deal with.

Last nigfht I made a change in the 118 pager that involved the content of a photograph, instead of it portraying three characters it would now only portray two. That photo was referred to (appeared in) three or four different scenes, so I had to find them. A bit of a chore that. But, still not overwhelming and done with all due haste.

But the longer script is definitely a bit harder to manage and work with. 275 scenes!

Best to you on this.

GWG, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate FD, MM, and Sophocles.