11 - Time to start writing        Tue, 06/30/09 - Scott

How long will it take to write? If you work all day (8 hours), working from a synopsis or treatment on a screenplay, you can usually create ~ 10 polished scenes a day. I usually work up to 6 hours on a screenplay unless I'm pushing to get it done, and then I might write for 12 hours. Scenes run 1 to 2 minutes on average. (There are also a number of short scenes that only last a few seconds.) So a 120 minute screenplay will take around 80 scenes. For me that's around 15 days of writing, and then I begin evaluating and rewriting. Evaluating rewriting might take another 7 ot 15 days of writing.

(On Reo, the producer's feedback was very slow in coming and required making a lot of new stuff fit in, so I often had to undo what I had written, taking at least twice the normal time.)

In a studio, or on some independent productions, you might receive feedback from a number of people, each taking the story in a new direction. It often takes months to go through development.

After development, you are likely to get pre-production feedback from other producers, the director, and the actors, all who have a legitimate need to get it right for the production. This requires more rewriting.

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