17 - Development Cutting        Thur, 08/20/09 - Scott

When analyzing and cutting a story, it helps to have a plan. So I made a list of all of the scenes and what each scene was about. I color-coded them by type so I could look at the balance. Seventeen were about the mysterious condition. Nine were about one thing (undisclosed). Nine were about the antagonist Lars. Seven were about one thing (undisclosed). Another Seven were about another (undisclosed). Ten were otherwise necessary scenes that made the story hang together. The balance looked about right. I made some minor changes to make the story a little more balanced, first by combining two similar scenes into one and cutting some information, and next by dividing one scene into two. The story arc looked about right. The individual sequences of scenes looked about right. The pacing looked about right. Overall the development looked about right - a reading later would tell if it was.

The scene total was sixty scenes - a typical number for a two hour story. The average scene length was 2.6 pages. The average scene should be 2 pages (typical scenes are 1 to 3 pages, average 2), so I knew my scenes were too long. The question is always, where do you cut. Rereading usually doesn't help at this point. Again, a method helps. I prioritized each scene by importance to the story: 1, 2, 3. Five scenes came out to priority 3. There are two ways to cut priority 3 scenes: 1) Move the priority 3 scenes to another file, and then see if you really need them (don't read the scenes or you won't move them). 2) See if there is any important information in them that has to be in the story. If there is, put the information into another scene, and then delete the scene. I did some of both.

Working with individual scenes usually doesn't get you much (I only lost three pages). You have two things left to do to cut: 1) Focus on the priority 2 scenes and cut all of the unnecessary information from them. 2) Rewrite the priority 1 scenes to focus on what is really important in them. The latter is what really improves the story and makes it powerful: focus, attention to scene arc, and improving the dialogue. If this doesn't get it down to 120 pages, cutting it gets more painful.

Next: More on Development Rewriting

Next: Development Refining - Major

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