I’m currently editing a screenplay, something I haven’t done in a while. And one of the things I’ve become obsessed with during the process is script rhythm. What is rhythm? Rhythm is the pacing of a script. It’s a combination of how long scenes last and how you balance longer and shorter scenes.
One of the things I’ve realized is that some general screenplay rules don’t mesh with the natural rhythm of a screenplay. For example, one of the first rules you’re taught, as a screenwriter, is that when you write a scene, you want to start the scene as late as possible and leave the scene as early as possible.
For example, if you had a job interview scene, and you were to utilize this advice, you would start in on the interviewer saying, “So tell me about yourself.” And we’re right into the meat of the scene. After they go through the applicant’s resume, the interviewer smiles and says, “We’ll be in touch.” END OF SCENE.
You’ve just written a technically perfect scene.
But is that the best scene you could’ve written?
Let’s imagine another scenario where the interviewer invites the applicant in, tells him to sit down, but before she starts the interview gets an important e-mail. “Hold on,” she says. “This will just be a second.” While the interviewer replies to this e-mail, we now get to sit in the applicant’s growing anxiety. He needs this job. And the longer he sits here, awkwardly, without saying anything, the more nervous he gets. And the more nervous he gets, the more he starts to sweat. And because he has to make sure he doesn’t LOOK nervous, he keeps trying to wipe the sweat off his forehead without the interviewer noticing.
Finally, she finishes, and because the applicant is so nervous, he starts babbling when asked questions. The writer doesn’t give our nervous applicant a way out though. He forces him to sit in those uncomfortable silences after he’s said something stupid. Eventually, things go so bad, he apologizes and asks if he can have a do-over. He’ll come back tomorrow. The interviewer offers a pinched smile and says, “I think we both know that won’t matter.”
Which is the better scene? I would argue the second scene is. Yet if we lived by the “start as late as possible, leave as early as possible” rule, we never would’ve written that scene.
Or take a look at the scene I broke down last week from I Care A Lot. That scene, which follows a lawyer trying to persuade a guardian to release one of her patients, didn’t start at the latest point either. There’s a bit of gamesmanship from the lawyer character before the real conversation gets started.
What we’ve learned? That some scenes need time to get the most out of them.
However, if you only write these types of scenes, your script can quickly begin to feel like it’s moving too slow. That’s because it’s harder to write long scenes and most writers don’t know how to construct them in the most dramatically compelling way. I recently read a party scene in a script that lasted 8 pages. There wasn’t any dramatic component to the scene at all. It was just us meeting characters. Even if a scene like that has a couple of nice moments, readers are going to get impatient.
It’s a reminder that, even though it wasn’t applicable in our interview scene or I Care A Lot scene, the “start as late as possible and leave as early as possible” tool is often the best option. You only want to bust out the really long scenes (8-10 pages) every once in a while.
Generally speaking, you want to write a few short (1 and a half pages) to medium (2 and a half pages) scenes, then a longer scene (3-5 pages), then a few more medium to short scenes, then a really long scene (8-10 pages), then some more shorter scenes. And so on and so forth. The appropriate balance of length is the key to getting the rhythm of a script right.
So what happens when you only write long scenes? Well, we actually have examples of that. This is how Quentin Tarantino writes a lot of his movies. I believe Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds are one continuous series of 10 minute scenes. And, obviously, the movies work. So we’ve just proven your theory wrong, Carson. Rhythm is whatever scene-writing system you come up with.
Here’s the thing with Tarantino. He knows all the little dramatic tricks to keep your interest. He knows that when Nazi soldiers show up at a farmer’s house who’s hiding Jews, you’re going to want to see what happens. So his scenes are almost like mini-movies. They all have their own beginning, middle, and end. Therefore, when you go to a Tarantino movie, you’re watching a series of short films from a guy who understands storytelling better than 99.9999999% of Hollywood. In other words, he’s a bit of an anomaly.
If someone else were to write twelve 10-minute scenes for their movie – say, in yesterday’s Mortal Kombat script – people are going to be like, ‘What the f%$# is going on right now?’ The rhythm would seem all off.
Conversely, what happens when you only write short scenes? We actually have examples of this as well. Michael Bay lives by the rule of start the scene as late as possible and end it as early as possible. Go pop in 6 Underground on Netflix. Try to keep up with what’s happening in that movie. It’s impossible because the rhythm is so fast. It’s boom boom boom boom boom. We don’t have any time to breathe.
I bring this up because I realize that one of the main directives of screenwriting is to keep the story moving. Go go go all the time. And that gives screenwriters the wrong message. If all you’re doing is rushing along relentlessly, the reader never gets to sit down and learn about the characters, or understand and relate to what they’re going through. That’s what happened with Tuesday’s script, The Post Office, or whatever it was called. I found myself not caring because the plot was so relentless. The writer didn’t balance enough longer character-driven scenes with the 1 and a half page plot-driven scenes.
Rhythm is balance. It’s the ability to balance the long, the medium, and the short. As far as how many of each you’ll put in your script, that’s going to change depending on your genre and subject matter. For example, I just read a drama screenplay that followed a white trash family going through a rough spot in their life. In a script like that, you’re going to have a lot more longer scenes than short quick scenes. Conversely, in a script like Mortal Kombat, you’re going to have more short scenes than quick scenes.
What you’re looking to avoid is only relying on one. Or only relying on one specific page length for a scene. For example, if every scene in your script is exactly two pages, that’s going to feel weird. And the shorter your “default” scene length is, the weirder it’s going to feel. If you write 30 straight pages of 1 page scenes? People are going to throw your script down. Nobody can handle that. You need balance, a nice mix of short, medium, and long.
One of the biggest reasons for improper pacing is when writers start to trim scenes down to meet a certain page length. So, let’s say, they have 50 scenes in a 130 page screenplay. And they want to get it down to 120. What they’ll do is they’ll go into each individual scene and trim it. A 2 page scene becomes a 1 and a half page scene. A 3 page scene becomes a 2 and 1/4 page scene. And they do this again and again with all the scenes until the script hits that magical 120 page number, which makes them feel like they’ve accomplished something. But, in actuality, they’ve f$%#d up the rhythm of their screenplay because now everything is super short. What they should’ve done instead is eliminate scenes. That would’ve got them down to the page count without decimating all their individual scenes.
A good habit is to write down the length of every scene in your script in a spreadsheet and do a little investigating. If you have an endless number of ‘1 pagers’ I’m guessing your rhythm is off. Same deal if you have seven 10 page scenes and the final 40 pages are a bunch of short and medium scenes. That rhythm’s going to be off as well.
Rhythm is balance. Keep that in mind when you’re working your way through a script.
