A writer/director I know offered to send something of mine to a couple of managers, which meant plugging another script into Celtx and converting it. I suppose this means every script is headed this way. This time it picked up a lot more of the correct formatting, and it makes me wonder how much of a difference it makes that this script was originated in Final Draft, whereas the last script I ported over was originated in Word long ago and then copied into Final Draft. Deep below the screen lies all those invisible old keyboard commands, and each piece of software has their own way of interpreting them, I guess.
Scripts grow longer in Celtx – minor tweaks in margins, tabs, and font are sure to contain the culprit or culprits. That was okay for Snowblind, which grew from an anemic 90 pages to a merely svelte 93. The College Comedy, though, grew to an alarming-for-its-genre 124 pages. Since time was of the essence, I stuck to line trimming and pulled it back to 121, but I built a lot of runners and subplots into that contraption and it may be a sign that I should re-examine it, because that is a pretty epic length for a script that is largely about underwear.
The stuff I write usually ends up pretty dense, and I seemingly always have to make tough cutting choices after a draft is done. The thing is, no matter how often that happens, I always fear, when I’m drafting, that I just won’t have enough story material.