I'm having second act troubles at the moment. I put my script in to Final Draft and it's come out at 40 pages long so far, that's for act 1 (20 pages) and the first half of act 2 (20 pages). I was always taught that a minute of script is roughly one page, and that is how it has always worked with radio scripts in the past. I am currently writing a TV drama (45 minutes long). What are peoples thoughts? Should I try to cut things down a bit? The story certainly wouldn't suffer from cutting the second half of act two out... maybe that's a bigger problem.
If you feel you can cut down unnecessary stuff, that's always good for scripts. Editing out stuff that's not really required, never hurts any writing. It's always good. But if you feel that cutting out anything would just spoil the main plot don't do it.. And yup, if you've written a second half of Act II that you feel is not important for the plot, I'd say that's a problem. But basically about your main problem, if you really can't cut anything out-I think 40 pages is fine-maybe someone else thinks otherwise??
That seams to be the problem I always have with act two, especially in things like this. I would quite happily skip act two all together and have a nice beginning that leads straight to the end.
if you're writing a 1-hour tv drama, the 1-to-1 rule of thumb won't apply, the way it does for feature films... and you have to also have more 'acts' than the standard feature film 3, since more plot points need to be worked in, to allow for commercial breaks... sounds like you first need to learn the basics of writing for tv... david trottier's 'bible' has a good tv section in the back and i have some good tips from the pros that i'll be happy to send you, if you want to email me... love and hugs, maia maia3maia@hotmail.com
