Reader Question: Is an 80-page spec script too short?

If 120 pages is no longer the norm, is there one and if so, what?

A question via email from Olov Lindstrom:

I was wondering if I could have your opinion on something. Maybe the answer to this is out there somewhere but I can’t seem to find it.

Right now I’d say I’m about 75% of the way through writing my first script. I got into this writing because I woke up one night after having a dream that was just such a great story that it just needed to be told! Before that I had no intention of becoming a screenwriter. I’m just telling you this to let you know from where I’m approaching the writing. I’ll be trying to sell the script, not myself as a screenwriter. Basically I saw the movie, now I feel everyone else deserve to see it too! :)

Right now it seems my script will end up being about only 80 pages. It’s a thriller/action story. Sure, I’ve kept it quite lean but I feel all the turning points, subplots, dialogue etc is in there. So.. is this good or bad from a selling point of view? Is 80 pages too short? Should I keep it like this or try to expand on it?

Interesting. A few weeks back, we had a reader question about whether it was okay to submit a 187-page script. We were fortunate to have several professional script readers and story analysts provide their thoughts in comments. Hopefully we’ll get the benefit of their wisdom on this query, too.

First things first, you should check out this post which goes into detail about several dynamics related to screenplay page count — how scripts are ‘shrinking,’ which genres have more / less page counts, and so on.

While acknowledging that we no longer talk about a 120-page screenplay as the norm, speaking personally I’d still say that if I got an 80-page script to review, I’d go into the read anticipating that the story might be pretty thin. Yes, I know that the movie Buried, which recently sold at Sundance to Lionsgate for $3.2M, had a script that was only 80 pages long, but look at that story’s premise:

Paul is a U.S. contractor working in Iraq. After an attack by a group of Iraqis he wakes to find he is buried alive inside a coffin. With only a lighter and a cell phone it’s a race against time to escape this claustrophobic death trap.

There the issue is more about how do you sustain that premise for 80 pages? But most movies clock in with at least a 95-minute run-time. So I would still carry a yellow flag into my reading of any script that was only 80 pages long.

Now I can’t deny the possibility that your script could work perfectly at 80 pages. However seeing as this is your first script, before you start sending it out to agents and managers, I strongly suggest you get some feedback. For while you may think it works as is, perhaps other readers will find that they don’t get to know this character or that character well enough, the plot resolves itself too easily and would benefit from more complications and reversals, etc.

But I would not recommend to “try to expand it” just to pad the page count. Instead I would encourage you to perhaps spend more time digging into your characters, seeing if they have anything more they may want to ‘tell’ you. Maybe look at your plot again to see how many major plot points you have. How many sequences? If you have less than 10 of the former and 8 of the latter, maybe it would behoove you to re-open your plotting process to see if there are some twists and turns you might have overlooked.

Be clear: That process is not about trying to generate more pages, it’s about trying to surface more of the authentic story that could be lying there, waiting for you to discover it.
 
But at the end of the day, if you feel confident that your 80-page script works as is, then I say go for it. If the story is a strong one, Hollywood is not going to balk at an 80-page script.

Script readers and story analysts, what say ye re an 80-page script? What would be your first impression? What prejudices might you carry into that read? What would you advise Olov to do?

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[Originally published January 31, 2010]