Hello people,

I've heard other threads debating on what counts towards your page total, i.e. Title page, Dramatis Personae, Scene Synopsis, etc. Look what I found on the guide to Formatting a Stageplay:

"Each Scene should start on a new page. Acts often have page dividers."

For those of us who are writing 5 act plays, this should seem very interesting! Along with my pages at the beginning, this will all add up to an additional 7 pages on top of the main body of my script! But it does feel a lot like cheating... Still... it IS part of the play. Will you include it? What do you think?

Formatting=finagling to reach the page count.
Cheating=completely killing your play, plot, and reason for writing to reach the word count.

Do you care?

Do you want to write the best play you can, or hit 100 pages?
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SF08: Gethsemane - Thriller
SF08: Shooting - Comedy

Good luck to you all.

If it's following proper formating for your genre, then it's not. It's cheating if you're doing it to up the page count. It's not cheating if its done to follow genre guidelines.

It's also not cheating if dividing one scene into two scenes makes for a better play, or doing your TV show as a two-parter with ten acts, two epilogues, and a teaser works.

I want to write the best play I can AND hit 100 pages AND hit 20,000 words AND finish by today which is currently looking very possible.

I've decided not to pay any attention to my target anymore and aim for ~108; which is bang on without character list, scene list, dividers, etc. or slightly over target if included.

Then the page counter can call judgement on the 15th. See you there!

Page one of your piece begins at curtain rise on the first scene of the first act. All that stuff before it is fluff.

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http://CrustyPolemicist.blogspot.com
"Bleak times call for bleak measures." - some random guy on the internet