Under "TV Formatting" it says hour long dramas tend to be 60-70 pages long...is 42 too short to even be considered? If so, how can you tell how long it'll take to play on screen?

I think, in most cases, the assumption is about a page a minute. That's where they get the "60-70" estimate. I've heard of some scripts for hour-long programs running longer than that, others running shorter. It depends how much described action you have, as opposed to dialogue. Dialogue will naturally take up more space than action will.

Also, make sure you have your pages formatted correctly! It makes a difference if your margins, for example, are too narrow. I know at 21 pages with normal margins, I had 23 pages with proper margins. Two pages doesn't seem like a lot, but it can add up.

Death toll: 7 named, about 181 unnamed

Okay, thanks.
Yeah, there's quite a bit of action in it, which is why it's so short.

I'm *pretty sure* There's the right margins. I'm using celtix.

If you're using Celtx, then you've probably got everything formatted correctly.

If you've finished the plot in 42 pages, you can always write another script - either for the same show or for something else.

Best of luck!

Death toll: 7 named, about 181 unnamed

What are you planing on doing with your script? Is it for your own enjoyment or is it for a fellowship application?Is it an original pilot or a spec of an existing show? If it is an original pilot, are you sure you got all the intorductory stuff for both the world and characters? If it is a spec, if you can check the existing scripts for the show and find out how long their scripts are? Have you put in the act breaks? (This is a forced page break that shows where comericials go. I know I forget to put them in sometimes and when I do it bumps my page count.) Also places like the ABC-Disney fellowship won't take scripts longer than 60 pages even for an hour drama and they require that is be a spec script. If you have done all you can, 42 pages is acceptible but light. See if you can't get to the 45-50 page range. (When I first started to apply to the Disney fellowship, that was the page range Jane Espenson was saying hour shows were running.)

Interesting stuff even though I'm writing a movie screenplay, not a TV one.

If you're writing for US TV, of course the commercial breaks are very important, both to the page count and to the story. You want to write a cliffhanger or something really tense just before the break so the viewers will stay beyond the commercial.

42 pages for something very action heavy in a TV format where there is actually 43 minutes after commercials is bare minimum, maybe a little too short. I saw a Stargate: Atlantis script on eBay that was 43 pages. I think that episode had a lot of running back and forth and waiting for the bad guy to come into view so there was a lot where three words of action might have been a minute of screen time (and David Hewlett didn't have much dialogue - fast talker, there).

If it's a pilot, you sometimes take a little extra space introducing the appearance of sets, etc., so I'd expect a pilot to be longer because of that.

I have come in around 42 pages before for an existing show and it probably is too light and I would add something if I could, but the story is told at 42 pages. The show also has some quiet transition moments so a director can fudge the timing based on that. However, I already write very leanly. There isn't much that should need to be cut out once the director has a go at it. I start the scenes late and end them early and tons of dialogue is assumed to have happened off-screen. If your writing has some chatty areas already, especially at the beginning and ends of scenes, that'll get cut and shorten your script.

J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 scripts would come in around 40-some pages and, even, then, comparing them to episodes, beginning dialogue would often be cut and they were less action-filled than you'd expect so that's an example of directors being able to get the timing to work out right. However, if a show is being written for today's TV, the pacing is expected to be faster so I think they would prefer to have more wiggle room by having a longer script.