Something that we estimate at 55 minutes may come in below the 50 minute boundary in a pacey production a bit of creative stage business may make an 18 minute short play into a one-act festival piece.įor festival performers, the moral here is not to be too rigid with the published timings find a piece you like, then test the length based on the way you intend to perform it. This is at its most problematical for one-act play competitions, where (typically) the rules require plays to run for between 20 minutes and 50 minutes, with penalties for breaking the rules. Typically, this will mean rigid boundaries where reality is more fluid. We use the same measure throughout for consistency, and we base our category boundaries and the web site searches on that estimate. On the Lazy Bee Scripts web site, we give an estimated length of each play based on Word Count. (Note that this also applies to Page Count.) Directions can throw the estimate out in either direction. Word Count allows nine seconds for this (the same action 4), but actually it takes no time at all, because the time is occupied by Fran’s speech. “ Whilst Fran is talking, Carl takes a revolver from his briefcase, examines and cleans it slowly and carefully then loads five bullets, leaving one chamber empty.” Word Count would say that takes five seconds, but that careful cleaning might last a minute. “ Carl takes a revolver from his briefcase, cleans it carefully then loads five bullets.” In addition to the issues of style and performance, some aspects of the writing may lead to an inaccurate estimation of duration. Just because Word Count is more accurate than Page Count, it doesn’t mean it’s perfect. This is the same sort of estimate as the estimate behind Page Count, but Word Count does away with most of the variability in Page Count and will therefore, typically be more accurate with the additional advantage that it needs fewer rules. All you need to know is that 10,000 words of script will occupy around an hour of stage time and pro rata from there – so 1000 words take six minutes 3. Just take the text from the opening scene-setting direction through to the final curtain and count all the words 2. Word Count does away with the first five factors affecting page count and most of the sixth. (In 11 point Courier 1, those nine speeches of Mamet’s will occupy nine lines, but Shaw’s will occupy 31.) Typically a page of Shaw, with ten words per line, will take much longer to read than a page of Mamet with three. By my estimation, the first nine speeches of Mamet’s Duck Variations consume 23 words, whereas the first nine speeches of Shaw’s Arms and the Man weigh in at 296 words. Compare the terse David Mamet to the long-winded George Bernard Shaw. All the performance issues over which the writer has no control.Īverage speech length can cause major variations in estimated run time.Style (a one-minute Beckett pause should consume a full page).The packing of the type face (monospaced fonts like Courier will occupy much more space than a highly-packed proportional font like Times New Roman).Line spacing (single spacing? double spacing? single spacing within a speech and double spacing between speeches?).The size of the paper (US Letter paper, used in North America is a different size from A4, used in most of the rest of the world).The run time of a page of a play depends on:. See, for example ‘ Was Solzhenitsyn a Synesthete?‘). They don’t (and, in my opinion, they should not – a play should be written in whatever format works best for the writer. The basic flaw in this is that it assumes that everyone uses a standard page layout. The most common way of estimating is Page Count, with the usual approximation being one minute per page. So what’s the best approximation? Page Count Estimates of stage time will be approximate. Secondly, style make a lot of difference to run time for example, compare Samuel Beckett’s lengthy pauses to the manic pace of a Ray Cooney farce. Firstly, some aspects of timing are outside the writer’s control: stage business, scene changes and slickness of production. The bad news is that it won’t be perfect. The good news is that you can make an estimate. Does it fill an evening’s entertainment? Does the length justify the effort of constructing the set? Will it fit within the time limits allowed by a competition? From that viewpoint, some way of estimating the length will be useful.Īt this point, I have good news and bad news. To someone selecting a play, however, the run time matters. The perfect play might last three minutes or three hours. At one level, that doesn’t matter: the ideal length for your play is the time it takes for you to say what you want to say. So you’ve written your play, now you want to know if it’s the right length.
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