Screenwriting : How many scenes? by Thomas Yazar

As for the number of scenes, the "40 to 60 scenes" range is a common benchmark, but it's not a hard rule. It really depends on the pacing, the style of the movie, and how the story flows. If your scripts naturally have more scenes, it might just be your storytelling style. Some stories require more scenes to fully develop the plot and characters.

Producers do pay attention to the structure and pacing of a script, but having more scenes doesn't necessarily mean you lack experience. It's more about whether each scene is necessary and contributes to the overall story. If you feel like you're fragmenting sequences too much, it might be worth reviewing to see if any scenes can be combined or streamlined. Ultimately, the number of scenes should serve the story and keep the audience engaged. i think your ok ( ;

It's ok to have more than an average number of scenes just as long as you keep the number of locations down. You have to remember that each scene you write means a whole new setup for camera and lights and it can get costly in both time and money if you keep bouncing your characters all over the place.

Always good to see which scenes can be consolidated into one, not to showcase your talent as a writer but rather to keep in mind that a producer is going to be thinking in terms of a shooting schedule and budget.

One of the errors many screenwriters make is this: "I need a scene to explain this. I need a scene to explain that. I need a seen for ..." Many times information in a scene is just a small bit of info, detail, and that info, detail can be easily placed in another scene.

Wont know what you need/dont need until you do a breakdown with a director & Producer & crew, go over Master Shots to tell the story.

Cant compare our spec scripts to finished movies; we have no idea what every production did or did not shoot, for whatever reasons, but usually in postproduction ppl edited down, never up.

You hear a lot of things on the internet. I write as many scenes as it takes.

My latest screenplay has 164 scenes and is 96 pages long. But all locations are used multiple times. So in practice one only needs 6 locations indoors and 5 outdoors.

There's no rule, and anyone who says there is can't write.

I see why they’d say that as a guide for less experienced writers but as long as your story makes sense and the audience doing feel lost, it can be as many or a as few scenes as you’d like.

Scenes need to be organic and flow with the story/theme without restrictions. If you're looking at numbers, I would watch the film page count; 90 to 120.

I agree with most everyone here as well. Anyone who says there's a limit to scenes is quoting something from a book they read 30 years ago. I've heard a scene a scene can go on too long (hence: come in late, leave early), but a lot of short scenes telling a great story could number over 100. Love to be a fly on the wall when a reader gets the riot act for turning down a great script because it had too many (or too few) scenes :-o

Thomas, it depends on the kind of story I want to tell...I'm willing to use as many scenes (or as few scenes) as it takes to get the job adequately done.

I think it is a good VERY GENERAL rule for beginning guidance, but it is not going apply to every script. Tell the story the way you see it, and then judge if it is working based on notes and rewrites.

I would say if you’re counting scenes for this purpose, don’t literally count scene headers. Instead count sequences. Segments of the film that feel like complete building blocks.

So a scene where Indiana Jones steals the truck containing the lost ark— on the page it might be many scene headers, jumping around to int and ext, also to other vehicles. But it’s one complete sequence.

Practice by watching some existing films in your genre. Count what you perceive as scenes. See if you can apply that pacing to your work.

Mike Boas thats a great example !!!! yea when i have scenes like that i just combine them because in my mind its like duhhh !!! but also i don't really sell my work to random people ... i just mainly work with people i no so if theres something they don't understand i can be right there to tell them , he's just jumping back in fourth from car to car lol

Plenty of good insights, glad to see my doubts vindicated. To sum up, better keep an eye on the number of pages / don't mix scenes and sequences / takes as much or as little as possible to tell your story / the fewer the locations the better for production value.

Interestingly, i listened to a podcast where Aaron Sorkin said something quite obvious but which I had never heard put into words before: Dialogues take more space on the paper than on screen, but Action takes less space on paper than on the screen. Hence, his scripts tend to be above 150 pages.

As long as you achieve the pacing and flow you want it shouldn't matter how many scenes. I tend to have many short scenes and never gotten a negative note on that particular aspect.

Mike Boas That is such a great example to use and explains it perfectly.