Metrics!

Now that I’ve completed my first draft and am waiting to go on vacation (more on that later), I figured I’d put together some metrics. This may or may not be of interest to you, but for me, it is an interesting way to look at how you work, and what you might be might be capable of in the future.

Let’s take a look at the overall numbers:

Total Pages: 165
Given that it is better to write too much than too little, this is still more than is necessary. I’m going to have to chop out 50 or more pages.

Total Words: 31,122
Not an important stat, but because my script is description heavy, I expect this number to drop considerably during rewrites and for future scripts as my craft improves.

Total calendar days: 38 with an average of 4.34 per day.
This is just tells me how much actual time it took me to write and how productive I was while still including the days I did not write.

Total Writing days: 26 with an average of 6.36 pages per day.
This shows how prolific I was while writing.

Now lets take a look at the work itself.

Act I
Length: 37 pages
Total calendar days: 12 with an average of 3.08 pages per day.
Total writing days: 7 with an average of 5.2 pages per day.

All in all, not too shabby. Started off a little slow, but acceptably so.

Act II
Length: 92
Total calendar days: 22 with an average of 4.18 pages per day.
Total writing days: 16 with an average of 5.75 pages per day.

Clearly Act II is way too long, but I’m happy with the output nonetheless.

Act III
Length: 36 pages
Total calendar days: 3 with an average of 12 pages per day.
Total writing days: 3 with an average of 12 pages per day.

When you get down to the end, you just want to belt it out ASAP. Of course I was staring in the face of a deadline of getting it done before vacation*.

The Big Picture:

So what does it all mean? Well, it is obvious that if I can wrangle in Act II better next time, my writing time will be shortened by a few days. But I might not be able to devote the same amount of time to Act III in the future so it might not affect the overall timeline too much.

Using the above information as a guide I could theoretically write the first draft of a 90 page script in 21 total days. A 120 page script would take 28 days. Considering the anchor that is my full-time job, writing a first draft in under a month, at this point, is a worthy and achievable goal.

*More on that later.