Antoine de Saint-Exupery (no, I can't pronounce his name, either) wrote: "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." How do you apply this to screenwriting?
Screenwriting : How do you know when you're done? by Leo Sopicki
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Leo, I love your quote. I believe the initial draft contains everything including the bath water. Subsequent drafts flush out the bacteria...unwanted/unnecessary elements (dialog/action etc.).
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My favorite part of writing is editing. I try to not self-edit in the first draft. The joy of editing is in discovering the jewels among the rocks.
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That's so very true. All the french writers from the 1700s said that a text is right when you can't take anymore words out without changing its true meaning. Pascal was also famous for saying, after a vey long exchange, "I'm sorry for such a long answer, I did not have the time to make a short one". By that he obviously hinted at the same process being spending time to get rid of all the useless words. It's also a great way to bring back the white on your script pages. I used to have a very bloated script of 145 pages. I applied that method on the action paragraphs and removed only one scene; the script dropped down just under 120 pages... And it's so much clearer.