Novels vs. Screenplays (Joys & Challenges)... a Co-Written Post

Joys and Challenges of Novel Writing—Chrissy Clarke

@Chrissy_Clarke, www.chrissyclarke.com

Immediate gratification (sort of)

You’ve fantasized about writing the “Great American” novel for ages, produced character profiles and doodled a fantasy world. Maybe you meticulously outlined every scene. Now, after months (or years) of writing and editing—oh, the editing!

If it’s a novel, now it’s ready for the masses. You can send a pdf to all your friends and relatives and print hard copies for grandma and that woman at the grocery store who expressed interest. People can enjoy your work of art immediately.

If your dream includes being published in hardback by Simon and Schuster, there is the matter of writing a brilliant query letter, synopsis, tag line, and pitch, querying agents, being well received, sending manuscripts for review, basking in adulation, signing with a NYC agent, being out on submission (think Fight Club; you don’t talk about sub club), and hammering out a fat contract. But I digress.

A screenplay, on the other hand, is nowhere near ready for the consumer. Van can explain better than I, but the journey from on paper to on screen takes time, effort, and money.

Creativity

Creativity is key in all varieties of fiction, but a novel is the most freeform. For short stories, I’ve heard up to 30k in length is acceptable, but if you want it published in a periodical, a short shouldn’t exceed 7500 words. A novella is typically 30-50k; you have some flexibility, especially since you’ll likely e-publish. And novel length can be anywhere from 70 to 100k. Sure, there are exceptions, but under 70 will make for a skinny trade paperback and over 100k costs considerably more to produce, so don’t go nuts unless you’re a King or a Brown, capische?

For a novel, you have 300 pages or so to write whatever you like, with as much or as little structure as you choose. You can break it down into scenes—ala screenwriting—or meander through chapters. Go back in time, throw in a dream sequence, add a secondary plot, thwart your character’s goals with a dragon, a werewolf, or some C4. I’m a fan of structure, but structure is secondary in novel writing. Story comes first.

Unlimited Budget

Aside from the aforementioned need to stay within 100k, budget doesn’t concern novel writers. Will your epic sweep across all seven continents and span three hundred years? If you’re making a film, cost comes into play, but in a novel, there are no rules governing how many settings, costumes, characters, or monsters are practical.

Anything you imagine can find its way into your novel. A new family of mythological creatures that live in Marianna’s Trench? Go for it. Space travel, time travel, dinosaurs, a robot messiah, an army of mutated bananas—not my kind of book, but doable. If you’re writing for screen, only a Spielberg would warrant the budget to produce it.

Novel-writing Challenges:

Interior Dialogue

It’s considered poor form to use a voiceover to convey what a character feels or thinks in film, but we expect a window into one’s thoughts in a novel. But with freedom comes responsibility. As with many techniques at a novel writer’s disposal, less is more. Sure, you can delve into your main character’s head throughout a story. They share their innermost thoughts and feelings with the audience. There are problems that can arise:

a.     If a reader doesn’t gel with the character—appreciate their distinctive voice—then the book won’t be enjoyable.

b.     Being in someone’s head has an air of immediacy. The emotional impact may be positive, but I don’t want to hear all my own thoughts, frankly, so the sum total of another person’s is a LOT.

c.     Tension in fiction is glorious. If the reader knows everything, then there’s no anticipation. It’s what you aren’t told that makes for great storytelling.

However, done skillfully, using first person POV or limited third allows for intimacy. Your character can reveal what no one else knows: fears, secrets, needs. But be stingy. Reveal only enough to keep readers wanting more.

Focus

The flip side of having structural flexibility is it’s all too easy to get lost. You’re not writing a 100-page screenplay but an 80k-word novel, perhaps three times as long. Sure, you want an inciting incident and rising tension, a climax is a given, but how you fill in the remaining pages is up to you. Secondary plot lines are common. Personally, I write an intertwined mystery and a romance, often with another mystery element that doesn’t connect to the rest, a sort of red herring. The lack of rules and sheer number of words can be problematic, especially with first novels. Trust me, you don’t want to read my first novel.

I recently read a book that didn’t end well. Actually, it didn’t end. About fifty pages from the end, I began to suspect the story wouldn’t wrap up, but I also wasn’t sure what I was expecting. The conflict wasn’t clear. It was a series of events without a lot of “why” and “how” answers. I wanted answers.

No matter what you’re writing, there should be satisfaction when you close the book or the credits roll. The problem is solved. The character is cured, in love, or has died from saving the world. Novels may be freeform, but before you type THE END, the dominos must fall—all of them.

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Joys and Challenges of Screenplay Writing—Jeff “Van” Vande Zande

@jcvandez, www.authorjeffvandezande.blogspot.com

Chrissy is absolutely right! Though screenwriting and novel writing share some goals in common, the two attempts at storytelling come with their own specific joys and challenges. For myself, I mainly write short film scripts that I intend to shoot on my own on a limited budget. I write my scripts with “low budget” in mind. I don’t write in locations, props, special effects, or anything else that I don’t already have access to. Many of my films I make for under $25 (sometimes $0), but that’s not the norm… especially if you’re writing a feature-length script.

Truth be told, I have only written one feature-length script, but I teach the feature length script in my Introduction to Screenwriting course. I have also adapted short stories of mine into short film scripts, and that has only served to reinforce how different the two approaches to storytelling can be.

Stripped Down Writing

One of the joys of screenwriting (but one of the frustrations too) is that the descriptive writing is very stripped down. Screenwriting almost comes closer to technical writing than it does fiction writing. There are no long paragraphs, and similes and metaphors are a no-no. You simply provide a gist of what’s happening, knowing that a set designer, actors, and others will (hopefully) fully flesh out your ideas. You have to remember when working on a screenplay that the final product will be credited to a director. It’s never a film by “blank blank” screenwriter. Instead, it’s a film by “blank blank” director. Think of a screenplay as a blueprint for a movie. Nobody can actually live inside the blueprint for a house, but also nobody would ever build a house without a blueprint!

I find the stripped down aspect of screenwriting to be freeing at times. It makes the writing process all about fleshing out the story and focusing on the story/plot development. Flowery language or a compelling style for the reader become unnecessary. Movies don’t have readers; they have viewers. There are no readers to please on a language level. Those who do read your screenplay will be reading with an eye towards “How are we going to shoot this?” It’s a technical document to some extent.

I was told early on that in describing a setting in a screenplay, keep it limited to 2 to 3 lines of description and focus on light, space, and texture. Here’s an example (notice too that screenplays are in present tense to mimic the “happening in the moment” aspect of film on a screen)… oh, I’m also switching to Courier since that is the font of screenwriting.

INT. BASEMENT – DAY

Jakes opens the door to his bedroom.

The walls of the 10X10 room are unfinished drywall, and the floor is covered with clothes and fast food bags. An unmade mattress sits on the floor. Only one wall seems in order with shelving holding various sporting trophies.

A single bulb hangs from the ceiling.

The Light? Well, that’s the single bulb.

The Space? 10x10 basement bedroom

The Texture? The clothes, the garbage, the mattress, and the trophies.

This to some might seem like terrible writing if it were fiction. But it does what needs doing for a set designer to take over and create this room for the screen. They will choose if maybe there are some football movie DVD cases on the floor too, or a bong, or a dusty rowing machine. In screenwriting, you give a feel for the space, not a play by play

I’ve really enjoyed this aspect of screenwriting at times… just keep everything focused on the story and not so much forcing your sentences to operate like a camera that captures everything. In filmmaking… well, they have a camera that serves as that camera!

Limited Scope/Lots of Guidance

As Chrissy mentioned, there’s a definite limit to how long you can go on in a screenplay. Yes, there are three and four-hour movies, but they are rare. You typically only get to write THE IRISHMAN once you have a certain reputation. Your early screenplays will be after a 90 to 120-minute movie (and since a page of screenplay works out to about a minute of screen time, you’re writing 90 to 120 pages… with LOTS of white space).

A novel can go on and on and on… often to its own death in boredom for the reader. There are books that try to deal with structure in a novel, but it’s tricky because each novel is so different. On the other hand, books that deal with storytelling structure in screenplays are everywhere. And often they are very specific (i.e. “Right around this page, something like this should happen. Then, later, around this page, this should happen.” Etc)

This focus on structure is essential and happens in every screenwriting book. I’ve seen it broken into Acts:

ACT I: First 30 pages

ACT II: Pages 31 to 90

ACT III: Pages 90 to the end.

And further broken down to:

ACT I:

            Inciting Incident: Around page 10

            Plot Point One: Around page 30

ACT II:

            Midpoint: Around page 60

            Plot Point II: Around page 90

ACT III:

            Climax: Around pages 105 to 110

            Denouement: Last couple pages

But, this is only one way to look at structure. This website offers a different approach with different lingo: HERE

… but it’s all doing the same thing: making certain your screenplay follows a compelling dramatic structure in the vein of Aristotle.

I don’t see this same kind of guidance out there for novels. To quote E.L. Doctorow: “Writing [fiction] is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” That also sounds like a setup for easily crashing and having your novel go nowhere. That’s why I’m often blogging about how an understanding of screenplay structure (specifically Aristotle’s understanding of dramatic structure) can help fiction writers think about the structure of their novel.

It sounds like writing a screenplay is formulaic, but it’s really just providing rules. Just like a tennis game has rules, but no two tennis games are the same. Even with sticking to the rules, one tennis game can be boring while the other is thrilling. Knowing the structure of a screenplay doesn’t necessarily mean yours will be a hit, but you have a lot of guidance for moving your story forward. I find that guidance very helpful!

A Challenge of Screenwriting

I mentioned this earlier, but one of the hardest aspects of screenwriting is knowing that what you are working on is not truly a finished product even once finished. Chrissy mentioned that with a novel, once you have the polished manuscript, you can pursue an agent, a small press, self-publish it, or simply share it with others.

Nobody reads a screenplay for pleasure. They read it asking themselves, “Could this be a movie?” There are no anthologies (to my knowledge) collecting the finished screenplays of no-name screenwriters. Yes, you can buy books that include the full text of a feature film’s screenplay, but they are screenplays from famous screenwriters/famous movies… and you buy such books to study their craft.

So, what you’re working on might never reach its end goal: to be a film on a screen. What I know of getting an agent interested in representing your screenplay to studios wouldn’t even fill a shot glass. I know this much: it’s really hard… statistically unlikely. I don’t know the statistics on landing a first-time script (a spec script) with a studio, but they are dismal.

You might think, like someone who chooses to self-publish a novel, that you’ll just make it yourself.

Really?

Do you know camera operation? Do you even have a camera that will give cinematic results? Do you have the sound equipment? Can you edit digital film? Do you have the lights?

If I totaled what I’ve spent on equipment to make my short films, I’d say it’s around $3000. And none of my equipment would be considered top-end… not even close. And to shoot and edit decently (I’m no great shakes) took me about three years of trial and error.

I’ve heard of people making decent feature-length indie films for around $10,000. But, to make an even slightly competitive indie film, you’ll likely need closer to $50,000.

Even if you get it made (and it’s decent), you’ll spend more money submitting it to film festivals. If you’re lucky enough to get into a festival, you’ll need to spend money to travel to the fest and (hopefully) network with people who want to take your film to the next level.

In short, even though it comes with some expenses of its own, it’s much cheaper to self-publish a novel than it is to be an indie filmmaker.

So, yes, that’s a frustrating part of working on a screenplay. Even when finished, it isn’t anything; it’s just a blueprint for something that will be something if someone chooses to make it (a movie!).

It’s hard to imagine always having the motivation to write a screenplay… knowing that in all likelihood, it will just be words on a page that nobody will ever read, and nobody will ever see represented on a screen.

As I often tell my students, though, they should try many different kinds of writing. Even if you’re a fiction writer, an understanding of screenplays, journalism, poetry, and even technical writing can serve to hone other aspects of your preferred genre’s craft!

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