Novelists, Screenwriters, and Visual Fiction

In a previous blog post, I talked about how screenwriters should understand where cinematographers are coming from, so they can see and write their scenes as a series of shots. That way they can write and imply camera… without ever referencing the camera itself.

The goal? For their screenplay to feel more like a movie when someone is reading it.

You can read that post: here

It certainly wouldn’t hurt novelists (and fiction writers in general) to think of their own “camera angles” implicit in their visual sentences. Does your fiction show a variety of “shots”? Are you bringing us in for closeups, extreme closeups, but also some wider shots?

All of this connection-making between fiction writing and screenwriting came to me while I was working on my novel, Detroit Muscle. The book tells the story of Robby Cooper, a young man returning to Michigan after months in a Florida rehab for Oxycontin addiction. He finds himself having trouble making amends as people aren’t very receptive to his apology or his new vision for his life. He eventually ends up on a redemptive road trip (in a ’68 Firebird) with his grandfather which takes them from Detroit to Grand Marais in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Along the way, Robby learns that his grandfather is haunted by his own demons.

At the time, I really loved the stripped-down style of screenwriting sentences. I wanted to write a novel that felt like a movie. To write according to a screenwriting aesthetic, I had restrictions. One, I needed to write in scenes, not chapters. Two, I needed to write in the present tense. Three, no (or very little) metaphors, similes or figurative language in my description. Four, there is no paraphrased or summarized dialogue; if it’s spoken, we hear it. And five, I could only reveal my character through what he did and what he said. Screenplays, on the whole, do not get into the internal dialogue activity of a character.

If I wanted to reveal the past, I couldn’t just have Robby think about it or flashback to it. I had to find an organic way. Early on in the book, post rehab and back in Michigan, I have Robby meet with his new therapist. That was an opportunity to get a lot of his past into the book in an organic way. The book has a surprising amount of backstory in it, but the reader learns none of it through Robby’s thinking.

If you’re interested in the book, you can learn more: here

When I was finished with Detroit Muscle (or at least finished with a few drafts), it still felt like something was missing. It felt thin. And that’s when it hit me… “Of course, I need to go back and work in the cinematography!” And, for the fiction writer, it’s not just a matter of having a lot of “shots” but how you use the details to reveal emotion, etc. You can do this even in a novel where you do have access to the character’s inner dialogue. I think a risk writers take is revealing most emotion by having characters think about it or feel it internally. Is there a way to convey the emotion in the character’s actions first?

I often encourage my screenwriters to have entire scenes with no dialogue, but that still push the story forward. I think fiction writers can do that too. When doing this, I’m really imagining the scene I’m writing as a scene that might appear on a movie screen.

Here are a few scenes from Detroit Muscle that I’d like to dissect from a “cinematography” angle:

            The small houses on Mayflower Avenue are packed tightly together with a driveway of space in between each. Bushes against the fronts of the homes are carefully trimmed, and the little lawns are well-tended. Most of the awning-covered stoops have pots of flowers and wicker chairs. Strolling along the sidewalk, a gray-haired couple waves to Robby as he drives past.

            He waves back. A moment later he pulls his car over to the curb.

            His grandfather’s house is a brick ranch with an enclosed porch. The small front lawn looks as neatly maintained as a golf course fairway. The lamppost near the end of the driveway is on, glowing dimly in the sunlight. With its crown spread as wide as the roof, a sugar maple towers behind the house. Its bare branches show only a stubble of green spring bloom.

            He sits in his car staring at the tree. His hand clenches and unclenches the wheel.

The majority of this scene focuses on “wider shots” that establish the neighborhood. But, in places, I direct the “viewer’s” attention to specific (and less wide) details.

The couple, the flowers, the lamppost, the tree (though given its size, it’s still in a wider angle shot)

The telling details are in the end. Robby is fresh out of rehab. He’s just seeing his grandfather since getting out. His grandfather can be a critical man, and Robby doesn’t really want to see him. I couldn’t have him think that… and, thusly, his hand clenching and unclenching the steering wheel.

Another scene:

            Robby walks into his bedroom and then closes the door. A Return of the Jedi comforter is draped across his bed. On the walls are posters of Geddy Lee, Flea, John Entwistle, and Les Claypool. He reaches into his pocket, takes out the pill container, and sets it on top of the desk near the window. He studies it for a moment before sitting down in the chair. The darkness outside and the light inside make a mirror of the window in front of him. He looks at his reflection and brushes his hair away from his face. He picks up the container and turns it slowly between thumb and finger. 

           Like a screenwriter, I establish the scene in this paragraph. The reader hasn’t been in Robby’s bedroom before, so I do some “cut-away” shots to some details. The posters reveal that Robby is a serious bass guitar fan. The Star Wars comforter shows that he is in his boyhood bedroom (and implies this might be an environment that coddles him rather than empowers).

Then attention turns to the pill container. Robby is supposed to be in recovery, but he carries pills around with him. They have his rapt attention in this scene. He must be jonesing for one or two. He’s craving. He’s tempted to use again, though I never have him actually think about it. I hope this scene conveys it.

This next scene I just wanted to be more visual. I added this scene just to add to the visual “cinematography” of the book. This scene even has some of the fragmentary sentences sometimes found in screenwriting.

            Eight o’clock in the morning, the Firebird flies down M-72 toward Grayling. The sides of the highway are mainly scrub grasses and small evergreens. The view is a wash of olive, avocado, lime, jade and Kelly green.

            Black road. The red car growling down its stretch.

            Sunlight shines through the branches of the intermittent taller trees. Telephone lines run parallel to the road.

            The Firebird’s backend climbs a distant rise where the highway narrows, like a pencil lead coming to a point.

            The car clears the rise and disappears, leaving only the land behind and the highway quieting as the engine’s grumble fades out.

            And perhaps here is where I realize the point of this post. Sure, you can think about the variety of “shots” your sentences convey. You can especially think of ways to convey emotion through actions, rather than thoughts or words.

            Some of the big point? Are you giving thought to the visual spectacle that is your fiction? Are you overly relying on dialogue to move your story forward? Do you have any scenes absent of dialogue and interior dialogue that still move the story forward?

            In short, do you think you overly use internal dialogue and dialogue? Could your fiction be more relevantly visual?

            Are you trying to picture your writing as scenes? The more time you spend imagining it, the more likely your reader will feel it… feel your world to the point that it almost feels real.

            Just like a screenwriter can make their screenplay feel more like a movie by writing with cinematography in mind, a novelist can make their words feel more like a reality by thinking about the cinematography of their sentences.

If you find my blog posts instructive, please consider purchasing a copy of my new book of short stories, The Neighborhood Division, as a donated payment for the "class."

From the Publisher (preferred): here

From Amazon: here

A review of the book: here