Novels to Screenplays

A whole lot of us go both ways.

I like both, for different reasons. My next wip is another screenplay. Looking at a seriously low budget on this one, but the story just went that way. I think folks will like it.

It's along the lines of Pacific Heights, an eighties movie. Dang me and names, Michael somebody or other, it was a John Sleschinger movie. That's just similar, mine's a whole new line. Great bad guy, who's named Guy.

I think it's good to keep both options open. Still love the novels, though.

I started writing screenplays and switched to novels. Keep in mind that as a screenwriter, you don't have the same identity that you do as an author. With a novel, it's your work--you created it, you'll be recognized for it. As a screenwriter, you're a small part of a huge machine. You may give birth to the project, but it's the producers, director, and actors who will finish it. They'll all have the ability to change your words, so the end result may not be yours. Not only that but if a studio purchases your script, they can end up hiring a team of writers to change it. And also keep in mind that you're now trying to break into Hollywood, and it's a "who-you-know" business.

After a couple of years of screenwriting I got into directing just so I'd be able to have full control over my stories. That's a whole other ball game and a road that will cost you a large chunk of money should you choose to go down it, but I guarantee the thought will cross your mind, because film is a director's medium, not a writers. And I'll tell you right now, the best way to get your work to an audience is to get out there and shoot the script yourself.

I'm not trying to deter you. You should write what you feel comfortable with. If you feel you can do a better job telling a story with a screenplay than that's what you write. I'm just trying to give you some advise since I know what you're getting into. If I were to compare them, I'd say getting a novel published is like climbing a really steep hill, but getting a screenplay read, optioned, purchased, and ultimately green lighted so that it actually becomes a film, is like climbing a mountain.

There's nothing wrong with keeping both options open, like Joe said. If one of your screenplays doesn't sell, and you really love the story, you may reconsider turning it into a novel.

Screenplay

I, too, write screenplays, but if you think novels are a tough sell, wait until you try peddling a screenplay!! Infinitely tougher to sell.

Yeah, I've decided to test the Screenplay waters in June during ScriptFrenzy (ScriptFrenzy.org). I am planning on doing a Zombie comedy/horror, that I'd started outlining as a novel, but I kept having nightmares, so I'm hoping since I won't have to write all of the description that it will be a little easier on my sleep habits.

I've only written novels and short stories before, so we'll see how it goes!

BRAINS!!!

I once changed a screenplay to a novel...@_@ but not the other way around...maybe thats cuz the screenplay i wrote was just awful! XD

I got into screenwriting about two years ago. Won some contests, got a TV series into development (whatever the hell that is)

I just love writing scripts. It's probably what I do best in the fictional field. Novels are just too long for a guy who spent his life doing articles and columns and such. I get bored before I'm halfway through. And I hate all that description. Screenplays are, to me, the stripped-down choppers of storyville, the pure distillate.

But yeah, astronomical chances against selling them. Three different people who are very prominent in movies and TV's praised my work, then told me I'd find it easier to break in to Hollywood by publishing a novel that sells well. So I'm back to using the whole sheet of paper.

What I'm working on right not is converting some teleplays to a novel. I have previously reworked shorts and novels into screenplays. The differences between the two types of conversion are interesting. My initial take was that it's easier to novelize a script because you don't have to do all the itsy (and painful) weeding out that an adaptation requires.

But it's not as simple as all that, it turns out. For one thing, I now have to put all the damned description in. And since I am very familiar with the piece, I tend not to see where it's needed.

You read those "novelizations" of movies and you notice they are brief, and not so much spare as sort of drafty, like underfurnished rooms. Their plots are very simple. You take something like "Blade Runner", a script written from a short story, then re-adapted to a novel, and you see what I mean.

I was talking to a guy the other day about writing a novel based on a movie that was made from a Mexican song!

But one thing I definitely believe: it's easier to sell a book than a script and a book will open doors to screenplay sales a lot faster than a script sale will get you into print.

I'd love to get into screenplays AND comics (similar in some ways), but I would never do either unless I was already rich and famous enough to have them the way I wanted. I just couldn't handle the lack of creative control that others have pointed out... someone else meddling with and rewriting my scripts! Ack!

I'll stick with the novel, thank you very much, where the author is soveriegn. More or less.

JoNightshade said:

I'd love to get into screenplays AND comics (similar in some ways), but I would never do either unless I was already rich and famous enough to have them the way I wanted. I just couldn't handle the lack of creative control that others have pointed out... someone else meddling with and rewriting my scripts! Ack!

I'll stick with the novel, thank you very much, where the author is soveriegn. More or less.

Click to expand...

Writers aren't all that sovereign with novels, either. About teh only area of writing where the writer is in close to 100% control is stage plays.

But from my experience, the worst thing most writers can do is insist on having full control. Agents and editors are there to make novels better, not worse, and most writers really need the help.

Scuse me, but you're saying plays, where people get cast, costumes and sets designed, scenes directed are more under a writer's control than a novel? That is a remarkable statement.

Your comment on novels not being 100% writer controlled is for real, though.

But I have a hard time seeing an agent's job as being to make a better book. Their job is to sell the book.

aspiringwriter said:

I've officially switched from novels to screenplays---I can tell the story better with a screenplay more or less...ever since I finished my first one i've been "bitten" so to speak..

If this thread doesn't belong here, sorry but wasn't sure where to put it

Click to expand...

I was a beta reader for a novel from a guy who wrote and produced his own screenplays. It was his first attempt at writing a novel and it definitely showed. There is lack of description, hopped from one date in time to another; several characters thrown in every chapter and no character building. It read like a screenplay, and I’ve never even been a beta reader for a screenplay. But I realize he is making a transition from one genre to another, which is difficult especially if you spent years writing screenplays, producing and filming them.

I just wanted to point out the emptiness of his WIP maybe from screen directions and reliability on the actors. This is an assumption because I have no idea what goes into writing a screenplay. However, this will not affect you since you are going from novel to screenplay and I’m babbling at this hour.

Jamesaritchie said:

Writers aren't all that sovereign with novels, either.

Click to expand...

Hence me saying "more or less." What I mean is that in novel writing, the novelist gets the final say. You don't hand your book over to your agent and then they make whatever changes they want to make and then hand it over to a publisher who makes whatever changes he wants to make, and then it goes to a committee, where they make whatever changes THEY want to make... etc. In the end, you always gotta ask the author if it's okay. And if there's a disagreement that can't be worked through, the author can take his/her work back and say "screw you."

Well, then there's contract issues but you get the idea.

The real problem I'd have with writing screenplays is that with a novel it doesn't matter if it's published - you can still read it beginning to end. With a screenplay I would want to SEE my words happen and it would be more frustrating for me to struggle with the screenplay/film/play industry than the novel industry.

But GO YOU! If screenplays work for you, that's awesome.

Lindo said:

Scuse me, but you're saying plays, where people get cast, costumes and sets designed, scenes directed are more under a writer's control than a novel? That is a remarkable statement.

Click to expand...

Funny that you say that. I was just reading through Chayefsky's collected TV plays, interspersed with his essays. In one he talks about how badly most of his writer friends are treated by TV and film producers, and how lucky he is to be given a little more respect by his sponsoring program. And he wrote this in the 1950s!

In the theater, there's usually a lot more respect for the playwright. Yes, costumes, sets, direction, acting... it is a team sport. But theater plays are usually more talky, fewer changes of scene... and from everyone there's more respect for what's actually printed. Certain liberties might be taken with Shakespeare - excising much of the Fortinbras subplot from Hamlet, for instance - but even that change has become somewhat of a tradition. It was considered pretty oddball that Branagh put it back into his film version.

If a playwright wants every word played just as he or she wrote it, it will probably be respected.

Meanwhile, the freelance screenwriter might not be allowed on the set of a TV episode, written from his script. And a high powered actor might decide to "rewrite" whole sections of the script.

I don't doubt that playwright get treated better than screenwriters. (Why aren't they called "screenwrights"?) I just had a hard time seeing that they are in more control of the final presentation than an author is.

Somebody mentioned "jumping around" in a novel written by a screenwriter. Yeah, that's a major problem I have in converting play to novel. And it's made me start thinking about structure, maybe about direction of popular novel format.

We are used to seeing a lot of jumps in films, even a single word or a few seconds of action cut in. We also widely accept films like Babel, Crash, Amores Perros in which widely different stories are told, possibly related later by the thinnest of connections, sometimes not even that. But it's not so much done in books (and I'd say done less than back in the seventies).

You can kind of see that it's easier for the audience to follow the visual cues than print, but I think there's a certain timidity among publishers, or possibly just studginess.

I'm continuning to do this bok with a lot of intercutting between different stories. I'm not writing it for people who like Proust, it's for people who like The Sopranos or Deadwood. We'll see how it goes.

Lindo said:

I don't doubt that playwright get treated better than screenwriters. (Why aren't they called "screenwrights"?) I just had a hard time seeing that they are in more control of the final presentation than an author is.

Click to expand...

I think they're consulted a lot more, and if one of them gets angry about a controversial change, it's big news. With screenwriters, it's never news. grin.

They did call Serling and Chafeysky television playwrights back in the day. I think that disappeared when networks stopped making anthology television shows.

I can think of books where the point of view changed from chapter to chapter and a novel in stories is more common now. Perhaps editors are concerned about how intimidating it might be to a reader, if they lost track of where they were.

Playwrights

Lindo said:

I
Somebody mentioned "jumping around" in a novel written by a screenwriter. Yeah, that's a major problem I have in converting play to novel. And it's made me start thinking about structure, maybe about direction of popular novel format.

.

Click to expand...

Interesting point. I think jumping around is more successful in movies because continuity can be established by things other than the action itself. There is music, camera work, editing devices and other tricks of the trade that can be deployed to make what is in effect a sentence or a paragraph out of a series of disparate scenes. At its most extreme, of course, you have the 'montage'; which would be a damned difficult thing to pull off in a novel.

As a PS, I would strongly echo those who have good things to say about writing for the stage. In the theatre the writer is king. In my experience, both actors and directors love working with a living playwright. This is a luxury they don't usually have. For the writer, this can be great fun.

The downside is that even with 10% of the box office (which is a higher royalty than most novelists enjoy), you are unlikely to make much money. Your first production is likely to be in a small fringe venue where the actors are all working for nothing. So you may feel guilty about taking even that. Your play also vanishes once the final curtain comes down, unless you happen to have written a hit. It does not linger on library shelves, public and private, the way a book does.

But if you are looking for a break from prose fiction, and like the idea of something more collaborative, you could do worse than give it a go.

Philip64 said:

Interesting point. I think jumping around is more successful in movies because continuity can be established by things other than the action itself. There is music, camera work, editing devices and other tricks of the trade that can be deployed to make what is in effect a sentence or a paragraph out of a series of disparate scenes. At its most extreme, of course, you have the 'montage'; which would be a damned difficult thing to pull off in a novel.

Click to expand...

Exactly right. It's a totally different medium and you've got entirely different storytelling tools at your disposal.

Just yesterday my husband was commenting about how I LOVE movies that get me so twisted around that I can't even tell if what happened was actually real. And yet, with novels, this is utterly unacceptable to me. He happens to love really confusing, reality-bending books, and can't understand why I don't. I still can't figure out exactly why, but I suspect it's just because I am willing to take cues in movies that are simply unavailable in novel format: soundtrack, lighting, etc.