Writing Styles

[magicman531]

I'm just curious about screen writing as an art and its format. Mainly, is it really necessary to learn and become proficient in the other writing styles (novel, short story, etc. etc.) before attempting screen writing? Just from observations it's pretty apparent to me that the formats are vastly different from each other.

In "regular" writing the lines are usually more drawn out and contain much more detail. Whereas scripts are usually concise in detail and frown upon the flowery style that is often praised in novels.

I may be way off base here... But to me it's kind of like a fine artist compared to a cartoonist. Not to disrespect screen writers in anyway. The novelist is more of the fine artist, perfecting each and every detail. Where the cartoonist (screen writer) is more concerned with the visual side of the story and how it will come across as an idea, instead of just letting the words speak for themselves.

Maybe I need to be slapped upside the head and straightened out...

[pansy]

I think of it more like both are fine art, with one being in the style of the old masters, and the other more minimalist.

In screenwriting you have to master brevity, and need a solid command of english to tell the most with the least. You have to create a visual, an emotion, a scenario in just a few words that reads fast.

Try this ...

Take a character intro from a novel, then try to reduce it to one sentance and still create in the readers mind what that person looks like, acts like, how they dress, and their age.

Ssame holds for a space. Tell me what a place looks like in ten words or less.

Yea, it's an art. It ain't cartoonin'!!


www.alexwhitmer.wordpress.com

[dpaterso]

Screenwriting has tighter constraints, that's for sure.

The fine artist vs. cartoonist comparison seems kinda wacky to me.

I can't say whether you need to become proficient in one discipline before you attempt the other.

But if you're attempting to write and tell a story for the first time, very possibly screenwriting isn't the easiest medium you could choose.

The above is my humble opinion, not gospel.

-Derek

[NikeeGoddess]

it's because a script is not a finished product. the final production is the final product. if you're baking a cake the script is the flour/dry ingredients, the director stirs in wet ingredients, the actors give it texture, the editors put the icing on the cake, etc.... a novel is the cake. so you're really comparing a cake to the flour. make sense?

[magicman531]

it's because a script is not a finished product. the final production is the final product. if you're baking a cake the script is the flour/dry ingredients, the director stirs in wet ingredients, the actors give it texture, the editors put the icing on the cake, etc.... a novel is the cake. so you're really comparing a cake to the flour. make sense?

Yeah, that was one line of thinking I had. The script is just the start but the novel is finished in its entirety. But I was wondering if a great novel writer could easily make the transition to scripts or vice versa, because the styles seem to contrast so much. Which is why I questioned whether it was important to learn the writing style of a novel if I planned on doing mostly scripts.

[NikeeGoddess]

if you want to adapt your own novels then by all means. some writers can do it with ease while others will have a hard time of it. peter benchley vowed to never do another adaptation after jaws because he found it so difficult to cut up his story, combine, change, and remove characters, etc... which is so necessary for a good novel. this is why many novelist would prefer a screenwriter adapt (butcher and remold) their story.

so many times you hear people say, "the book was great. the movie stinks." not all novels make for good stories on the big screen.

short stories make for better films imo because you can take characters and expand and make them grow whereas novels you much cut and cut, losing much in the process.

you should invest in some reference books on adapting for the screen. they can explain which parts of storytelling makes for good movietelling vs noveltelling.

[magicman531]

short stories make for better films imo because you can take characters and expand and make them grow whereas novels you much cut and cut, losing much in the process.

you should invest in some reference books on adapting for the screen. they can explain which parts of storytelling makes for good movietelling vs noveltelling.

That's what I've been doing as of late. Writing, say, a 10 page or less short story and then fleshing it out into a script. Some books I've read recommend doing the outline of it in 3 pages or 4. One for the beginning, 1-2 for the middle, and one for the end. I guess I'll just have to figure it out with some trial and error.

Any books you'd recommend on the subject?

[nmstevens]

I'm just curious about screen writing as an art and its format. Mainly, is it really necessary to learn and become proficient in the other writing styles (novel, short story, etc. etc.) before attempting screen writing? Just from observations it's pretty apparent to me that the formats are vastly different from each other.

In "regular" writing the lines are usually more drawn out and contain much more detail. Whereas scripts are usually concise in detail and frown upon the flowery style that is often praised in novels.

I may be way off base here... But to me it's kind of like a fine artist compared to a cartoonist. Not to disrespect screen writers in anyway. The novelist is more of the fine artist, perfecting each and every detail. Where the cartoonist (screen writer) is more concerned with the visual side of the story and how it will come across as an idea, instead of just letting the words speak for themselves.

Maybe I need to be slapped upside the head and straightened out...

What you seem to be suggesting is that there is "fine art" on one side and "cartoonist" on the other and nothing in between.

Where then would you put something like this:

http://ftp.at.postgresql.org/art/cgfa/goya/caprichos/index.html

-- the etchings of Goya, minimal in detail, no color, clearly exaggerated in form, but I think hardly something that one would categorize as "cartoons."

Certainly Goya is one of our great artists and I don't think that anyone would suggest that he was somehow "slumming" when he chose to pursue this particular form. It wasn't that he was doing "real" art when he was doing "fine art" -- in the sense of his oil paintings, while this was something of a lesser form.

He chose the form -- stark black and white etchings -- to match the subject.

To do either thing -- either an etching or an oil painting -- excellently, is always going to be exceedingly difficult.

One should not think that simply because one has mastered the former that one can simply "knock out* the latter without breaking a sweat.

Each form has it's own particular requirements and discipline.

Some writer, I'm afraid I don't remember which, once wrote, in closing, to a friend, "Forgive me for writing so long a letter. I didn't have time to write a shorter one."

What some people invoke as the challenge of writing a novel -- it's length, the level of detail, the wealth of description, the ability to explore the internal world of the character's minds and past -- virtually none of which are available to a screenwriter, are actually what make it hard to write a screenplay *well.*

That's because a screenplay has to do all of the stuff that a novel does, in technical terms, in dramatic terms, in emotional terms -- it has to engage the reader, involve him, inform him about the characters, convey what needs to be conveyed about their past and inner lives, tell us about the nature of the world that they inhabit, move us, scare us, make us laugh, and of course, tell the story -- do all of those things, without benefit of the majority of the contents of the novelist's bag of tricks.

And, after all, what do we have available to us, to accomplish all of this?

The same words from the same dictionary that the novelist uses.

Only we are required to use fewer of them.

That is why, all things being equal, it is harder to write a great screenplay than a great novel.

NMS