Screenplays and Novels: Mechanic vs Maestro

I know, kinda pretentious there that last part, right? Maestro? Really?

Well, yeah. The term actually fits. But I pregress (which is nothing more than premature digression--it's the only premature issue I have--honestly--stop laughing!).

What I'm talking about here is the vast difference between writing novels and writing screenplays. I've done both. A lot. For eighteen years now. It's how I pay the mortgage and buy the bacon. I started in novels initially, with my first published by William Morrow in 1993. Around 2000 I transitioned to working in, ahem, film. Hollywood. Where aspiring screenwriters come to be crushed by reality and trams on the back lot. I was fortunate and have had a good run so far (please, please, keep buying my stuff because, you know, they don't give bacon away). In that time of shifting focus I learned some valuable things about the differences between novels and screenplays, and novelists and screenwriters.

First, to reference the title of this post, screenplays are mechanical objects. Look at them. They have parts. Slug lines, and parentheticals, and CUT TO's and all sorts of things that have to be put together to craft a finished monstrosity that someone else will interpret. Screenwriters are mechanics, fixing a car that someone else will drive. We move the parts around. Replace them. Somewhere in there we actually write, but it's always within the constraints of the required parts. Take away the slug lines and, boom, the wheels fall off.

I don't necessarily like that. I love having a finished story in that format that people will enjoy when it's finally interpreted and on the screen, but I always struggle with (pretense alert--pretense alert) the artfulness of it. The lack of a singular, flowing voice uninterrupted by parts. Not every script would even benefit from such an infusion of this full-on narrative voice, but when you actually find it in a screenplay, it's a revelation.

In novels, you are the god of your own universe. What you lay out there on the page, be it paper or virtual, is a continuous stream of narrative that, when it works, flows. So seamlessly that the reader may forget they are reading. You are like a maestro conducting a literary symphony.

Pretentious? It's not intended that way. It actually feels amazing when the words flow, and the story comes together, in either format. Recognizing the difference when you begin to write either, and embracing the often divergent skill sets, makes the process less crushing and more liberating.