Emily Saso asked Elan Mastai:

Do you find that switching between screenwriting and prose helps you improve as a writer overall?

Elan Mastai This is such an interesting question. I found writing a novel actually helped simplify my screenwriting in a good way. Before I wrote "All Our Wrong Todays" I went through a phase where I was trying to pack a little too much into my movie scripts—basically trying to squeeze a novel's worth of story into a movie. After writing the book, my scripts got a lot tighter and, I think, more effective. Likewise, screenwriting requires a lot of discipline, because the page counts are so limited. And that discipline should extend to novel-writing too. Just because you can make it longer, doesn't mean you should. In screenwriting, you're always outside the character, defining them by their words and actions, not what flows through the inside of their mind, which the audience has no access to. That's important in novels as well. It's terrific to have that psychological interiority, but interesting characters are made vivid by their actions and dialogue, what they do and what they say, not just what they think. So, that is my longwinded way of answering—yes, I think so.

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