I was asked over on Goodreads about the differences between writing novels and writing screenplays, and since my thoughts on that became quite a long answer, it seemed sensible to post them here in the blog. So here goes.
On screenwriting and novel writing
I’ve been writing for screen for thirty years now; but before that I wrote novels, and I’m now writing novels again. I think of myself first and foremost as a novelist: just one who happens to have made a career in screenwriting. In a lot of ways they’re deeply dissimilar forms, and it’s not at all the case that ability in the one correlates to ability in the other.
That said, I’ve been increasingly conscious recently of the extent to which the practice of screenwriting has influenced the way I want to write novels. I’ll say something more about that in a moment, but first it’s probably worth outlining the key differences between the two disciplines.
1) Screenplays are collaborative; novels are individual.
This isn’t to say that a screenplay can’t be personal; but it’s necessarily going to become a collaborative process the moment you hand the finished draft to a production company (and, subsequently, a director; and then network executives; and actors; and so on). With a screenplay, the writer is part of a team, all of whom need to be on top form if the end result is to work. A scene can be brilliantly written, but if the direction is insipid or the acting flat-footed you’re still in trouble. Conversely, a good script editor can elevate what you’re trying to write: I’ve had the luck and privilege of working with some excellent script editors and their quiet, behind-the-scenes contribution to the development of a screenplay can’t be overestimated.
By contrast, with a novel, there are really only two collaborators: the writer and the (imagined) reader. (There may of course be an editor at a publishing house in due course; but that comes after the novel is written, rather than during the process.) It’s the job of the writer to use all their skill in pursuit of eliciting in the reader an emotional connection – to the world of the book, to its characters and events, to its themes and preoccupations. It’s a conversation. For me it’s intrinsic to the process of writing to imagine the reader reading: there is a necessary connection there – through which I try to judge whether what I’m writing is likely to connect adequately, to elicit the reactions I want.
But beyond that imaginary level, writing a novel is far more solitary than writing a screenplay; with far fewer interjections from third parties; and, ultimately, both control of the text and responsibility for its quality weigh on the shoulders of the writer alone.
2) Screenplays are governed by structure; novels are a free landscape.
There are structural rules for screenwriting. They’re not entirely immutable, but you stray from them at your peril. They involve things like pacing: in television, it’s important to grip your audience from the off (lest they change channels). If you’re writing for a commercial station with ad breaks, or a streaming service with ad breaks, those need to be reflected in the structure: a “cliffhanger” need not be a plot point – it can be an emotional or character development – but you definitely want to entice your audience back after the break. There are “tentpole moments” throughout a script on which the rest of the structure hangs. And so on, and so on. These are the structural constraints of screenwriting, and they inform it as much as, say, minuet and trio form informs composing a minuet and trio: that is, there’s scope for exploration within, but don’t break the walls.
Novels, I think, have far more latitude in how you choose to express yourself; how you choose to pace things; the investment the reader has already given you when they sit down and open your book. I think there’s some essential goodwill already in place when a reader opens a book: they’ve sought it out, they’re sitting down now to read it, and this, I think, allows you a slower burn if you want it. If we’re generalising, novels tend to ramp progressively and elaboratively; screenplays are a series of twists, changes and hooks designed to propel the audience. (Of course, this may also be true for genre novels; there’s a lot of cross-pollenation both ways.)
There’s more freedom to define your own path with a novel. So long as you’ve got the reader by the hand, I think they’re more willing to be taken along.
3) The way you write screenplays is direct; novels require elision.
This is not about structure: it’s about how you actually put the words on the page. In a screenplay, the descriptive prose passages outlining each scene are not presented to the audience: they’re just guidelines for the director and actors, so that they know how to direct and act the scene. All the audience gets of the screenplay is the director’s interpretation of those instructions (in the form of how the scene ends up being shot), plus the dialogue you’ve given the actors to speak.
What’s the impact of this in practice? Let’s say you have two characters who have met, and who are attracted to each other; but that one of them is hesitant because they have just come out of a failed relationship and are feeling wary and untrusting. They’re conflicted. Conflict is usually interesting to watch, so this is already a promising encounter, whether in a novel or on screen.
If you’re writing this encounter in prose, you might take time to reveal the inner conflict of your character by showing their reluctance; by emphasising hesitations and moments of withdrawal; you might put a great deal of time, care and word-count into making this difficult internal conflict breathe on the page in a way that will stir similar feelings of conflict, hope, denial, frustration and urgency in your reader. It might, bluntly, take a page or two to do this moment justice.
For a screenplay, we might just write: “ELLIE is immediately attracted to SAM, but also conflicted because of her failed relationship with ALEX, so she struggles to open up.” Then you leave the portrayal of those conflicted emotions to the director and actors to workshop, develop, and finally commit to screen. Your instructions have to be clear and concise: trying to implythings in stage directions, rather than saying them out loud in the bluntest way possible, is a recipe for misunderstanding (and, therefore, a scene that ends up not doing what you intended it to do).
So… writing a novel, and writing a screenplay, are really really different in this respect. But having said that…
4) Dialogue connects both.
Dialogue is the only element of screenwriting that actually translates directly to the audience. Your stage directions are, at best, a set of guidelines and springboards for the actors and director to work with. But unless someone is letting the actors improvise (…sigh…) your words should be the words the characters speak on screen. Therefore, getting the dialogue right is vital.
For me, “getting the dialogue right” means, above all else, making it credible. Clunky dialogue is so easy for us to hear, because we know how people speak: we hear them do it all the time. Just like a robot that inhabits the “uncanny valley” of almost but not quite human, clunky dialogue repels us from the world being built on screen. We know bad dialogue when we hear it. (And clunky expositional dialogue is the worst: just look at the glee with which the internet rightly crucified the line from Madame Web “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders just before she died”. I mean… ouch.)
I think the same holds true for novels, even though the dialogue there plays out in our heads (unless we’re reading aloud or listening to an audiobook). I would always aim for credibility: to try to get the characters to talk, and sound, as realistically as possible. In my own prose writing, that means including hesitation, derailment, ellipsis, if necessary. When people speak they don’t always produce perfectly-formed sentences or perfectly-formed thoughts; they sometimes stumble their way towards what they mean. Inarticulacy can be emotionally resonant. I always try to “listen back” to my dialogue, either reading it aloud or “reading it aloud in my head”, to check for false notes.
In conclusion
So, there are points of divergance and points of connection between screenwriting and novel writing; but what I find interesting is that, despite them being so dissimilar in form, I do think that being a screenwriter has influenced the way I write novels. (Hopefully for the better, too.) The weird thing is that it’s not a structural influence, but a stylistic one.
For a start, screenplays are always written in the present tense, and this is something I’ve realised that I love in a novel. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but for me, present-tense narration (whether 1st or 3rd person) establishes the novel in an ongoing, unfolding moment: which is how human experience unfolds. A novel told in the past feels like a “story” – an account of things already concluded. A novel told in the present feels immediate: we are right there alongside the characters, sharing their experiences right as they unfold. The stakes feel higher, too: if this is the present, then we don’t know what the future holds (whereas if the story has already happened, and is being recounted in the past tense, its ending has already happened). I know, of course, that this is a conceit, but it’s one that works for me and which I’ve realised I greatly prefer. Look, for example, at how vividly Hilary Mantel brings the past to life in the Wolf Hall trilogy, which is historical fiction and by definition buried in the past; but Cromwell’s story is told in the present tense, and thereby reaches the reader as he lives it, moment by moment. It’s magical. I can’t imagine myself not writing in the present tense any more.
I also think I’ve learned concision from screenwriting: the instinct towards it, at least, if not always the practice. In a screenplay, each page of text approximates to one minute of screen time, so that a 120pp script will be 2 hours on screen. It’s a vital rule-of-thumb that allows producers to gauge costs and cuts based simply on page count. (And it’s why screenwriting software enforces a strict 12-point Courier layout, with particular margins, on you: to keep your 21st-century screenplay consistent with the old Hollywood typewriters from which this rule was derived.)
In a screenplay, then, words are at a premium. In a novel this doesn’t apply in the same way, and some readers and writers love to revel in lush, expansive prose, full of sweeping description that wrings every drop from each metaphor. I’ve always favoured leaner writers – Tim Winton springs to mind at once – and a screenwriting career seems to have confirmed in me that I’m happiest when my own style is quite spare. This doesn’t mean that I don’t describe things; it just affects the toolkit I use. So far as possible, I aim for simplicity.
The opposite is true when it comes to elision, though. Earlier I said how important it is when writing a screenplay to make absolutely clear what you mean, for the benefit of the actors and director and network execs and everyone else in the chain of command. Subtlety is then – with any luck – returned to the mix by means of their interpretation and performance. But novels are nuance, characters are nuance, things left unsaid or half-said are the lifeblood of prose. We can trust the reader of a novel to dig a little deeper, and a little more willingly, than we can trust the average actor, director or exec with a stack of scripts on their desk and the phone ringing. So for me, the overwhelming delight of writing a novel is allowing myself to be more indirect, allowing characters to be nuanced and complex in their reactions, leaving room for subtext to breathe in the mind of the reader; and trusting the reader to have the time, grace and goodwill to be open to those processes. These are all the things I miss when screenwriting, even though I’ve learned a great deal from it, and it’s why I’m working on novels at the moment.
