I am not a long-winded person. In fact, whenever I'm asked to speak in church, I talk the bare minimum, fearful of the congregation's imminent desire to see the meeting end.
And now I'm seeing my tendency to streamline in book #2:
What?? I'm only at 9,000 words? Maybe this should be a novelette...
I even looked up novelettes to see if publishers really publish them. Not looking promising. Not looking promising at all.
I once read an interview with Neil Burger, writer/director of The Illusionist. His screenplay was based on Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Millhauser's short story, Eisenheim, The Illusionist. Burger admitted that he'd written the screenplay and completed post-production for the movie before obtaining permission from the initial author!
When Burger finally managed to email Millhauser to ask for permission, he was nervous... and I can relate to his trepidation quite well:
"I began to draft a note. But what do you say to a Pulitzer Prize-winning author—and how do you say it? There’s no way I can write on his level. He composes beautiful, lyrical English. I write screenplays. It’s a different beast. The screenplays may someday be translated into beautiful movies, but the writing itself is strictly utilitarian, like a blueprint for a bathroom. Everything I wrote him seemed clunky, lame, weak."
As we all know, the film came out anyway. Millhauser was supportive... and I love the movie!
But I feel like the blueprint writer: utilitarian, clunky, lame.
But I will write my blueprints, and then go back. Fill in the spaces, embellish, make it real.
Anybody else think they might enjoy writing screenplays? Or are you the high and mighty lyrical beast?
I have no interest in screenplays, and imagine the market must be even harder to break into than publishing for books.
ReplyDeletebut like you, my first draft is usually very outline-ish. no worries. It's fun to fill in the blanks later.
Yes, plus it should help with the dialogue. And once you get some really great dialogue going, the background can always be filled in later. My oldest son graduated from the film school at USC, where he learned to write screenplays, edit films and all the rest. He worked in the industry for awhile and said the stealing of work is rampant. Say you give a pitch to someone, they like it, what's to keep them from taking your pitch and have someone else write the screenplay? It happens all the time. He actually gave a pitch for a tv show called LAX, about all that goes on there, he had some great ideas. They didn't offer him enough money, so he turned it down, and then a few years later it shows up on TV. All this is running through my head with your mention of screenplays:)
ReplyDeleteI need to learn how to add that bookshelf thingy like you have on your sidebar. That is so cool!
ReplyDeleteWhat a fascinating major! In my next life I want to do that! Just to gain the knowledge of course.
ReplyDeleteOh! It's from Goodreads! I just asked my friend Erica how to add it. You go to My Account and it shows you how there.
ReplyDeleteI have a good friend that is trying to break into screen-writing, I've read a couple of his things and its good but it is so much more sparse than a novel because it ends up being decorated according to the director or producers vision.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the only ways I would work on a screenplay, since you have to leave so much out of setting and description-which I love to do-is if I was adapting one of my own books. I would throw myself into that.
I stumbled on to a blog the other day, written by a playwrite in Scotland. The blog is called wordarts.blogspot.com. Her post talks about how wonderful it is to write something by yourself in your room and then going out and seeing people perform it. She said the performance often turns out better than the script, but letting it go is always frightening.
ReplyDeleteJust went to her blog and commented! Thanks, L.A., what a great find! I did a ton of acting in high school, so--duh--why didn't I think of writing plays??! What a fantastic idea, to write EXPECTING the words to be spoken and acted. That's how I see it in my head while writing my novels--the movements and dialogue happening for real. But to create something that is intended to be acted? Very, very cool.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I swear I left a comment here last night. I'm not sure what happened to it-- I probably closed the window before I hit "post" or something...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, all I said was that I pretty much suck at writing dialogue, so a screenplay would be a nightmare for me. I'd rather take an entire paragraph to describe some girl's feelings or something. (I know-- boring, huh? I'm such a girl!)
P.S. Today's word? Swanilia!
ReplyDeleteHey Mary, you got another blog award from me on my blog! :)
ReplyDeleteMary, I think you might find this very interesting.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/08/30/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-14-the-four-principles-of-puppetry-with-mary-robinette-kowal/
WOW! Great find, David! And you can imagine my shock when I saw that one of the contributors of the blog is Brandon Sanderson, author of the Mistborn series. I am SO EXCITED to read that series. Just waiting to get my hands on copies of the books.
ReplyDeleteBut I LOVE what Mary Kowal said about puppetteering. I want to listen to that interview a few more times to gleam from it every bit of wisdom that I can.
Thank you for stopping by my blog! It's great to meet you! And congrats on your book coming out next fall too! Hope to see you again!
ReplyDeleteI took a screenwriting class in college and it's all very methodical. Act one ends by this page, the climax has to be here, etc. It really pushes you to create the most out of your dialogue. A lot of screenplays are actually online and they are fun to read.
ReplyDelete