10 Things Screenwriting Taught a Novelist

These were hard lessons to learn, very hard. My first pages of script screamed “IDIOTIC NOVELIST THAT DOESN’T KNOW WHAT SHE’S DOING!” It was an interesting journey to adapt to the ethereal word of sluglines and dialog tags, but it was blood and sweat well-spent . .

1. Shorter is (often) better. (When you realize that, no, your feature script can’t be 378 pages, you’ll understand.)
2. Show not tell. (I’ll warn you now – you’re going to develop an utter loathing for this vile thing called OTN dialog.)
3. Use concrete verbs. (Eventually you’ll get bored of having your characters “walk” everywhere.)
4. Employ connotations. (After you get tired of “walking,” you’ll realize that “striding,” “marching,” and “trudging” are all very, very different things.)
5. Actions speak louder than words. (When you realize that there are only two options in a script, dialog or action, you’ll learn to love the action as a reprieve from your characters’ babbling.)
6. “Omit needless words.” (When that last word – one measly word! – pushes the scene over your page count…)
7. Know your end use. (You’ll understand what this means when you write a short for your friends to shoot and then realize you have no feasible way to crash a train over the edge of a cliff into a crack of lava.)
8. It’s okay if the movie is different than the book. (Try adapting a book to screenplay and you’ll see.)
9. It’s not heresy to like the movie better than the book. (Breathe. Take deep breaths. It’s okay. Really.)
10. You can tell a lot of story in 3 minutes. (Once you’ve gotten a feel for the above, you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish when your characters aren’t yammering for hours and you’re not stopping to describe how the rampaging robot looks in finite detail.)

(c) 2011 by Aubrey Hansen

10 Things Screenwriting Taught a Novelist