Category: Writing Craft, Revising, Screenwriter Tips for Novelists
Sometimes I write a story where lots of exciting stuff happens, my protagonist is proactive and has a goal, and I’m hitting all the right beats (if you don’t know what those are, check out this post on the 15 Story Beats), yet the story still feels flat. What’s wrong? What am I missing?
The truth of the matter is often I’m not missing anything. I spend a lot of time developing my stories and I know all the story parts that I need to make a story sing, but effectively implementing those parts into a manuscript is a whole other challenge. In a manuscript, those parts can get out of whack or lost or muddy. So how do you fix it?
By doing something we screenwriters often call “tracking the story’s spine.” A story’s spine is the character arc woven into the plot; the two should always go together just like your vertebrae and your spinal cord. Tracking a story’s spine means making sure the protagonist’s transformation (arc) is addressed in EVERY SCENE of the journey (plot). Because after all, as I’ve said before (specifically in this post about character journeys), every story is about change.
So let’s get started…
Category: Writing Craft, Screenwriter Tips for Novelists
Today I’m guest posting on fellow writer Sara Letourneau’s blog about the similarities and differences between screenwriting and novel writing…
I started my writing career as a television screenwriter, but my first love has always been books. So, after screenwriting for what seemed like an eternity to my young self (though I’d only been making a living at it for five years), I decided it was time to write a novel. Being a “seasoned professional,” I estimated I could develop a book idea and write a first draft in one year. After all, I already knew how to craft great stories. Novels simply used more words to tell those stories, right?
Oh, the naiveté of inexperience. I soon learned that more differentiates novels and screenplays than the number of words.
But let’s start with the similarities. I wasn’t totally wrong; many screenwriting skills do transfer to the process of writing novels…
Category: Screenwriter Tips for Novelists
Screenwriters have all these steps that we go through before we write a script. We’re the exact opposite of pantsers. But all these stages serve a purpose. I’ve blogged about loglines, beat sheets, outlines, and scene boards. Today, I’ll tell you about treatments.
A treatment is a document used mainly by film screenwriters. It’s longer and more detailed than a pitch (1 paragraph) or a synopsis (1 page), but shorter than a detailed scene-by-scene outline (approx 30 pages), yet it tells the entire story from beginning to end. Treatments range anywhere from 5 to 20 pages.
Why write your whole story in this condensed format? I’ll give you 4 reasons…
Category: Writing Craft, Screenwriter Tips for Novelists
Last week I talked about Mapping the Mushy Middle of a story so that your characters don’t get waylaid on some meandering goat path of grass-eating boredom before finally arriving in Act III. Or worse, get stuck in the swamp and never reach The End! It comes down to knowing your destinations in Act II: the Midpoint and the All Is Lost moment. If you don’t know what these are yet, click here.
Now that you know where you’re going, the trick is to get there without losing your readers. But how do you know if a story is on the road or the goat path?
Read the full post on Writeonsisters.com
Category: Story Structure, Writing Craft, Screenwriter Tips for Novelists
Last week I wrote about how to Create Character Change and the importance of making sure your character’s flaw is foiling her in Act II. This led one of my fellow Write On Sisters to comment that the “mushy middle” is a hard section to write. That it is. Robin wrote about it here from a baker’s perspective. Now it’s my turn to put a screenwriter spin on this difficult section of the manuscript.
I used to be completely confounded by Act II. I’d read Syd Field and knew there was something smack dab in the middle called a “Midpoint” where the character is farthest from their goal. But that definition always seemed a little vague. It wasn’t until I read Blake Synder’s SAVE THE CAT books that I gained some clarity about what actually happens in Act II…
Category: Writing Craft, Screenwriter Tips for Novelists
As a screenwriter, I had no choice but to learn a thing or fifty about writing dialogue. Scripts are 50% dialogue. The other half is physical action. That’s it. There are no other ways to express the story in a screenplay – no inner monologues, no poetic descriptions, and no narrated explanations. Only dialogue and action.
But just because novelists have more tools at their disposal doesn’t mean they can slack off in the dialogue department. It still has to be good. I’m not the only person on the planet who can’t stand reading a novel with stilted, unrealistic, on-the-nose dialogue. But those problems are easy to fix…
Click here to read the full post at Writeonsisters.com
Category: Writing Life, Feedback & Critique, Screenwriter Tips for Novelists
It’s been so long since I was in school that I can’t even remember if the professors taught us anything about handling feedback. Perhaps they just marked up our scripts in red and waited to see who would cry/quit and who would persevere/rewrite. Luckily, I was in the latter category. And over the last 15 years, I’ve had lots of opportunities to learn how to deal with script notes, whether it’s from friends, teachers, screenwriters, broadcasters, producers or directors. In TV, it often feels like everyone, even the office dog, critiques your script.
So, without further ado, here’s how to handle feedback…
Category: Writing Craft, Screenwriter Tips for Novelists
If you’ve read my first blog post, you’ll know I’m a screenwriter who took 2013 off from a career penning cartoons to write a novel. Now it’s 2014 and I’m back in the TV biz writing on a super fun animation show. Not that I’m shelving the novel, no way! I’ll still work on it in between the many stages of writing scripts. However, this television gig is reminding me of all the useful (and sometimes nerve-wracking) things screenwriters go through before they get to that final draft, and I’m going to share that info with you in a little blog series called Screenwriter Tips for Novelists. First tip? Pitch before you write!