TECH: Is there a movie in your writing?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 5 January 2009

The Silver Screen

Writer's Digest, June 2005, pages 29 to 31, have an article by Chris Eboch with the title "the Hollywood touch." The question is whether there are some useful techniques that novelists can borrow from screenwriters. Adaptation doesn't have to always go one way. "Screenwriters know a great deal about efficient storytelling -- keeping a plot moving forward, writing snappy dialogue and making characters unique, for example." So what are some guidelines or techniques that can be borrowed?

1. Open Big. Start with a big opening scene -- visuals, color, movement. Action to grab the reader's attention. Something exciting, different, weird. And it needs to be an event that affects the character. Establishing the protagonist role and goals? Sure. The key here is to make the opening grab the reader -- and then don't let go.

2. Scene by scene. "Set high expectations, then satisfy them. Consider each scene in your novel. How can you make it bigger, more dramatic?" What's the worst thing that could happen? That's what you want in your novel. You also want set pieces -- big scenes that the reader remembers. At the same time, you need a good balanced mixture of action and dialogue.

3. Get to the point. Edit. Focus on making the most of your story points, and get rid of flourishes and lazy writing. "Novelists who focus on action over description are a step closer to making their books page - turners.... Make up for the lack of visuals by appealing to all five senses. Just keep the story moving and use short descriptions to advance the plot, not distract from it."

Big openings, drama in every scene, a mixture of action and dialogue, and ruthless editing.

What about an exercise? Take your work in progress, and consider how each scene would be turned into a movie segment. Where would it be shot from (is the point of view clear?) Does it have clear setting and objects, so that the props department can produce it? Does every scene have some good dialogue and action for the characters? Is their motivation clear, so that they can act? Do the rewriting needed by thinking through your story as a movie.

And who knows, you might get your name up in lights!