A Novel Idea: My Leap Into Script Writing
As the writer for the production team at Awfully Good Media, I've had to make a major adjustment to get my screenwriting right.
“You’re a writer, right?” my business partner asked after we launched our new venture, Awfully Good Media. “Then, write us some scripts.”
“Sure thing,” I said.
I had never written a script. How hard could it be? I had, after all, mastered the art of storytelling, specifically à la Hero’s Journey. I have written eight full-length novels and published academic papers, and worked for many years in marketing. Of course I was a natural fit to be the ‘writer’ for the production team at Awfully Good Media. Documentaries, commercials, and other promotional videos would be a breeze to write.
Except they’re not. With all the hubris of Ulysses after the fall of Troy, I bulldozed my way into prideful calamity. Telling a story through a novel is a different endeavor than for the visual arts. In my novels, I’m in control.
The first commercial I wrote, I felt that I had done a stellar job. Once on set, I learned a hard lesson. Scripts fall apart when the cameras start rolling. The team had to accommodate challenge after challenge, and by the time the whole production was shot, we had captured one line from the original script. Just one.
“Welcome to the film industry,” my producer said. “Writers are at the bottom.”
The commercial turned out great. I came up with a punchline on the fly that worked, and we pulled it off. However, I walked away from the experience a bit shaken. It made me question myself.
The first challenge I had to overcome was understanding pacing and timing. In novels, the prose sets the pace. In scripts, it’s set by the dialogue. It might seem like writing a commercial would be easy, but fitting a full message into such a short window requires mental and verbal gymnastics that I, as a novelist, did not enjoy playing at first. Ideas are easy, but boiling them down into three or perhaps four lines of dialogue in a way that conveys everything a brand wants to convey is tough. I’ve gotten the hang of it, though.
Next, I was tasked with scripting our full-length documentary film, Thirteen Crosses. If I thought commercials were hard, documentaries make them look like blowing bubbles in comparison. I thought my academic background would help me, and it did with the research, but writing a script for a project where over half the film is still unknown because the crew is actively shooting interviews presents its challenges.
Writing a story from an outline when you’re not given all the information in between is a tall order. I sat before a blank screen for hours, ruminating over how to complete the project. I tried all my writer’s block tricks. None of them worked.
That’s when it hit me.
Staring at the screen, it came to mind that I was trying to make a novel out of the film. I wanted perfection; I needed control. But films aren’t novels, nor are they projects someone can whip up alone from their imagination. They’re collaborative, messy, and chaotic compared with the methodical and structured processes I have for novel writing. Scripts are also not generally read by the public, so the pressure to create something publish-ready isn’t there. It sparked a question in me: what is the role of a screenwriter?
The role of a novelist is to create a world all to themselves, essentially playing God. But a screenwriter? Much, much less, especially in documentaries. What I realized in working on the documentary script was that I wasn’t so much telling the story as I was giving the production team a sense of direction. Like a conductor waving his baton to guide the orchestra, my role is to give the documentary the structure it needs to tell a compelling story but ultimately stay out of the way of the story that unfolds.
Since beginning this new adventure, I’ve learned to be less attached to my writing when it comes to scripts. I understand now that I am not screenwriting to create the perfect screenplay or to create a world from scratch but to provide a small measure of order in an otherwise chaotic field. I am enjoying this new foray into a different style of writing, but….
Thank goodness I’m still writing novels.
Speaking of novels….