: Re: Should I be a Novel Writer or a Screenwriter? Should I be a Novel Writer or a Screenwriter? This question is intended for the beginning writer, who is unsure if he should start with writing

@Gonzalez219

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You should be a Novelist.

Novels get optioned as screenplays. Authors can be involved in that; Stephen King was writing for the recent TV series based on his book, Under the Dome.

It isn't easy to get published as a novelist, but almost every novel that sells a reasonable number of copies will be at least read by somebody in Hollywood to see if it would translate to film.

Be a novelist with visualized scenes and concise dialogue.

Screenplays depend very, very heavily on visual scenes, visual action, and concise dialogue; meaning (in writing terms) something less than one line in a novel. Pick your favorite TV show, and keep an ear out for what sounds like a long line in dialogue. Write it out as a line in a novel. It will be pretty dang short, really.

Many novelists (including me) rely on telling the reader what Joe is thinking, or why Maria finally decided to kill Jane, or the history of the ranch and why Michael is so desperate to save it as the last remnant of happier times.

You've seen enough movies to know what is possible, don't write things that you personally would not know how to translate to visual scenes. The most you can get away with is like the beginning of Star Wars with their space scroll, explaining sixty seconds of back story. Which could be a narrator, or an old woman in a rocking chair on the porch beginning a story to a child, or whatever. But you are better off presuming you get zero time for straight exposition.

Write a novel that could be a movie. You won't be allowed to write the screenplay (no produced would allow a writer with zero experience), but you or your agent might negotiate a no authority advisor role of some sort so you can be involved and inform the plot.

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