: Re: Why write a book when there's a movie in my head? Around a decade ago, I had a dream. An actual middle of the night dream. An entire movie played in my head, all I had to do was write

@Tiffany377

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In another forum I've actually recommended to writers that they write the novel and the screenplay in parallel, even if you only intend to publish the novel. Writing the screen adaptation for a novel can expose weaknesses in the novel.

For instance, writers are constantly told "show, don't tell", because in the novel format it is depressingly easy (and common) to violate this admonition, and the failure to follow it generally results in weak prose. If you have told something to the readers instead of having shown it to them, when you write the screen play you will find it very difficult to depict the events in dialog and action. In such a case, you have to choose some other dialog and action that will advance the story (ie., raise the conflicts or develop the characters) in the way that you had intended in the same section of the novel. You can then turn that into prose and put it in place of the weak section of the novel.

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