Write the Novel if You Can

I am heartened in my pursuit by the advice of screenwriters.

Have you ever wanted to write a screenplay?

I have definitely wanted to write one. I still want to write one. I want to write a few of them.

In fact, I have written one. It’s not very good. I had written the novel earlier that year, in a genre-bending frenzy, and then, in two short weeks, I wrote the screenplay adapted from my novel, Summer Clubbing, under the pressure of a deadline for an application to a Sundance program my brother, a filmmaker, wanted to enter.

But I wrote it. I rushed home every day after teaching, and I wrote a feature-length script. I used FinalDraft software, which I did not know how to use. So to format my script, I learned how to use FinalDraft, and my self-education demanded my serious commitment and patience. 

Here’s what I wrote in my journal at the time: “It’s been an exhilarating and exhausting and inspiring two weeks of intense writing work. I get energy from this work. I’m not depleted. I don’t even want to rest. I want to start something new.”

When I was done writing, after a dozen drafts, I registered the script with the Writer’s Guild. I had fun going through the whole process.

And apparently the way I did it is the way screenwriters suggest that you do it.

Meaning: write the novel first.

WRITE THE NOVEL!

Write the novel if you can.

That’s what every screenwriter I’ve talked to has said. 

Okay, I’ve only talked to, like, five actual screenwriters, but they all said the same thing.

If you can write prose, write the novel.

They had various reasons for telling me this, but all of them had to do with control.

CONTROL!

Control the work. Control the story. Control the rights. Control the money. Control the sequels. Control your reputation.

And so on.

Creative Control | As a novelist, you have control over every aspect of your story. It’s your baby. Okay, maybe you get pushback from editors, if you’re lucky enough to make it that far, like being asked to add more sex and violence and work on the midpoint, but it’s nothing like what a screenwriter goes through as a matter of course. 

As a screenwriter, you do not have control. You work collaboratively. There are many, many decisions you do not make once the script is out of your hands, and these decisions can totally transform your work until you barely recognize your own contributions, let alone your original story. 

New screenwriters can change your storyline. Actors can change their lines. Directors can change the entire final act, which may mean changing the entire first act. Reactions from test audiences may prompt a recutting of the ending . . . and so on.

Copyright | As a novelist, you own your novel. You own the copyright. You own the derivative rights. 

As a screenwriter, you do not necessarily own your script. Very often in a sale, you sell the whole enchilada. You sell your script, and someone else can make it or, more likely, shelve it indefinitely (unless you have terms in your contract that stipulate your rights revert to you if the script is not produced in, say, three years). 

Sometimes the movie that’s made of your script may credit the other writers who worked on the script after your initial draft. Imagine that happening with a novel! A publisher buys your novel to be rewritten and “punched up” by the equivalent of a script doctor (a “novel doctor”), and their name goes above yours on the book cover. 

A Final Product | As a novelist, you create a finished product that can be delivered, read, reproduced, and enjoyed. This is not the case for screenwriters. 

As a screenwriter, you create a script that can be delivered, but very few people read scripts the way one reads novels. Scripts are blueprints for films, and so a script is an initial step toward a final product. Screenwriters may or may not have anything to do with the subsequent steps in the process of making the film. 

Compare the early drafts of a script with the later drafts, with the shooting script, and with the script made from the final cut of the edited film, and you will see how massive these changes can be. Some screenwriters are lucky to identify a single line of dialogue of theirs that remains in the final cut of the film. Often characters are changed completely based on which actor, director, or producer gets involved in making the film.

You begin to see why screenwriters also become directors and producers. If you want to control your story, you make the movie yourself.

Writing the novel, then, is a bit like seizing control and making the movie yourself. And it’s a lot cheaper . . . and faster.

Okay, so I won’t belabor the point. Others with more insider experience have more to say on this matter. In fact, one person I read on this matter was Terry Rossio. 

Terry Rossio is a screenwriter from Kalamazoo, Michigan, with writing credits for Aladdin, Shrek, Treasure Planet, Deja Vu, and The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

“In today’s world, IP is everything,” he writes in his essay “Time Risk,” posted along with many other great pieces of writing here (wordplayer.com).

If you as a writer want to own the intellectual property (your story), Rossio advises you to write a novel, a novella, a short story, a graphic novel—anything that is developed enough to merit publishing on its own. Once you own the copyright to that work (conferred instantly upon writing that work), you can sell the derivative rights, like movie rights. 

You can write the screenplay after you’ve written your own novel or story (which is my plan). You don’t even have to publish the novel to sell the film rights. If someone buys the rights but doesn’t make the film after a certain time period, you get your rights back, which enables you to sell the rights again.

I was heartened to hear Rossio’s advice. Sometimes when you write in the dark so long, you need someone to reassure you that you’re doing the right thing. Your creative pursuit will pay off. 

I’m writing the novel because I can, first of all, but also because I have control, the story will be mine, I’ll own the rights, and I’ll always have the novel, a finished product anyone can read.

So that’s what I’m doing. 

I’m writing the novel.

And depending on the duration of the strike by the Writers Guild, which involves demands that screenwriters not be relegated to merely editing the scripts generated by AI-ish mash-up algorithms, there may be a whole lot of screenwriters heading home to take their own advice, seize control, and write the novel . . . while they can.

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