1/2: One of the scripts I got over the weekend is astonishingly bad. The story is average, nothing really wrong with it. The formatting is passable, only just, though more than a few mistakes and typos. All of the problem is in the usual places, and those are:
1. Dialogue. It's just dreadful. I reads like what people think other people sound like but don't sound like at all, really cringe. It's not even dialogue, really. It's sophomoric jokes someone thinks are funny AF and exposition. Oy vey.
2/2:
2. Structure. This problem is a byproduct of terrible dialogue. If your dialogue doesn't tell a story well, you can't tell the story well. You especially can't tell it efficiently or engagingly if's stumbles, stutters, drags, skips, and is generally uneven.
3. Characters. Caricatures aren't characters, and they're especially not main characters. Gimmicks aren't characters. Catchphrases aren't characters. Interesting characters are characters.
@MariaAragon64: Overall, any related fiction writing experience is a boon, especially playwrighting. All of the stories are structured basically the same, but each has a form, for lack of a better term, to tell a story, i.e., screenplays are "show, don't tell" and there aren't internal monologues and Stephen King level descriptions of minutiae in screenplays. The audiovisual medium is a far cry from the text-to--imagination medium.
@thedisasterautist
Yep. You have to learn to rethink your approach and strip it down past Hemingway levels, which is why I gave up trying to figure out how to write scripts.
@thedisasterautist Scripts and screenplays are apparently as strange and mysterious to me as novels are to my scriptwriting friends.
@ianthealy: In one very large, very key way they are entirely different animals, and that is format. Yeah, it's just word, but it's also an entirely different style with several different dissimilar elements. I have trouble writing prose fiction and have for many years. I'ven't written legit prose fiction longer than maybe a (fairly) short story since I was 21, which was a long time ago.
@thedisasterautist I tried to turn one of my books into a screenplay and gave up pretty quickly. I have none of the correct vocabulary to translate prose into scripts because, like, you have to leave SO MUCH OUT.
@ianthealy: ๐ฏ
I once had a novelist duo give me permission to give a girl at adapting to screenplay one of their novels. They said they had tried, and that studios had attempted to do so. Their novels are so rich and complex that there was no way thatโs green playlist coming in at any less than 250 pages, which is a colossal no-no. As an avid fan of their work, for many, many years, I could not bring myself to add the story to make it fit. It was truly beyond me.
@thedisasterautist I'd give permission for you to try one of mine if you ever wanted. Some of my stuff is pretty cinematic. My superhero stuff is definitely too long-form, but I have some standalone projects that are probably filmable.
@ianthealy: Where's your stuff available? Amazon? alibris? B&N?
I'd dig seeing your stuff.
@ianthealy: Which Just Cause book do I start with? I don't see it on Amazon?
@thedisasterautist Here's the full series. The first book is Just Cause. It's free. The link is Amazon but you can get them pretty much through any online source (Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, B&N if you're a masochist, etc.). https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07QFYQ9P1 /nosanitize
@thedisasterautist Also, there is series order, miniseries order, chronological order. Pretty much whatever. Each book is by design a complete standalone tale so you don't have to read in any order if you don't want to.
@thedisasterautist @Jezibaba started with Search and Rescue. @kenc313 started with Flint and Steel. @Lena_Tasi started with Arena.
@ianthealy @thedisasterautist @kenc313 @Lena_Tasi
๐ค Search and Rescue. I have the others in my queue.
@ianthealy @thedisasterautist @Jezibaba @kenc313 And I loved it! Wait, did I start there? I think I started with Blood on the Ice. (Unless we're talking about my intro to the universe.)
@Lena_Tasi @thedisasterautist @Jezibaba @kenc313 Blood on the Ice had its moments, but I hadn't really found myself as a writer yet. There's some cringiness in it. Although, hockey and Vampires is still a great combo, RIGHT, CANADIAN #COSONAUTS??
@thedisasterautist
Quick question: does having experience working in other literary fields: plays and novels, provide some advantage for screenwriters in terms of being able to structure and create characters?