Now, unlike mistakes caused by carelessness (editing) or
inexperience (the original book cover), this mistake was the result of being
too experienced in a different genre---screenwriting.
In screenwriting, a writer has about 120 pages, or 120
minutes to tell their story. This means
that everything has to be distilled to its essence, and screenwriters strive to
capture only the most emotionally impactful moments in any scene. While novels also follow certain structures, they have an
unlimited number of pages in which to do it.
Films, on the other hand, have the most unrelenting editor
of all: time. Few people will sit through a movie longer
than two hours, and even fewer studios will consider reading anything longer
than 140 pages. Perhaps in no other
medium is the approach so formulaic: an
inciting incident within the first ten pages, a set back by page thrty, a
turning point on page sixty, the final set back on page ninety, and final
resolution by page 120.
In order to tell a complete story in this amount of time,
screenwriters have to train themselves to think in terms of action rather than
thoughts, impressions, or feelings.
Backstory is still important, but instead of ten or twenty pages showing
a main character thinking, describing and remembering their troubled
relationship with their mother, a script would summarize the conflict in a
sentence or two or dialogue or description, and preferrably one that isn't even
telling you about their relationship.
For example, "Camera PANS
across her apartment, filled with lovingly framed pictures. There isn't a single one of anyone related to
her." Done. Twenty years of dysfunction in two sentences, without even a mention of the word mother. This works in a script, but in a novel it would seem rushed, to say the least.
There is even a phrase for when in the story a screenplay
should begin: in medea res, which means
"into the middle of things".
Think of a Bond film. The very
first scene shows the hero in a car chase, escaping an underwater dungeon or
free falling into the Hoover Dam. Transport that same scene in novel form and a reader would flip to the Table of Contents, wondering if some pages had been truncated.
Then there are the endings, which are even more terse. Once the golden elixir is found, the city is saved, the boy gets girl back---there's no point in lingering, and we immediately FADE TO BLACK.
Most of my writing experience is in writing for the
screen---whether television or movies. I
knew novel writing was different; in fact, when I used to read screenplays for
a production company, we could always spot the novelists because of the sheer
amount of…words on their screenplay. Some screenwriting gurus even recommend that any block of text in
a screenplay longer than five lines be edited.
This seems absurd until you start reading scripts from films that were
actually produced and realize that this is not only true for the most part, but it's one of the reasons the film succeeds.
Which leads me to the feedback I get the most: that the story started too quickly and ended
too abruptly. I realize that this is true,
and I'm writing about it now not as a way to make excuses, but as a way to
remind myself that there is so much more to learn.
Although now that it's been pointed out to me, I do wish I
could re-write my book and flesh out the ending a little more…
Writing is an art. Sublime writing IS art. The most important thing will always be a
great story creatively told. My mistake (which I will correct with my next
novel!) is in not respecting writing as a discipline---and experience in one
genre doesn't necessarily carry over into another.
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