What’s the difference between writing a novel and writing a screenplay?
I’ve been pondering that a lot lately, probably because I’ve been deep into both processes!
I’m not going to claim to have all the answers, or even some of them. All I’ve got to offer are my own impressions of the way writing a screenplay seems to be different than writing a book. However, over the last five years or so, I have learned a lot. I’m still very much a novice in the TV/film world, but I’ve started to understand the form and appreciate the differences from publishing. Some of what I’m about to share may sound painfully obvious. Some of it may not make sense out of context. But for me, the screenwriting process didn’t make sense until I was in it. I think that’s true for any field, especially creative ones. You don’t really understand the steps involved until you’ve done them yourself. And who knows? Maybe hearing about my experiences will be helpful to some of you. So let’s dive in!
Writing a Novel
First, a disclaimer: I broke into publishing in 1997, when my adult private eye novel BIG RED TEQUILA was published by Bantam Books. That was . . . let’s see, add the five, carry the two . . . A LONG TIME AGO. Many things have changed about publishing since then. We no longer write on clay tablets! We have newfangled ballpoint pens and word processing computing thingamajigs. If I were starting out today, I would be lost. Some of my advice may be outdated. But I will try to sketch out what I think remains true about being a novelist. Okay? Okay.
The Idea
“Where do you get your ideas?” Writers smirk, or laugh, or groan when they get this question. That’s because we hear it so often it has become a cliche. It’s impossible to answer! It’s also one of those things you either intuitively understand, or you don’t. I got ninety-nine problems when it comes to writing books, but finding ideas isn’t one of them.
Now, I’m not saying getting a good idea for a book is easy. I am saying it is by far the easiest part of the book-writing process.
The second-most common experience writers have, after the “Where do you get your ideas?” question, is when someone comes up to you and says: “I have an idea for a book! Why don’t you write it, and we’ll split the profits!”
Oh, boy. This proposal assumes that writers are desperate for new ideas. We are not. Most of us have more ideas than we will ever be able to use in a lifetime. The proposal also overestimates the importance of having an idea. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: having an idea for a book is about as rare and impressive as having a pencil. The real trick is can you USE that idea and create a novel with it? That is the hard part. That’s why we get the big bucks (or medium, or small, or no bucks). It’s also why I grimace whenever someone is worried that another writer might “steal their ideas.” Ideas cannot be copyrighted. Only the specific way in which they are expressed in any given book can be copyrighted. If fifty writers decide to write books about dinosaurs on Mars, those writers would be silly to sue each other. Every single book would be different, because every writer is different. The book that did the best would be the one that connected with the greatest number of readers. And now I want to read a book about dinosaurs on Mars. Somebody get on that!
Anyway, back to the whole “idea” thing. Sure, you need to start with a great idea. No one can help you with that. It has to come from your imagination, and from being open to finding inspiration. That means having a sense of curiosity about the world, an ability to look at things from a slightly divergent angle, and to constantly ask, “What if?” You have to be able to look at something millions of people have looked at before, but see it in a way that is fresh and unique.
In publishing, you are on your own to find that idea and develop it. Yes, sure, there are some jobs for hire. Some writers are asked to write a book set in the Star Wars universe, for instance, or to novelize a famous TV show. It still bums me out that I was once asked to write a short story based on Doctor Who, but I had to decline because I didn’t have time. Curses! However, most of the writers who are offered gigs like that have already proven themselves by writing their own books first, and even when writing for hire, you have to come up with the ideas within the context you are given. If you are stuck at the “I don’t know what to write about” stage, you should try to read more. Question the world more. Ask “what if?” more. But realize that once you DO have an idea that excites you, there’s a 99% chance many other people have also had that idea. Your journey is only beginning. You will need to find how your version of the story is different, more exciting, and more engaging than anyone else who has written a book like the one you are contemplating. Dinosaurs on Mars, but it’s a romantasy with pterodactyl riders. Now we’re cooking!
The Writing Process
This goes along with what I said about ideas. Even if you think you have a killer idea that is a sure-fire bestseller, don’t expect to take it to a publisher or an agent and immediately be showered in money. Again, the real challenge is can you actually write a book? Agents and publishers need to see you have the skill and talent to do that before they will take you seriously and offer you any kind of deal.
This means that you should not even begin to query agents or publishers until you have completed an entire manuscript and have made it absolutely as good as you can. Many people can talk about ideas. Many people can dabble with beginning a manuscript. Very few can complete a manuscript. That’s the first serious test for any writer.
So again, in the publishing world, you are on your own while you are creating your book. No one will pay you in advance. There are no guarantees that you will ever be published. You can certainly take courses in creative writing, or join a critique group with other aspiring writers to give you feedback, but most of your time will be spent staring a blank page or a blank screen, figuring out what to say next. The only way to learn to write is to put your butt in the chair and write. Believe me, I’ve tried other methods. I’ve found some absolutely first-rate ways to procrastinate — tai chi, dog-walking, washing the dishes — but as far as I can tell, there are no shortcuts to the writing process.
How do you manage to get a manuscript written? First, don’t wait until you have more time. Don’t wait until you’re “not quite as busy” to start your project. That day will never come. Everyone is ALWAYS too busy to write a book. You just have to do it anyway. I wrote seven novels while I was a full-time classroom teacher and the father of two young children. That was long before I found my break-out success with Percy Jackson. I got up extra early in the morning to write, then wrote some more after the kids were asleep. My wife Becky was a huge help because she would take the kids out often on the weekends to do shopping, go to the park, or visit the zoo, giving me more hours to write. She’s the best! Everybody copes with their schedule differently, but everyone needs to find a way that works for them, and it sure helps if you have a supportive partner!
Second tip: Don’t stop to revise until you are done with the first draft. Force yourself to finish the whole draft before you let yourself go back and start revisions. Like most writers, I learned this the hard way. Once you start revising, you will get frustrated. You will get stuck. You will abandon the project and start something else, hoping it will be easier. It won’t be. Most writers, including me, have tons of half-finished stories in our archives. Sometimes if I really want to punish myself I go back and read them. Then I whack myself on the nose repeatedly and say, “BAD Rick. BAD Rick.”
Just finish the manuscript! I know you’ll think your first draft is terrible. That’s okay. Let it be terrible. Just finish the thing. Then and only then, go back and revise.
Revision: 99% of writing is rewriting. First drafts are always bad. That’s okay. Most of your time will be spent polishing, overhauling, reworking, rethinking, overthinking, rehauling, overworking, and perhaps a little bit of crying. Here again, you will be pretty much alone in this process. You need to get the manuscript in excellent shape before you submit it. You may think, as I used to, “But revising the manuscript is what the editor is for.” No. BAD Rick! The editor can and should only be used to make an already excellent manuscript even better. They should be taking you to the next level. If you give a great editor an A- manuscript, they may be able to help you make it an A+. If you give an editor a C+ manuscript, there’s only such much they can or will do to help you, if they accept your project at all, which is doubtful. Tips: Read your work aloud. That will help you spot problems. Let people you trust read your stuff when you think it’s shareable. Believe in yourself, but also be open to reasonable criticism, especially if you get the same feedback from more than one source. If you hear from three readers in a row that the smoking hot pterodactyl rider you created might be more appealing if he didn’t talk like Mickey Mouse and have the name Eustace McGillicuddy, maybe you should pay attention.
If you finish writing a manuscript, congratulations! You have passed the first big test on the road to becoming an author. That doesn’t mean it will be published. HA HA HA HA. You didn’t think the hard work was over, did you? Many people have to write three, four, five or twenty manuscripts before they write the one that sells. Sometimes you need that long to build up your writing skills. Persistence is critical. Is writing starting to sound really, really hard? That’s because it is, but if you finish a manuscript, hey, you are already way ahead of most aspiring writers. Treat yourself to an Oreo cookie! Heck, go on and have two.
Are there exceptions to the process I described above? Oh, sure. Once you have already GOTTEN published and proven you can write a book, it is possible to get subsequent writing deals just by pitching an idea or writing an outline. But you have to have proven your chops. It’s also possible to get a publishing deal without already having written the book if you are famous and successful in some other field. Are you a well-known professional athlete, artist, actor, influencer, politician or other household name celebrity? Then yeah, sure. You can probably get a book deal, and the publisher will hook you up with a helper/writer to guide you in crafting the book. But if you don’t fall into that category, I’m afraid you’re stuck at stage one with the rest of us. You have to write the book first!
Getting Published
So you’ve got a manuscript. Hooray! Now, you are ready to launch yourself into the next circle of Hell . . . er, I mean, the next big set of exciting challenges. How do you get the thing published?
This is the part of the process that has changed the most since I first got published in 1997. Generally speaking, however, you will want to try to get yourself a literary agent if you can. Agents provide a crucial screening function for publishing houses. They pour over the umpteen bajillion manuscripts that are submitted each year, find the ones they love (which are very, very few indeed) then vouch for them by sending them to the different publishing houses with a fantastic cover letter like: I PROMISE I AM NOT WASTING YOUR TIME. THIS HERE WRITER CAN WRITE STUFF REAL GOOD! CALL ME! Almost all major publishers these days will not even look at unsolicited or un-agented manuscripts. They just don’t have the staff or the time to deal with so many submissions.
To put this in perspective: according to a New York Times survey, 81% of Americans think they have a book in them and should write it. According to the National Literacy Institute, one fifth of American adults are functionally illiterate, and 46% of Americans read NO books in the last year. This means there are literally more people in the US who want to write a book than there are people who will read books in any given year. That’s what you call a supply and demand problem. It’s also one of many reasons the odds of getting published are so bad.
Oh, and I shouldn’t have to say this, but it’s also why some people think they can game the system by using AI to write a book. Just . . . no. Please, no. If you can’t be bothered to write the book, why should anyone be bothered to read it? There aren’t that many readers out there, and to be successful, you need to figure out how to reach them with a wonderful, deeply human book that resonates with them. And if you can throw in a smoking hot Martian pterodactyl rider, all the better!
You can find agents in many ways. Look at the acknowledgments in books that you love. (You do read a lot, right? That’s kind of a prerequisite for becoming a writer.) Authors will usually thank their agents. This can give you a good idea of which agents are accepting the kind of book you have written. You can also check on line or in the public library. There are many directories of agencies available. None of these ways should cost you any money. If any agent or publisher asks you for money to consider your book, run. Or if you prefer, you can laugh in their faces and then run. You have options.
Assuming you get an agent — another huge challenge — the agent will start submitting your book to publishers. The odds are bad, but let’s assume a publisher loves it and wants to publish it. Hooray again! Now, finally, you are no longer alone in the writing process. You have an agent who will help you negotiate a publishing deal (hopefully). You have an editor who will help you make the manuscript even better (hopefully) and will advocate for you with the publishing house to help the book get as much attention and support as they can (hopefully).
How much can you expect to make? Generally speaking, at least enough to buy a new box of Oreos! But seriously, for a first book? Probably not a lot. You will get an “advance” up front, representing your share of the amount of money the publisher thinks the book might make. The publisher will be conservative. They will be cautious. 9 out of 10 published books never make a profit. The advance will also be paid out in installments — part when you sign the contract, part when the edited manuscript is accepted by the editor, part when the book is actually published. Often, the payments may be broken out into even more steps than that. But still, hey, it’s money that you got for writing. Congratulations!
Each time a book is sold, you get a percentage of the sale price, a royalty, which is normally 10-15%. So if you sell one copy of a hardcover novel for $25, your cut is $3.75. As you can guess, you’d have to sell a whole lot of books to get rich. Who gets the rest of the money? It’s split between the publisher and the bookseller, because they figure they put up the resources to get the book into the hands of readers, and fronted most of the costs, so they get most of the money. Oh, and your $3.75 per book royalty? Typical your agent will take a 15% cut of that, and you will be paying taxes on it, AND you will not see any royalty money at all until you’ve sold enough copies to “earn through” your advance — you remember, that lump sum payment you got for Oreos when you signed the contract. Just as most manuscripts never get published, and most published books never turn a profit, most published books also never earn through their advances. Wow, I’m throwing a lot of “nevers” at you. Are we having fun yet?
Then you’ve got all the problems that go along with being a published author. It will seem to you that the publisher is not doing enough to promote your book. You may be right. Publishers are overwhelmed! It will be hard to get anyone’s attention. It will be hard to get your book into bookstores. No one will show up to your book signings. The fun just never stops. You will find no shortage of wailing and gnashing of teeth if you follow authors on any social media platform. Come join us in our misery! But let’s set aside the post-publication blues for now. If you’ve made it to this stage, you are a published author. You have beat incredibly long odds to get this far. You should pat yourself on the back, assuming your arms are not too stiff from being hunched over the keyboard so long.
Are there ways around the system I describe above? Sure. You can self-publish, which does not have nearly the same stigma it did twenty years ago when I started. Many authors do this through Amazon, for instance. The upside: If you do it yourself, you get a much larger portion of the royalties. The downside: you are doing it all yourself, from editing to cover design to marketing to distribution, and you will find it hard (I should say even harder) to get noticed in the vast sea of books that people publish every year that no one ever reads. You could also publish through a small press, as opposed to one of the big conglomerates. That’s a perfectly fine option, though small presses don’t pay nearly as much and don’t have large print runs, typically, so again it will be difficult to get your book noticed. I should note also that publishing online, like fan fiction or personal zines, can also lead to a traditional publishing contract if you manage to gain a huge following and do really well, but writing is writing, and whichever path you pick, it will mean a ton of work and long odds to get noticed. Good pep talk, right?
The Pros and Cons of the Novel Format
Novels have some drawbacks as a form of creative expression. The most obvious is what I said before: Not many people read, so your audience will be smaller than the audience of even a modest TV show or independent movie.
There are also fewer and fewer ways to connect with readers and get visibility for your books. Most traditional newspapers no longer have dedicated book review sections, and of course, most people no longer read traditional newspapers! Media programs are rarely interested in promoting books with interviews or features, unless the author is a superstar or the book has a special and wide appeal for the viewers they want to reach. Bookstores only have so much shelf space, so it is tough to get them to take a chance on displaying your books. Social media is a great tool, especially TikTok these days, and has been known to help authors’ book careers, but the market is absolutely flooded with books, so it is very difficult to rise above the crowd.
So what’s a struggling aspiring novelist to do? As with most creative fields, you should only write novels if you have a deep, burning desire to do so – because it satisfies you in some basic, instinctive way. If you’re doing it for any other reason, like to get rich and famous, you will almost certainly fail. Write novels because you would want to do it even if you never get rich and famous. Although if you can get rich and famous by writing, go do it! I love that for you!
Pros of the novel as a creative form: You have almost complete control over what you create with words. You are the master of your own story. The editor might ask you for changes about certain details, or publishers may turn your story down entirely if they don’t like the style or the content, but generally speaking, only YOU decide what you write. It is a solitary sport most of the time, like running, weight-lifting, pole vaulting, or all those other solitary sports I’ve never tried and have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s just you against the obstacles, striving to get better, faster, stronger, more effective. You can make a novel just about any length. You can make it as wild and incredible as you wish. Your reader’s imagination does the rest of the work. The reader creates images and feelings and voices in their heads based on the words you give them, which makes reading a unique form of storytelling, a magical sort of mutual creation between you and your reader like a Vulcan mind-meld except they pay you money. That makes books powerful. They can affect minds, and are more active than more visual forms of entertainment, in my opinion, because they depend on the reader as much as they depend on the writer. A good book can be life-changing.
But writing a book is hard. You may have picked up on this from my subtle clues above. I don’t say any of this to depress you, but it’s best to know what you’re up against if you are considering this path.
Writing a Screenplay
Perhaps now you are thinking: “Wow, that sucks! I’ll write a screenplay instead! They are much shorter than books, anyway, and TV/film work gets a bigger audience and pays a lot better, right?”
Well, yes and no and maybe. If you want to be a screenwriter, I wish you all the luck in the world, because just like with publishing a book, it isn’t easy! This is a world I don’t know as well as publishing, so take my comments with a grain of salt, okay? But I can give you my impressions from being in the TV industry this last five years, as a dues-paying member of the Writers Guild of America, which represents screenwriters in the U.S. It’s true! I’ve got a little plastic card in my wallet and everything!
Now I need to make clear that my impressions below are general and hypothetical, meant to give you an idea how things might work on any given project. I am not talking about our Percy Jackson show, or about any other specific project.
The Idea
In publishing, I’d venture to say almost all novels are written “on spec,” meaning the author comes up with the idea, then develops it on their own time with no pay until the book is sold. It sucks.
In screenwriting, I’d guess that most writers dream of doing their own projects, too – coming up with an original idea, writing it and selling it, achieving fame and fortune. But the vast majority of screenwriting work revolves around writing for other people’s projects. You are working for hire — kind of like a mercenary, except usually less dangerous.
If you want to write an original script, you can certainly do so, but just as with publishing, it’s doubtful anyone will pay you to do that in advance. First, you will have to prove you can produce a great product. And then the hard work begins: How do you get anyone to read it? How do you learn to be a screenwriter? How do you start?
As I said above: publishing, at least the way I’ve experienced it, is a solitary practice most of the time. I didn’t even meet my first editor or my literary agent in person until after my first book had been published. I didn’t know anyone in the publishing field. I had no connections. Screenwriting, in contrast, is very much a team sport. Connections are EVERYTHING.
Most people who want to work in any aspect of the film industry need to “pay their dues” by starting at the bottom of ladder and working their way up. If you don’t know somebody who knows somebody, or you don’t have the good fortune to be born “nepo,” you take any job you can get just to be in proximity to people who are in the business. If you’re lucky enough to get into a college screenwriting program, that can be where you first make your connections. Emerson College here in Boston has a well-known undergraduate screenwriting program, for instance, and its graduates often help each other after graduating to get started in the business. They call themselves the Emerson Mafia. I am not kidding. They will write you a script you can’t refuse.
If you’re not so lucky as to belong to such a completely legal and not-at-all shady organization, you may be able to land work as an assistant to a producer. This is hardly glamorous, nor does it pay well, but it’s a start. You’ll be taking orders for coffee and lunch. You’ll be making copies of documents, responding to emails, maybe driving people around or picking up the producer’s groceries or laundry. (I am not kidding.) Basically, whatever they need to make their schedule a little easier. If you do well, hopefully you will eventually be invited to take notes in the writers’ room for whatever project is underway, and you may get to the point where you can offer your own thoughts in the room. Again, hardly glamorous, but with persistence and luck, you may be able to get more and more responsibilities until either 1) you convince someone to look at a script you wrote on spec, and/or 2) you are given the chance to write part of a script for another project. Then you will begin being paid according to the union’s guidelines, as agreed upon with producers and studios, even though you are not yet a union member. Once you accumulate enough “units” of writing work for film/TV, you are allowed and expected to join the Writers Guild of America, at which point you are officially a screenwriter. Congratulations! And by the way, could you still run down to Starbucks and get me a Frappuccino?
Long way of saying: the “ideas” of screenwriting are often ideas you pitch about someone else’s project. How can we improve this? How can we make the characters more interesting? If you do a good job, you might get hired as a writer for a writers’ room. This doesn’t necessarily mean you are writing the scripts. It might mean you are there to help brainstorm and structure scenes, to talk through problems, to offer advice and perspective to the team of writers. You may be getting paid as a writer without actually writing a single word. You could be doing this for six weeks or longer, and the team could be anywhere from a handful of writers to a whole conference room full.
As a screenwriter, especially in TV, a lot of your time will be spent in writers’ rooms. You may do more than one writers’ room at a time, but the work is quite time consuming. Some of this work can be done remotely, but in person is vastly preferred, probably because you cannot pick up lunch for everybody if you are on Zoom. Lots of cooperation, lots of discussion, lots of face time. This is how you create scripts, but it’s also how you build relationships that are critical to your career. That means you pretty much NEED to live in a place where the film industry is active, especially Los Angeles and New York. It’s no accident the Writers Guild of America has two divisions, east and west, based in those cities.
Hopefully, eventually, you will get enough experience and enough connections to pitch your own ideas in the form of an original script and you maybe actually see it get made for the screen, but almost always, a film or TV show is the product of many creative minds working together, not a solo creation. One interesting thing to note: If you are in a writers’ room adapting a book or other source material into a screenplay, you want to add value, right? Naturally enough, you want to be able to point to something and say, “See, that line right there? I wrote that!” or “That idea was mine!” This means there is a built-in incentive to change the source material. Nobody is going to be impressed if you say, “Let’s just do exactly what it says on the page.” Doing exactly what it says on the page usually wouldn’t work anyway, for a variety of reasons, but if you’re wondering why adaptations always deviate to some degree from the source material, that’s part of the explanation.
The Writing Process
The process of writing a screenplay will vary depending on a lot of factors. If you are writing your own screenplay based on an original idea, you should get familiar with Final Draft, which is the industry-standard writing application. There are lots of tutorials on line, and you can find scripts for many famous and beloved TV shows and films on line as well to study as models.
But most likely, either before you write an entire script or while you are working on your own passion project, you will be working on other people’s projects, starting with writers’ rooms, as described above. You will learn how to break a plot into acts, scenes and “beats” – the moments that make up the story. You will learn how to best convey emotion through actions and dialogue. You’ll spend a lot of time writing beats on colored index cards and arranging them, then rearranging them, on a white board. You’ll get good at “pitching” an outline or an episode, explaining it aloud to your fellow writers, or producers, or studio executives.
The industry is governed by strict and complicated union rules. They have to be complicated, because they have to cover so many possible scenarios, and protect union members from being exploited. They can be difficult to make sense of at first, however — another reason it’s really important to make connections and rise up through the ranks with a lot of (hopefully) good mentors.
The industry is also very aware of hierarchy. For instance, when producers get lists of writers to consider for a project, each name will be listed with a general idea of that person’s level of experience. Are they a beginning writer, an intermediate writer, a veteran, or even a showrunner? Each level depends on the amount of work they have done in the past and what sort of price they are able to command in the marketplace.
Hollywood is like high school. There are popularity rankings. There are cliques. There is a lot of gossip about who is in and who is out, who works well with others and who to avoid. To be fair, most human industries are like that, I guess. I mention it only because it is very different than being a solitary novelist, and it underscores the importance of making connections and being a good team player. Your reputation will get around very quickly.
Also, unlike in publishing, where a wildly successful person in another field may find it pretty easy to get a book deal, being successful in another field counts for nothing at all in screenwriting. Even after selling millions of books and achieving more success than I ever dreamed of as a novelist, I was still a rank beginner in Hollywood. I’m not complaining. That’s as it should be. I needed to learn the ropes. I needed to get used to an entirely different creative system. But as a novelist, I could not join the Writers Guild of America, even though “writer” is right there in the name, until I had accumulated the correct number of screenwriting units, just like everyone else. Getting into the WGA is a big deal in the industry. It’s not easy, and it’s a Catch-22 type of situation. You need work to get into the union. But you need to be in the union to get the best chance at getting work.
Be respectful. Be aware of the hierarchy. Be willing to start at the bottom. Folks in Hollywood all worked hard to get where they are, and/or had a huge number of connections, and they guard their territory jealousy. They don’t like interlopers. There’s an old story about Frank Sinatra, one of the biggest superstars of his time in music, and how he ruffled a lot of feathers when he started making films. The industry didn’t care that he was famous as a singer. In film, he was nobody, and they didn’t appreciate that he expected VIP treatment from the very beginning. His career almost didn’t survive the encounter. So again, if you’re wondering why authors don’t have more control of their movie / TV adaptations, that’s another reason. There is a huge cultural/professional divide between publishing and film-making. Hollywood doesn’t care if you’re a bestseller novelist (Well, they don’t care much, anyway.) That doesn’t mean you know the first thing about making a screenplay or a film or a show. Also, publishing numbers look like chicken feed compared to Hollywood numbers. Because so many more people watch films and TV than read books, viewer numbers are exponentially higher than book sale numbers. Huge amounts of money are on the line to make a product for the screen, so why should they listen to you, the novelist, when it’s their money and careers on the line, and you don’t know the industry? Fair enough. Hollywood has a point. I never even brought any of them a Frappuccino from Starbucks.
Moving along . . . after working in writers’ rooms, and rising to the rank of intermediate or senior writer, you may be assigned to write a script by the head of the room. Hooray! This means you get a screen credit. When that episode of TV gets made (assuming it gets made) it will have your name as the writer. This affects how much you get paid for your efforts, and also means you will get residuals (like royalties) whenever that episode is aired. If you initiated the script, wrote the first draft – you get that credit. It doesn’t matter how many other writers come along afterwards to revise or polish the script. And it’s quite common for multiple writers to tackle a project. Your name will still be on the script as the principal writer, because you started it. This can lead to some very strange circumstances. I could point to any number of movie scripts that say BY JOE SO-AND-SO, but which were revised so many times that not a single word in the final script was actually written by Joe So-and-So. Still, Joe gets the credit. And anytime somebody asks him why he wrote the script this way or that way, Joe has to do the interview and pretend he knows what he’s talking about, not blame the writers who came after him or god forbid the director, because remember, his career is based on keeping good relationships.
I mention this because as a screenwriter, you have to be willing to let go of anything you write. The script is NEVER a final product. It will be changed and revised countless times by many different writers right up to the moment the cameras are rolling, sometimes even afterwards. A script is only a means to an end – the film, or the show. This is another big reason why adaptations so often veer from the source material. If the written word is only a vehicle towards the goal of a film or TV show, why should the written word be treated like sacred scripture not to be changed? In Hollywood, that approach just doesn’t make any sense.
Whether you are writing an original script or writing a script for a project initiated by someone else, you will always be working as part of a team. You will need to get good at pitching your ideas. If you’re writing for a project, you’ll need to be able to sell your “take” on a story – basically giving a quick, fun, concise oral presentation about what you want to do. You’ll need to be open to “notes” from the producers and executives, and willing to revise your work as necessary, probably multiple times.
The “writing” part of writing – by which I mean going off to your local library or Panera or wherever and staring at a screen, typing in the words – is only a small fraction of your workload, though of course it is important. Being a screenwriter is just as much about taking meetings – endless meetings – to pitch ideas, audition for jobs, take notes, meet new potential colleagues, etc., etc. I remember our first season writers’ room for Percy Jackson, which was a great experience with great people, but it took me a long time to understand what was going on. We were just talking. Sometimes for hours. It felt like a literature discussion class. I kept thinking, “When does the actual writing start?” But that’s the work of a writers’ room – throwing ideas around, investigating new angles on the story, brainstorming for ways to adapt the material. The actual writing of the scripts only happens much later, after everyone has agreed on the structure that makes the most sense, and an individual writer is sent off to “go to script.”
Another huge difference between publishing and screenwriting: In publishing, you only make money if you sell a book, right? Bummer. In screenwriting, you can hypothetically make a pretty good living writing whether or not anything you work on EVER gets made and seen on the screen. Obviously, it’s preferable if your projects get made, because that gives you more credibility and a higher profile, which means you can command a higher price. It also means you get residuals for any writer’s credit. It also means you can point at the screen when the credits are rolling and yell really loudly: “SEE, THAT’S ME!” But it’s not at all uncommon for writers to work on multiple projects in any given year, get paid at least minimum union scale, and never have any of those projects ever see the light of day.
That’s a good thing for the writers! Thankfully, the union is making sure you get a fair wage and are paid for what you do every step of the way. You get one price for a first draft script. If you are asked to rewrite it, you get paid again. If the studio wants yet more revisions, but maybe smaller revisions, you get paid for a “polish.” If this system wasn’t in place, it would be very easy for a studio or producer to exploit and overwork a writer, claiming the need for endless revisions at no additional pay. From a production point of view, however, it does mean that making any progress with a script can be expensive and slow, and is carefully governed by the rules. If you’re a producer, you can’t just jump into someone’s script and make changes, even if it’s for a project you are in charge of. Only a writer can do that — one who has the contract to do so. If one writer does a script, but the script isn’t working, you can hire a new writer to do a new version. Some scripts are redone over a dozen times by different writers. Each one gets paid, whether or not the film/show is ever made. The production company or studio keeps a tab of all these production costs. They can add up to millions of dollars very quickly. You may have heard the expression “development hell”? A big part of that is the script writing. Some projects become so expensive, so far in debt, that it is cheaper for the studio to cancel the whole thing and take a tax write-off rather than make the project, because the odds of it ever turning a profit become so slim. If another studio comes along and decides to take a risk on the project, they are expected to cover all the development costs incurred by the original studio.
Massive amounts of money are spent in the industry developing projects that never get made. As a screenwriter, you take the work you can get. Hopefully, you will get enough projects to make a living. Hopefully, some of those projects will even get made. But you will only be one creative contributor to a project that is the work of hundreds of people.
The Pros and Cons of Screenwriting
I remember years ago I talked to a screenwriter who had decided to write novels. My question was why? Screenwriting pays much better, generally speaking. Your projects, if they get made, are seen by so many more people. If you’re established in that field, why would you want to be a novelist and likely reach so many fewer people?
The screenwriter’s answer was simple: A novel was his. His idea. His name on the cover. You can own credit for a novel in a way that you simply can’t with a TV show or a film. So that’s one drawback to screenwriting. Nothing will ever be yours alone, unless you rise to the stratosphere of Hollywood and become one of those rare power players who can write, produce, and direct your own film. As a screenwriter, you can contribute to some amazing projects, but they will always be a team effort, and your contribution may or may not be recognized. Your words may or may not be used, even if you have the writing credit!
Another big challenge in screenwriting is how hard it is to get into the business, and how hard it is to find work. Competition is fierce. Jobs, especially right now, are very hard to find. There are no guarantees. Hopefully your agent will be able to keep your name out there and help find you jobs. And yes, you will absolutely need an agent and/or manager. You could labor for years at the lower levels of the professional ladder and never progress.
Also, everything you write must always keep budget in mind. As a novelist, I can write “twenty fire-breathing dragons descended on the army!” No problem. My job is done. If I wrote that same line into a script, there would be questions. Does it have to be twenty dragons? Can it be one? Can all the dragons look the same, or do they have to be different? How big is the army? How much fire are we talking about? Because bringing those words to life visually – that one little sentence – could easily cost tens of millions of dollars.
On the bright side, if you DO get screenwriting jobs, you’ll get paid reasonably well for each project, and you get paid regardless of the whether the projects are ever made for screen. The WGA makes sure of that. Get enough jobs to maintain full union membership, and you get health benefits and a retirement plan. HUGE. Novelists have no safety net even remotely like this. And if you are a people person, screenwriting can be a much more collegial experience, not as solitary as being a novelist. You can make great connections, great friends, great memories.
Bottom line: Screenwriting and novel writing do have similarities. They both involve learning how to do effective dialogue, crafting a compelling plot, creating memorable sympathetic characters. But in terms of work experience and creative methods, they are about as far apart as two professions can be that both have the word “writing” in the description.
Now imagine the level of experience and range of skill you would have to have to move easily back and forth between those worlds – publishing and film-making. You would basically need to be completely fluent in two different languages, and culturally sensitive to two different cultures. That’s another reason why book adaptations are so tricky. Book people in general don’t understand Hollywood. Hollywood people in general don’t understand publishing. They are alike enough, and different enough, to cause endless misunderstandings and bad feelings.
I can’t claim to be doubly fluent, but I am trying to learn! I hope this write up gives you some idea of what I’ve discovered about the process so far. It has certainly taught me a great deal about storytelling, and given me a newfound respect for people who write for the screen. My big takeaway is this: Be open to learning. Don’t assume you know everything (or anything). But also, don’t assume the “other side” knows or understands where you are coming from and what your concerns are. It’s a pretty big chasm to cross, going from publishing to film-making or vice versa, but it is well worth the effort! And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a strange desire for Oreos and a Frappuccino.
