As demanded, I’m going to take some time over the coming weeks to devote a post or three toward screenwriting. I write so often about novel-writing, or about the overall construction of a narrative that for the most part I haven’t really addressed this part of my writing life. And it’s a substantial part: this week is a revisit of the film script to go through a new draft (this would be draft number eight, for the record).

It seemed then that the proper place to begin was a very simple, Why I Love The Unholy Shit Out Of Writing Scripts. I do! I adore it. I don’t suffer the same sense of anxiety when writing a script, anxiety that nibbles at my edges when I’m lost in the belly of a novel.

So.

Why do I love screenwriting?

Let me count the ways.

One: Super-Fast Payoff

I’ll cut to the chase and get to the lazy man’s reason: writing a script is fast. At least, compared to writing a novel. It feels fast, too — like, boom boom boom boom, suddenly you’ve progressed by several scenes, things have changed, shit has happened, the characters are active. Blink and you’re halfway done. You can feel the wind in your hair. You have momentum. A novel can feel sloggy, boggy, a long marathon rather than a fast sprint. Screenplays speak to my inner crack-monkey, patience be damned.

Two: Sniper Bullet Instead Of Machine Gun Spray

Very few novels feel highly-tuned. Many feel sloppy — big, bloated paragraphs; rampant cliches; unnecessary language; dialogue that goes on too long without saying enough. That’s just my feeling, but a lot of novels get out of control with the word count. This can be a feature, sure, but a lot of the time it’s a bug: stories that sprawl out, airing their junk, growing fatter with each reading.

I’ve said it before: the novel feels like a spray of machine gun bullets. Fire a hail of lead, you know that some are going to hit, and some are not. Just chew apart the landscape until you kill the target. (It’s been a while since I’ve read a novel where I felt, “Wow, each word, each sentence, is critical. You cannot remove any language from this and have it stand.” Maybe, maybe Finch, by Jeff VanderMeer. Reading that, I felt like each word was perfectly placed, a critical component to the overall work.)

A script is like a sniper bullet, though, in much the same way that a short story is: you only have one bullet. You must make it count. It teaches you about the importance of language, and specifically, how crucial brevity is to the art of elegant communication. Speaking of elegance…

Three: The Elegance Of Action Plus Dialogue

The simplicity of the screenplay is deeply compelling. It’s like you’ve distilled the nature of a story down to its two most visible and critical elements: action plus dialogue. It is the embodiment of the show, don’t tell admonishment: it is all the more difficult to use the visual form of a screenplay (and despite the words on page it remains a visual form) to rely on telling rather than showing. Novels, though, even some of the best novels are guilty of the “tell.” They explain away so much: the history of this, the look of that, the thoughts of this character, the telegraphed arc, and so on.

A script doesn’t have that luxury. It is distilled down to the two thing that matter most in a story:

Characters do stuff.

Characters talk about stuff.

Action.

Dialogue.

(And it’s for this reason that I declare: if you want to know how to write a novel, first learn how to write a screenplay. A bold statement, and one without any evidence at all! Enjoy! I’m here all week.)

Four: The Art Of Bonsai

Editing is also a lot easier when it comes time to pick apart a script: because it’s already down to its spare elements, because it’s already an exercise in brevity, it’s so much easier (mentally and practically) to take it apart at the seams and add new components or restitch it together in a brand new order. It’s like Bonsai: pruning down, creating art from a minimal form, the freedom of simplicity.

Screenwriting is some crazy Zen shit. The editing even moreso.

Five: A Reduction In Pressure

A novel is all you. That’s a great thing, but it’s also a heavy burden: yes, the novel is also built with the critical help of editors and agents, but at the end of the day what’s on the page is all you. I don’t mean to suggest this as a negative, but only that it puts a lot of pressure on you: that brick of pages in people’s hands reflects on one individual and one individual alone.

You.

A screenplay though, it’s so much more. You’re only a part of it. The director’s going to make it his own. The actors will, too. The way it’s cut will alter it, too. You’ve written a blueprint, a plan, a recipe with action and dialogue, and it’s up to others to cook it up.

The part about this that’s awesome is the lack of pressure: it is oddly freeing to be a part — admittedly, an absolutely necessary part — of the process rather than The Only Known Quantity.

It feels lighter, somehow.

Less straining.

Once more: it feels kinda Zen.

Any Questions?

Man, I kinda feel like that was a boring post. Let’s liven it up with some questions or thoughts from you, the ever-critical peanut gallery. Whazzup? Whatchoo got? Anything you want to know? Any thoughts you want to share about scripting? About that versus novels? C’mon. Jump in the water. It’s warm. Probably because I peed in it. Shut up.