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Content Corner: What can novelists learn from scriptwriters?
There’s a lot that novelists can learn from scriptwriters – especially when it comes to realistic dialogue, and ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’.
So, what things have you learned from TV, film and other scripts? And if you’re a scriptwriter yourself, what are your top tips for novelists? Share your thoughts below!
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6 Replies
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I’d love to hear from some scriptwriters. I’d like to have a go myself some time, since my style tends to be light on description and heavy on dialogue.
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I had a crack some years ago at sitcom scripts. The first drafts were totally over-written at first. Two sentences is more than enough. Watch any American sitcom like Friends or The Big Bang to hear how sparse and pithy the exchanges are.
Even more so than in fiction you have to ensure that each character has a unique voice. As for the ‘showing’ you also have to leave a lot of that to the director. Next time you watch a film just watch for the long dialogue pauses when the camera is panning a scene and think ‘how did they write this?’
As a great example of dialogue pared to the bone, take a look at ‘The Graduate’. Once you get beyond the opening few minutes virtually every scene is true ‘dialogue’ i.e. a conversation between just two characters, no matter how many others may be in the shot.
You can find it here.
http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/g/graduate-script-transcript-mike-nichols.htmlContrast and compare that with one of my other favourite movies ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ where there are long minutes of silence.
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I’m confused. Why do people think that TV/film scripts are about dialogue?
As Iain points out, some brilliant film include extended periods of silence. They are scenic. Indeed, one of the most compelling and (in my opinion) rewatchable films contains zero dialogue. (The entire script is two lines of epistolic introduction and half a dozen expletives. Brownie points to anyone who can name it.)
Film – whether cinematic or TV – allows the scenic. As Iain says, there is a lot of showing left to the director.
The camera pans over a mountain range, harsh rock and snow, an ibex stepping gingerly across the trecherous terrain. Yes, we can write it. We can “show” it in prose. But, to capture the extent of the majesty, to convey the detail, we need so much more than that. Did you see the layers upon layers of ridges, the sparse trees clinging to life in the extreme conditions, the stream that trickles deep under permanent snow to join with others, eventually to roar down the face of a cliff? In film, all of that, the “showing,” can be captured in a second or three. Ten million points of light, two dozen times per second. A moving image.
The brain can process all of that. It can build a model for itself. Add music and you have tone, too.
But we are working in prose. We have only letters, words, sentences. We are slower. What you can learn from a single frame of a movie would take a page – maybe even ten pages – to describe in prose. It’s a completely different world of “showing.” Three to four orders of magnitude different.
It’s a line drawing versus a hyper-realistic painting. And for our drawing, we are limited to a single heavy brush, and no more than three strokes.
Film is a medium that is optimal for person-versus-world conflict storylines. How do you describe, in prose, a person faced with an avalanche? How do you capture the magnitude of so much snow billowing down on the PoV character? How do you convey the fleeting seconds of being tumbled as they are subsumed in such power? As you read that, you replayed visual images you’ve seen from film, angles that show the first shifting of a few snowballs, the billowing wall of white, trees blown away, a face looking up, mouth wide, and the camera tumbling: white-black-blue-grey. (Yes, I conveyed it there by referring to something you’ve watched elsewhere. i.e. I cheated.)
Prose, on the other hand, is a medium optimal for person-versus-self conflicts. One’s own thoughts at odds with themselves. I defy you to show that, on a screen.
Not to say that different conflict types can’t be presented in the other media; the best stories include all three forms of conflict (person-versus-other being the last, for which theatre is optimal – and, yes, there you’re going to learn some great things about sparse dialogue. (Interestingly, sitcoms, as Iain mentioned, are mostly theatre captured onto the screen rather than cinematic pieces, even filmed on stage with audiences.)
It’s a different toolbox. We can’t convey the full, detailed scene the way film can. We can’t hide Chekhov’s gun in plain sight, because we need to mention it specifically for it to be there; in film, it’s just one of myriad random details. We can’t convey a gesture or a facial expression as succinctly as the actor on stage. We must break our flow to show those details. But we can get inside a person’s mind. We can explore the making of a decision, not just the hesitancy of whether to open the door or not, but the fear of the impending encounter versus the lost opportunity if we don’t.
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‘All is Lost’ ? (I claim my prize)
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When I went to the Festival of Writing last year, I was told in both my one-to-ones that my manuscript read a lot like a film script. That, for me, was really encouraging because I also want to write film scripts. So, even though my details and description were sparse, (an issue I have subsequently corrected) and my novel was very dialogue heavy, it means that I should also be able to write successful film scripts. I hope so anyway!
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Would not dare, Sarah. I know my place 😏
