Writing Scripts Vs. Novels

So, like I mentioned in my last entry, for the first time ever, I was going to participate in Script Frenzy (A Challenge to write a 100 Page Screen Play in the 30 days of April), and managed to get all 100 pages written by today, the 8th.

We all know how much I love stats

Now, I DID find it easier than NaNoWriMo (The challenge to write 50,000 words in a month), but keep in mind that I have off of work from April 1st - 10th, so having no work, or any other real obligations, writing for 4 - 5 hours a day was nothing to sneeze at.

Anyway, as I was writing this, I was thinking about the differences between writing a novel, and writing a screenplay. If you have written both, let me know what you think, and if you're thinking about writing one at some point here are some of my humble thoughts and opinions.

Pros of Writing a Novel:

- It's familiar. In school, when you wrote stories, you used the same format, but on a larger scale. You know how to use quotation marks, and when to start paragraphs, you also get to start and end chapters the way books do, and you know how to do that, because you have read a book. It is comforting and familiar

- It's descriptive. I love, LOVE describing things. I love using flowery language to describe something beautiful, and I love writing for pages on end about how someone feels about something else. In a script, you get to say "She has blond hair", which is something I could spend a paragraph writing about.

- It's something you can share. You can send your friends and family a finished novel, and it will essentially be complete. Reading a screenplay is fine, but it is not even close to the same thing as watching a movie.

- It's easier to 'get published'. Nowadays, anybody can get published (On things such as a Kindle, etc), and with being able to sell your novel for $0.99 a copy, if only 100 people 'buy' it, you've already made a good chunk of change. From there, you can certainly get your novel published by a publishing company if it gets enough publicity through a Kindle.

- It's good for your vocabulary. If you don't wanna say "Jane said, Jane said, Jane said" every other line for 200 pages, you're going to look into a thesaurus, and you're going to learn a lot of new words.

Pros of Writing a Screenplay

- It's just easier. No longer do you have to decide if someone tittered, chattered giggled or laughed, because you will write "JANE LAUGHS" and that's the end of that. How is it said? Doesn't matter. You write:

JANE

I don't like you.

 

 And that's the end of that. No modifiers of descriptions. Based on context, these things are implied. 

- It's shorter. The margins for dialogue are HUGE. I believe there is 3" of margin on both the right and left sides of dialogue, so writing through a page takes significantly less time than writing a page of a novel. Sometimes my brain works faster than I can type, but with a screenplay, it can definitely keep up.

- It's not descriptive. While I love writing out some flowery, or gorey, details, there's something raw and satisfying about writing "JOHN'S HEAD EXPLODES", and then being done with it, moving on to reactions and effects of John's Head explosion. The pacing moves quickly, and you can just go go go.

- A lesson in subtlely. In a script, you can't explain a characters thoughts, and even if you can, you certainly can't go on for pages and pages about his/her thoughts on life and 'everything that's been going on lately'. You have to learn to write out facial expressions, and subtle phrases, and certain keywords. For someone who is generally rather oblivious, this was a good exercise for not only my writing, but also my life.

Cons of Novel Writing:

 

-  Tendency to ramble. When you have pages to fill, there is a good chance you're going to write some nonsense, and you're going to get a little bored. When you're in the middle of a scene and just want to get out of it, it's really hard to write your way out of it, because as I said, you have to describe feeling and locations and people. In a script, if you want to write your way out of something, it's as easy as "AND THEN JOHN FALLS DOWN".

- It's descriptive. I don't know how much more I can express my love-hate relationship with vivid descriptions

- Grammar. I love grammar, I do. But sometimes when you're writing a paragraph about someone talking about what someone else said as a question to a cousin's sister's friend...it gets a little confusing. There is almost 0 grammar in a script, and I like being able to just push past these things

Cons of Script Writing:

 

- Pacing. One of the biggest pros I have for script writing is the ability to move along at lighting fast speed, but even still, things can move TOO quickly, and make for some awkward scenes if you read over them and see that they'd only be a minute and a half on the big screen.

- It's not descriptive. ....

- A lack of insight. As nice as it is to not delve deep into the mind of a character, sometimes it's kind of nice to write out: '"I never liked him, not after he shot my mother. Even if I don't tell people about it, it's on my mind everyday..." Jane thought', to just really drive a point home. Or to write out thoughts that give a third dimension to a character.

All in all, if I had to choose, I don't know which one I would pick. I've written three novels, and one screenplay, and I learned so much from myself from both, I think it depends on what you're writing. Some things can never be movies, and some things can never be books, I think it's up to you to decide which medium it would be better as.

November 30th - A novel reflection

 I may have hit 50,000 words 2 weeks ago, but I finished the novel tonight. What a strange and glorious feeling, to know you have written a book, to know you have told a story, and to know that so much of yourself has been poured into something so grand, so outrageously colossal, and to still feel as though there is so much more to be said.

Looking back at the last three NaNoWriMo events, how much has changed, how it's so strange to have such a good grip on how much 50,000 words really is. It seems like nothing now.

2009 was my first year, and by far the hardest. I had no plot, no real idea of where I was going, plenty of breakdowns and as I recall correctly, quit multiple times throughout, then finished with 50,003 words.

2010 was my moment of true glory. A single dream fueled 68,000 morbid and beautiful words of historical fiction. Strange tides swept over everything I had to say, and twists and turns made the story stranger and harder to follow, yet easier and easier to write with each passing day. In June, I ordered a hard copy and tried to keep myself from jumping around like an idiot as I grasped it in my hands so tightly, as if it would float away. What a glorious, glorious month.

Camp NaNoWriMo was this past August, and I wrote 50,000 words about lesbian vampires despite everything. My asthma was the worst it'd ever been, and I was drinking cough syrup in hopes for even the slightest bit of relief, out of the house for 14 hours at a time, sometimes falling asleep at my computer after writing 200 words. What an awful and terribly exhausting month, but I did it. Maybe I did it just to boast, but whatever the reason, it was done.

This year, I had no outline and just a vague idea of where I was going based on what was written in my first part. 50k in 15 day. FIFTEEN DAYS. I felt on top of the world, and tonight I capped it off with the last 2,000 words, totaling the two parts together for a gloriously beautiful 106,500 words, and nearly 350 pages of sexually confused vampire goodness.

I wonder what's in store for next year. I wonder what I'll write about, and I wonder if I could do 100,00 words in a month. I wonder if I'll want to do it next year, and I wonder what the editing process for such a long book as this one will be like.

The adventures of writing are adventures like no other. The fact that I have written a total of 200,000+ words, and learned more about myself within those words than any other form of creativity makes me SO confused that not every single person on this planet does this at least once in their life.

Happy writing, everyone!

2011 NaNoWriMo Update #4: Day 15

50,012 / 50000 words. 100% done!

 Stats:

Average Words per day: 3,334 (Down by about 300 words since the 9th)
Music: The Broken Bells Pandora Station. This is officially a record for the LEAST amount of time spent listening to Chrono Cross music while writing a novel.
Average Junk Food Consumption: Way below average (I'm trying a change in diet to hopefully help my chronic asthma)

I DEFINITELY expected to have had this finished on the 13th. I was at 45,000 words the night of the 12th, and I figured if not the 13th, then no way would I get past the 14th without 'winning'. But the 13th came and went, and I only wrote 295 words. It was very apparent that I needed a break, and just tried to roll with it, however difficult it may be to write about 7% of what I've been averaging. When midnight hit on the 14th, I only had 975 words to go, and what should have taken 45 minutes or so took roughly 2 hours.

It definitely got rough in the last few days. I've been spending a lot of time online, looking at absolutely nothing in particular, and just wasting time in general. My plot also took kind of a boring turn that I didn't really care for, and I condensed the plot a lot so as to hurry things up.

There is definitely st least another 7,000 words to this story, but I'd rather take my time getting those words out in the next 15 days, or frankly, whenever the hell I feel like :)

Oh! And in even COOLER news, since this is the second part to what I wrote in August, when I added this to the 1st document, the story is 338 pages, totaling 104,494 words! How CRAZY is that?! Like a real book :D

2011 NaNoWriMo Update #3: Day 9

32500 / 50000 words. 65% done!

Stats:


Average Words Per Day: 3,611 (Up since last time by about 300 Words/Day)
Music: TOTALLY addicted to the "Indie Chill" station on Slacker. I put in on one day when Pandora had a hiccup that was lasting too long and I CAN NOT TURN IT OFF. It is perfect for my writing.
Average Candy/Junk Food consumption: About the same as last time, not outrageous.

I was hoping to hit 35k by tonight, but a misunderstanding with the boyfriend prevented me from doing so, and I ended up stuck out of the house, sans netbook, for about 3 hours.

I am definitely starting to feel...tired. Being so disconnected from everyone and everything for just over a week is starting to take it's toll on me, mentally, but I just keep writing. I guess I feel like I have a lot to say. I just finished up my first weekend since NaNo started, and I'm actually rather disappointed that I didn't get more done. However, maybe doing something besides writing for a couple days was good. And, afterall, it's not like I didn't write ANYTHING, I got about 5,000 words written over my weekend, so it could have been worse.

I'm also feeling rather egotistical. I haven't found too many other people on the site with as many words as mine, so I'm seeming to have a hard time keeping my ego on it's leash. But, you know, sometimes I think I kind of deserve this. I don't really shine anywhere else, not the way I do when I do NaNoWriMo...so don't I deserve to be as egotistical as everyone else for 1/12th the amount of time that they are? Maybe I'm just looking for excuses. I don't know, this has definitely been one of the more emotionally tolling WriMos since the 1st one I did.

I hope everyone else is doing well, and keeping up with where they want to be.

2011 NaNoWriMo Update #2: Day 6

20023 / 50000 words. 40% done!

Stats:

Average Words per Day: 3,337 (Up by about 600 words/day since last update)
Music: Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy, and my Pandora station stays on Florence + The Machine more than the Ratatat station.
Average Candy/Junk Food consumption: Probably a little higher than last time, although not outrageous.

Sound the victory horns, I am DOUBLING EVERYTHING. The par for the day today is 10k, and the words per day to finish on time is 1,666...where I have doubled both of those *Curtsies*.

Yesterday got kind of rough, my story took a very morbid turn, and my protagonist was being tortured and taken advantage of, pretty much for the whole day. I was at work, and when I walked away from my computer, I felt overwhelmed, and the weight on my chest was heavy and scary. I thought maybe it was work that was overwhelming me, but we were slow, and I realized it was the story I was writing. I had to turn off the computer and read something nice (Hello, Guild comics!) so that I didn't find myself clinically depressed.

I was so excited to get home, relax a little bit, and pick up the novel again, in hopes of taking advantage of Daylight Savings Time, but after cranking out an entire 200 words in about an hour, I shut the laptop and called it a night. I had worked 12 hours, woken up early, and was still trying to stay awake even later, while writing about torturing my MC. No, it wasn't meant to be.

I actually thought I may have been running out of steam, but after cranking out another 4,000 words, and getting my supporting characters in the story to save my MC from an eternity of torture, things are looking up (for my spirits, and for Faye).

At the rate things are going, I should be finished by November 14th, so let's see if I can keep up that word average for the next week or so ;)

NaNoWriMo 2011 Update #1: Day 3

8334 / 50000 words. 17% done!

Stats:

Average Words per Day: 2,778
Music: Xena Soundtrack and Ratatat Pandora Station.
Average Candy/junk food consumption: Below average for a NaNo Event.

I am rather surprised at how well this is going. I have never written a 2nd part to anything I've ever written during a NaNo event, and the words seem to be flowing almost effortlessly. I have had some panic-induced moments of writer's block, but when I slowed down, and really tried to think about it, I picked a direction, went with it, and never looked back.

I am having some procrastination issues (mostly in the form of NaNoWriMo forums, and blog posts), but even still, I am still ahead, doing well, and enjoying my story (even more so than the 1st part!)

I have some beautiful scenes, some ugly scenes, German ninjas, and I made Christopher Columbus a vampire (mostly on a whim, but I love it!). I am also making the stroy less serious and more quirky than the 1st part, and am enjoying that decision SO MUCH! Hopefully when the two parts are put together it will work out, but the amount of revising I will have to do is overwhelming, so I'm going to try not to think about that.

I am two days ahead, and and can hopefully surpass even that. I am trying to get as far ahead as I can now, so when I become overwhelmed and tired, I won't fall behind.

It looks like I'm going to have my 4th NaNo Victory this year, and a complete 3rd novel! I am so excited!

Also, I'm thinking about looking into Scrivener, but I'm not sure how easy it is to use. Does anyone have any experience with this program?

NaNoWriMo Eve

So here it is, guys:

I have fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm while typing throughout the entirety of November, the Xena soundtrack, and about 1/5th of an outline written in a Rainbow Zebra notebook. I feel like running around and screaming, and also like I am SERIOUSLY GOING TO EXPLODE with creative ideas. Yeah, NaNoWriMo starts in about 2 1/2 hours and I AM FUCKING READY. BRING. IT. ON.

Other things in my arsenal of novel writing include:

- So much Halloween candy, and even more when it goes on sale tomorrow.
- A netbook! I can now write any time, anywhere.
- High apple pie in the sky hopes.
- Three years of success under my belt.
- An espresso machine, and a coffee pot.
- A four day weekend in the middle of November.

Seriously.  Let's do this. I don't think I've ever felt more ready.

Buckling Down

I can't believe it's already October 23rd. There is pretty much no significance to this day, except for the fact that NaNoWriMo is ONE WEEK AWAY. I am writing a 2nd part to a novel I don't remember anything about, and I'm not even quite sure where I'm going with it.

So I'm buckling down.

I have to stop crocheting, and I have to stop everything else, because the next 5 weeks of my life are going to be incredibly busy and full of novel novel noveling.

I am lucky that I have a netbook now, so I'll be able to get some writing done at work...but I'm still going to have to kick my craft addiction for the next five weeks, and so I apologize for the hiatus, but it's November, which means a novel has to be written.

I'll be focusing on that for the next 5 weeks, so, sorry if it gets a little boring around here. I promise I will return in December, although wary, full of inspiration for winter and Christmas projects.

Victory post, as promised.

See that graph? That's what victory really looks like. That's what difficult, seemingly impossible, absolutely ridiculous tasks look like. I won 4 out of 31 battles, and I still won the war. In 13 days I wrote 171 pages (50,035 words), and if I had had time to write on all 31 days, who knows how long that novel would be. Only four days out of the month did I make the daily goal, and I still got to the 50,000 word milestone.

If you have ever considered writing a novel, please please give me a reasonable excuse why you haven't done so yet. I'm 22. This is my 3rd novel. Why haven't you written one yet?

There were days I didn't want to write, there were days I spent an hour-long commute to and from work, with 12 hours days in between, but I still did it. I moved. I moved all of my things from one side of town to another, then I unpacked, then I spent long, long days at work to make up for the hours I lost. There were days I didn't work, but couldn't write. There were days my boyfriend said "I feel like I haven't seen you. Ignore your novel, come spend time with me" and I did, and I didn't want to leave him, because leaving him meant writing more, and writing more meant more headaches, more exasperated sighs, more junk food to keep my hands from compulsively checking my word count every 50 words. There were days I felt like i wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote....but nothing came of it. It went nowhere.

There were days I wrote scenes of people napping.

There were also days where I wrote one-liners that made me crack up so hard I had to stop writing, but didn't want to. There were days I looked back to a random page and read a sentence, and couldn't stop reading because...it was good, intriguing, really. There were days I couldn't stop thinking about my main character, and would have given anything just to go home and write about her. There were days were i wrote twists and turns even I didn't see coming, and my fingers couldn't keep up with my brain, and my eyes lit up with imagination and intrigue. There were days i couldn't stop talking about my novel, and days where I told Gabe something that happened and he would respond with "That...actually sounds really cool." There were days I wrote thousands and thousands of words, and I was invincible.

And there was the day I hit page 100. There's just something insanely magical about hitting page 100.

Yes, writing a novel in a month is scary, and awful, but it's wonderful and beautiful, and outstanding and above all...you can tell people you wrote a novel.

So what's stopping you? The actual NaNoWriMo event starts 2 months from today...and it's never too early to write down your seemingly 'stupid' idea, and turn it into an amazing outline, and possibly even an amazing book.

Why There is No Reason You Can't Write a Novel This August

This August (Yes, as in the August that's a few weeks away) is Camp NaNoWriMo, a sister event to the legendary NaNoWriMo that takes place every November. Even if you've already been convinced to write a novel, you may be worried that you can't pull off a 50,000 word novel in 31 days, but I'm here to tell you that you can.

On your next day off, get out of your house. Get away form your computer, turn off your cell phone, and go some place no one can find you and do this. You will have an entire outline written in less than a day.

Step 1: Write down your 'stupid' idea.

Maybe you've just woken up form a dream. Maybe someone offhandedly said something odd to you. Maybe you can't sleep. Maybe you read a story but they just did it all wrong, and you think you can write it better. Whatever the case may be, you have an idea. It's a vague, poorly thought-out idea that isn't going anywhere. Maybe it's just "I just wanna write about zombies", but you don't know what else.

You know that old composition notebook you have lying around somewhere? The one you swore you would use to learn a new language, and when that didn't work out, you swore you'd use it to write poetry, and now it's just a notebook with 50 pages in it, because you ripped the other 50 out, but just didn't have the heart to throw away because you "might need it someday"? Well, today is that day. Find it. Open it. Write in it. Write the one sentence you heard that inspired you. Write the word "Zombies". Write down that crazy dream you had.

As soon as it's something tangible you can look at, I promise you will have ideas pouring forth. Your main characters will start with odd things "What if my main character has mutton chops. Like really, really absurd mutton chops." "What if a chinchilla is involved somehow?" "I've always liked dragons...there should definitely be dragons".

Soon, things will start developing. It will still be abstract. It's okay. This is brainstorming. I promise you're doing it right. You just have to write one thing down.

2. Write down character details.

So you have some basic ideas. You want your main character to be a bad ass zombie killer with some serious chops, a leather jacket, a pet man-eating chinchilla and a hot girlfriend who polishes shotguns for a living. That's great. That's...awesome, actually. But they need a little depth.

For me, this is where "write what you know" comes into play.

Use yourself. Use your friends. Maybe you have this one really cool friend who can strike matches on his cheek and be completely unfazed. Or a weird cousin who is kind of an alcoholic, and you have seen how he deals with situations he can't control. And maybe you've had a really strange childhood, and while you dealt with a lot of anger issues as a teenager, you came out of it a better, stronger person. Use this. Use all of this. Everything. From the odd quirks, to the distinctive things people do when they talk that make them...them. Take these things from real life, and your characters will also be real. If you don't have an actual person to base your characters off of, then how will they be real?

Also note, that the person you're basing them off of doesn't necessarily need to match in gender and age. You can write about a 20-year-old girl, but use a 28-year-old semi-effeminate male that you know. If it will work for you, then it will work.

I also like using this to help develop characters. Note, though, that not all characters have to be extremely well-rounded. By making some characters simple, flat and shallow, it will give you some dimension to the dynamic of your characters and how they interact with each other.

3. Write your outline.

I don't know what works for you, but you'll figure it out. Some people have index cards (me!), some people write out lists, some people make charts.

What I like to do is write a basic outline from start to finish (e.g. "Man wakes up one day to find that his chinchilla has a taste for human flesh. The zombie apocalypse has begun and now he must find a way to cure his chinchilla, and eventually the human race. Man meets hot scientist woman while she is polishing her shotgun on her porch. Hot scientist woman thinks the chinchilla may be the cure to the zombie apocalypse. After a lot of researching/adventures, it turns out the chinchilla is an imposter chinchilla alien who has been sent down to destroy Earth. Lots of fighting. Man and Hot Scientist kill off the chinchilla aliens by waking up ancient dragons and everything goes back to normal. Man and Hot Scientist kiss in the sunset.")

So now you know where you're going. The tricky thing about writing is that writers make it seem easy. It's so easy to read, but it's so much more difficult to write. All those clever subtleties and connections don't just -happen- thought, effort and time go into them.

Now your list/index cards/chart can fill in the details. What are their adventures? Who else do they meet? Who gets in their way? How do they summon these dragons? Subplot the hell outta this bitch. You can never have too much. If you feel like it's too much, write more. Add more. It will probably still not be enough. You can always take away minor events, but adding them is much harder when you're in the thick of NaNoWriMo Events. When you're writing a novel in a month, your brain will ultimately get fried, so it's better to come up with ideas and subplots now, while you're still able to process things.

So now you have an outline, for a book...your book. The hard part now is to find a way to pass the time until August 1st!

My Novel Arrived Today

Yes, that's right. My novel.

Rubbing my face against it, like a cat, so everyone knows it's mine.

- Last September I had a crazy dream about parallel universes.
- Last November 1st, I started my second ever NaNoWriMo journey.
- November 30th, The novel was finished with 67,409 words.
- Around March, my cousin told me he wanted to start a website where people could read books for free, so I finally had some incentive to read over this thing and edit it.
- From April - June, Billy and I coordinated to edit this.
- Then, about a week ago, I sent everything in to CreateSpace to get it published.
- Today, my self-published copy showed up at my door.

What the hell is NaNoWriMo, and what is the point?

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, and it takes place annually between November 1st - 30th, and roughly 118,000+ people all around the world write a 50,000 word novel in a month. The point is to have a rough draft of a novel, for everyone who has said "I wanna write a novel" but has never had the discipline to do so.

Are there winners? Are there prizes?

Everyone who hits the 50,000 word mark is a 'winner', and the prize is a certificate to print off and hang up on your fridge, as well as a code to use on CreateSpace for a free copy of your novel, and the ability to tell everyone that you have written a novel. What more could you want?

Why is NaNoWriMo one of the best things ever?

Not last year, but the year before, my boyfriend broke up with me after we'd been dating for just under a year. I was pretty upset, and found myself doing just about everything I could. I was taking up new hobbies, buying new animals, reading more, writing more, painting more, even took up a Kung Fu class to kill some time. He broke up with me in September, and by November I was over it, but I had still vowed to participate in NaNoWriMo. and I figured it would be fun to try it out.

November of 2009 was hard. A lot of awful things happened, but worst of all was witnessing the death of a resident at the home where I was a caregiver. I was so lucky to have NaNoWriMo, because every awful thing that happened to me that month was so easily expressed through my writing, and I had to express myself, because I had to meet my word goal. There were times I found myself crying in front of my computer, because I just couldn't write anymore, I had run out of ideas, and patience, and ability to think clearly.

I actually gave up for 5 days. I stopped writing, racked up an 11,000 word deficit, and only after that did I vow to finish the novel. I did it. It wasn't easy, but I finished with 50,003 words. I felt invincible, like I could do absolutely anything. It was through writing that I was able to learn a lot about myself that I didn't know before, and how to deal with the passing of Pauline.

It's astonishing what I learned, and how much of yourself really goes into a book. Everyone was a part of me, everything mimicked something that had happened to me in the past. Was I still hung up on these things? Am I really that dark? I opened up more, I felt more, I paid more attention. I had changed because of this novel, because of one month!

How come you barely finished your 1st novel, and your 2nd novel had an extra 14,000 words, and you never had any breakdowns?

Just like with anything else, you get better with practice. I was inefficient at writing outlines the first time around. Not to mention, I was 'scared" I would have 'too much', didn't know how to write characters or sub plots...so I learned from my conglomerate of mistakes, and fixed them the 2nd time through. I still had some very minor issues last year, and I intend to learn from those as well. It will be the same for you, I promise. Just stick through it the 1st year and it will get better and better every year.

Why everyone should write a novel:

Every year I try to recruit friends to do NaNoWriMo with me, and I never succeed. I try to tell people how great it is, how fun it is, but for some reason, people don't think sitting in front of a computer monitor every night to write 1,667 words is fun. I've tried every angle, but really, it's just something you have to experience. That moment when you can't stop laughing because a character of yours called their friend's girlfriend a whore in a clever, and subtle way. That moment when you cry because you just killed off a sweet old man. The moment you smile, because it's November 29th, and you finally get to write that scene where he gets the girl. It may sound stupid, but it's your world. It's a place you have made, and everything lives and dies by you and your rules. And why wouldn't you want to do that for a month out of the year?

Can I add you as a friend on the NaNo site?

Of course, my screenname is CaffeinatedTarantula. I'm looking for more people to cheer on, and who will cheer me on.

You will be hearing more about NaNoWriMo as we inch closer to November, but now is a good time to start thinking about ideas if you're going to do it :)