and everything in-between.
7.1 miles. Not the best 7.1 miles of my life, but I can feel this run, which makes it better than many other runs.
A piece of advice I have heard, over and over, since I became interested in writing screenplays, is that what I should do to achieve fame and fortune in Hollywood is
- write a bestselling novel
- adapt the screenplay from it
This reminds me of the old joke about "How to make a million dollars." First, you get a million dollars...
The theory goes something like this: far, far more novels than screenplays are bought every year. (Only 300 movies get made a year; maybe 10 times that many are in development.) Hollywood, being the ultimate me-too organism, likes to buy novels and adapt them into movies because they come with a built-in audience (the ones who bought the novel) and because they come pre-approved by other buyers. Nobody knows what's going to work; it's possible to cut down the fear just a little bit with a proven quantity.
Of course, not every novel published is bought by Hollywood, just as every novel written is not published. And pretty much the ones that are bought and developed are best-sellers, which are a pretty limited breed...much like the screenplays that are turned into movies.
On one of my screenwriting lists today someone mentioned that a writing teacher of hers had recommended, seriously, that her students should make money from their writing three times: first, write it as a book, then as a play, then as a screenplay.
My friend Pooks, who is also known as Patricia Burroughs, took serious exception to this. She's a published author of several novels, and it's taken her some time and effort to move from novel-writing into screenwriting, even when adapting her own novels. And with her permission, I'm reprinting what she wrote here.
And I think she is full of shit.
It takes years (in most cases) to develop as a screenwriter. Most of us here have worked years to learn our craft, to get better and better and better to finally get good enough and professional enough that somebody would pay us for our work.
Believe it or not, folks, it also takes years to develop as a novelist, with few exceptions. And the two are as different as water color and sculpture. Yes, the basic elements may be the same, but there's so much different -- and the idea that, "oh, just write a novel and sell it, that's easier," pisses me off royally. I know people who have been writing novels for years without publication. It's not so easy that you just jot down your script in novel form and somebody will be ready to publish it, AND it will be such a splash on the best seller lists that Hollywood will clamor for it.
When idiots give the advice "write a novel first," that's the same as saying, "want to become successful as a screenwriter? Win the Nicholl." Or, "Make Rob Reiner your dad." Or, or, or.
Yes, it happens. People's novels get snapped up by Hollywood before NY bites. (Let's see, if that happens a handful of times a year, how many thousands of novels did it NOT happen to?) Or people have best sellers that get optioned for huge money. So yes, they can get paid twice or three times. It happens.
But most of the time, it DOESN'T.
People also win the Nicholl, or Disney, or any other number of awards and get launched in their careers -- but most don't. People are born into or marry into ideal Hollywood situations, and are able to get a leg up in the business and become major successes -- but most people born into or marrying into those situations are people we will never hear of, because they don't have great careers in the business.
I know PLENTY of published novelists who could not on the rainiest day in hell get their books made into movies, nor could they write a script if their lives depended on it. I also know screenwriters who have asked me to read their "novels" which they decided to write because they'd read the above advice, and while yes, if they wanted to devote years to learning the craft of writing a novel, they could do it? What they show me is something they whipped out in a few hours (some of them even writing in present tense, with no pov or introspection, very little other than visuals and dialogue, and while I haven't seen the original? I swear, they simply reformatted their screenplay and thought it was that easy.)
And why are they doing this? Because idiots keep saying, "the best way to sell a screenplay is sell a novel first." I've read it in respected books. I've seen it in magazine articles. I've heard that advice, over and over.
And it is a crock of shit. The best way to sell a screenplay? Is to learn how to write a SCREENPLAY. And write them and write them and write them and write them, and never quit writing or marketing.
The ONLY reason to write a novel? Is because it's in your blood, and you, by God, have a story to tell that is aching to live in a character's heart and soul, where we can wallow in their lives and taste what they taste and smell what they smell and think what they think and remember what they remember and fear what they fear -- where we can delve into their psyche and experience first love again, or anguish or death or delight -- in all its technicolor, all its senses. Because you want to write a freaking NOVEL.
So, since it triggered my rant mode, I am ranting at the teachers, how-to book writers and other experts who constantly bombard the unsuspecting writer with the advice that selling a novel is somehow an easier way to break into screenwriting than simply writing scripts.
The way to succeed is to be good, and to work hard, and to not quit. From there, the paths are varied, but I still stand by my feeling that "write a novel first" is a ridiculous piece of advice.
And someday, if you catch me in the right mood, I'll tell you what I REALLY think.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com