Scriptwriting for Novelists

I'm not sure if anyone else has realised this (blatant sarcasm; forgive me), but there's quite a divide between scriptwriting and novel-writing. Where in novels one must write great big long descriptions to satisfy the reader's potentially interested mind, in scripts descriptions must be as concise as possible. The director decides what the set and costumes look like rather than the screenwriter in a script, because the ultimate aim is to sell it on to someone else so that they may produce it as a movie, play or audio play. This is a key difference between the two that I am finding difficult to deal with.

As a novelist and storyteller at heart, I have grown accustomed to describing scenes in subtle and often lengthy fashions. One of my personal rules is to pour as much description in as possible without deterring the reader from reading on, something that is not always easy to achieve. Therefore writing scripts is difficult for me, because I have to cut down an entire paragraph to a few key words and phrases. Where in stories the bulk is description and action, scripts are fleshed out with dialogue and have little action blocks just to tell you where you stand.

Making the transition from noveling to scriptwriting is an unusually turbulent one, and I've found that the way to deal with it is simply to write my scripts as I do novels: pile on the description and intersperse it with dialogue. Then, when it comes to the rewrite, I go back and blitz it. Waging war on one's own work is often difficult, but it tends to work - it cuts down the unnecessary stuff and generally betters the entire experience. And, as I do this more and more, I find myself having to do less and less editing. The moral of the story: if you're a novelist, you're going to write scripts like a novelist, so rethink your entire approach before you start. Still, perhaps some things are better learned firsthand...

If any of you out there are novelists going into scriptwriting, just remember that it's an entirely different ball game. In fact, I think the ball may have changed shape as well as size... Good luck to you, people. I now have a novel to be writing. I bit you adieu!

Pisces