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VOLUME 1 — NUMBER 2.5 |
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It Is What It Is Regard the novel. Scrutinize a screenplay. Can one become the other? What is gained, what is lost? * This past summer, my sister rang me. She told me that there was this competition, a screenwriting competition. Put on by the Writers Room of Bucks County, she said. She told me I should try it, I should submit something. Right, I said. No problem. Except, problem: I’d never written a screenplay. Ever. Solution! The contest did not require me to have ever penned a screenplay. No, instead all the contest wanted was the raw potential for a screenplay, delivered as a proposal, an idea, a snidbit (which is, of course, a “snippet” married to a “tidbit”). On a lark, I figured, sure. I can do that. The good news was, there was no way I’d win. Yes, they were picking three winners, each of who would receive a year-long mentorship under horror screenwriter Stephen Susco. But certainly the contest had a thousand — nay, a billion — applicants, each far more talented and skilled and screenwritery than I. So, I cobbled together a submission based on a novel I’d written. The novel was stumping me, I couldn’t quite make it come together and work the way I wanted. Perhaps writing it in another form — or, at least, proposing it in another form — ;would give me that thing that alcoholics call a “moment of clarity.” I pored over the submission again and again, which I finally submitted. That August, along with two others, I won the contest. Uh-oh. * A novel is a cut of fatty meat. Delicious in its greasy excess. The fat, marbled deep in the meat, gives the entire meal layers. The tongue can decipher this, the taste buds like fingers drifting over lines of braille. This meat, this prime rib or juicy rib eye, it’s a gustatory epic, by golly. Lots to digest. A screenplay is a lean filet, unfettered by clots of grease or strata of marbled flab. You cut free all the excess, paring it down to its bare essence: meat, muscle, a single flavor. This is no savory epic. It’s a quick six-ouncer, fast to cook and faster to eat. In converting the novel to the screenplay — or the fatty cut to the lean — ;much is lost. Whole characters and scenes snipped from the thing like blobs of delicious adipose. It’s sad to watch them go. Because you know they’d taste so good. * Did I mention that I won the contest? Did I mention, “Uh oh?” Did I mention that I’d never written a screenplay? See, here’s the thing. You win a contest, you figure you get a prize. Something you can touch or feel. Set of steak knives, a turtleneck sweater, a year’s supply of aerosol cheese. Not here. This contest, the prize is work. Effort. A struggle with unfamiliar phrases like INT: or CUT TO: thrown into alien formatting and given to strict limits and laws like those that govern an alternate universe. It’d be like winning a marathon only to find out that your prize is no ribbon, no medal, but instead it’s to run a bigger, meaner marathon. One that requires you to learn how to run differently, backward perhaps, or maybe on rocket skates. So, yeah, uh oh. Like I’m not neurotic enough. Like I don’t have enough on my plate with deadlines for other projects and a wedding to plan and dogs to feed and naps to take! Worse is the fact that the other two winners actually have a clue. One has already written several scenes of her film, the other has completed an entire script for a short film. They have screenplays already. What do I have? * Maybe it’s like this. The novel is a spray of machine gun bullets. Rat-a-rat-a-tat. Lead flies. Cordite burns the air. I’m going to hit you as often as I’m not, but that’s the point. The novel can’t connect with every word, but it has page after page of possibility. Each chapter, a new volley of bullets with the chance of hitting. By the end, you probably did enough damage to get the job done. You’re still dead even if I’ve chipped away half the wall in the process. Sure, it’s sloppy. But that’s at least half the fun, isn’t it The screenplay is one bullet. A sniper-shot. Bang. You’d best hit the head, or you don’t hit at all. You don’t have time for a thousand bullets, chattering and barking and laying waste to the landscape. With the screenplay, you’ve got X number of pages — i.e., minutes — in which to work. That single bullet carries with it everything: plot, character, story, theme, mood, nuance. Miss, and it all misses. Hit, and hits big. The screenplay isn’t sloppy. It can’t meander the way a novel does. Bang. It’s one and done, or it ain’t done at all. * With no time for naps and an entirely new skill (or, “Writer-Fu Fighting Style”) to learn, I of course begin to feel the dread, the pressure, the weight on my brain like a bag of rocks. See, I know an opportunity when I see it. Yes, okay, the prize for the contest is more work, but writers know that such a thing is secretly a true reward. The chance to work at a real writer’s feet? To apprentice under a sacred mentor? Sitting with the Buddha beneath the Bodhi tree? And Susco, he’s a real writer. He’s not one of those guys who wants to teach because he can’t actually accomplish. No, the stuff he writes, I like. The stuff I write is his bread and butter. If anybody is going to be able to teach me anything, it’s this guy. See earlier note, re: pressure, bag of rocks. At that point, I decided it was time to learn. I went out and bought an armful of books. Syd Field. Robert McKee. Some other dude who sounded a little like a jackass but still taught me good stuff anyway. I watched movies (which, admittedly, was totally normal for me anyhow). I read screenplays. I reread my novel with an eye toward distillation, toward the goal of putting it up on that screen-most-silver. I started to feel sick. Maybe a little crazy. Words tangled around me, a noose tied with lines of dialogue and exposition. I couldn’t do this, I knew. I was in over my head. I’d written novels (none published, cough-cough), but a screenplay? You might as well just stick me in the space shuttle with directions written in Portuguese and tell me to fly to the moon. This was an impossibility. And so, I gave up. * The novel is a mountain road, long and winding, full of switchbacks and beautiful sights. The screenplay, on the other hand, is a short highway, a ribbon of hot asphalt cutting straight to the destination. No, wait. Maybe the novel is a fat guy wolfing down a seven-course dinner, and the screenplay is the supermodel who throws up her Caesar Salad in the men’s urinal before a big shoot. Or, it could be that the novel is a stampeding bull in a glassware department while the screenplay is the hummingbird who can fly backwards! A novel is a, uh, the Labyrinth of Minos! The screenplay is a Sudoku puzzle! The novel — ! A screenplay — ? I give up. * Of course, ten minutes later, I hadn’t really given up. Writers, you’ll find, are probably beset by a number of fears and doubts. If we’re lucky, those uncertainties are just paper tigers; flimsy and without teeth. If we’re even luckier, we recognize those tigers for what they are and how they cast big shadows but are not themselves so big. I was, this time, lucky. I saw through the haze of my own insecurity. Or maybe I just ignored it. Whatever it was, I sat down and I got to work. The process of turning my own novel into my own screenplay hasn’t always been easy, but it’s been a lot easier than expected. While more will come of that journey, most of it has led up to this one and somewhat undeniable fact: A novel isn’t really any different from a screenplay. Yes, they have different formats. Absolutely are they given over to their own unique rules and frames. But that doesn’t make them different. If you drive a Mercedes and I drive a Saturn, and you eat Grape Nuts while I eat Fruity Pebbles, that doesn’t stop the fact we’re both still people. Same goes here. Sure, one cut of meat is fattier than the next, but they’re both still steak. Or, in this case, they’re both still stories. Stories with characters who talk to one another. And then they do things. And then they talk some more. You boil it down, that’s all the novel and the screenplay are. Once you realize that all you’re doing is telling the same story, just mixing up the pieces a little, it all falls into place. It clicks. And then, for a moment, you can breathe a little easier, comforted by that recognition of sameness. Of course, then it’s time to get back to work. Get back to work!
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