Thinking Screenwriting While Writing a Novel

I just got back from taking my youngest to see Harry Potter 5. Watching the movie, which was interesting and imaginative and sad like all of them have been, I automatically compared the novel to the screenplay. It’s a big leap sometimes. As some of you may know, I write screenplays as well as novels. Although I have converted a few of my books to screenplays, screen writing is an entirely different type of writing than novel writing. And not all novels make good screenplays.
Harry Potter has the wonderful abundance of story to adapt and draw from for film. Not all the scenes that make a fascinating book are needed to make a fascinating movie. And dialog is everything in screen writing. Where a novel has the benefits of descriptive narrative and inter monologues to reveal plot, emotion and motives, movies depend on strong dialog and setting to get every point across. Great actors help, too.
I was watching Harry battle the evils of the world, again, while suffering tremendous personal pain and loss, again, and I wondered if the author has changed her style of writing since the books became movies. Does Ms. Rowling now write with feature films in mind when she style sher dialog or constructs a scene? Can an author resist thinking, planning for, and writing in both worlds when it’s a sure thing her work will be in both print and film? I know I’d look at each new scene I wrote in the novel and think about how it would play out as critical to the plot or if it was a minor point that would be left to the wayside when the screenwriter got to it. It might even change the way I wrote everything from that point on. I’ll have to ask her on day.

Written by Laura Baumbach

Visit The Author's Website