Screenwriting and Novels

Last semester, I took a screenwriting class, so I thought I’d share with you some tidbits that I learned.  During the course of the semester, we watched a number of videos as we considered the process that is screewriting, and one of them was entitled “29 Screenwriting Mistakes.”  It’s a long-ish video, but I highly recommend it.  The fun thing about this video is that it’s useful whether you’re writing a screenplay or a novel (or much of it is, anyway).  After all, if your novel meanders or the main character isn’t right for the plot or the genre, that is as much a problem as it would be if you were writing a screenplay.

Some of these things I hadn’t thought about much before.  Most them at a glance can seem like no-brainers, but it did make me take a careful look at everything I wrote for that class and think more deeply about the pacing, the characters, and the process of raising the stakes than I had before.

At the very least, it’s food for thought.