Reporters make good screenwriters
So glad that Jane Espenson has started up her very useful writer’s blog again! In today’s post she discusses why, when making the transition to screenwriting, journalists often fare better than novelists. Her advice to film/TV writers:
Think like a reporter — pare the story down, find the bones of it, and listen to your characters talk in the language of whatever street they come from — even if you let them ramble on a bit in the first draft, eventually try to find the succinct quote.
You get to make up the facts and the people, but the core truths that you’re uncovering should be just as real as if the story had happened. Be a reporter.
Pure gold.
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Thank God. I’ve been arguing this for a long time. My English major friends so desperately want to argue that my Journalism degree doesn’t mean I’m somehow more suited to screenwriting.
Sure, regardless of education, you can succeed in screenwriting with the right attitude and work ethic (and a binof talent). But the journalist’s eye for no-bullshit facts while still being a page turner is a skillset that plays very well in Final Draft.
If you ask me, I think the writing differs because both novelist and journalist are handling screenplay much too differently.
You pretty sum up at the journalist’s position.
The novelist works with symbolism, metaphorism and expressive writing.
I can only give Franz Kafka’s “the Proceß” as example. The dialogues written during the novel are resembling more of a theatre play than realistic dialogues because it was important to catch the meaning of the whole novel.