A question for script, screen play, and play writers

Is it harder to write a play, or screen play, or script then a 400 page novel?
And how do you switch a novel into a screen play?
I have read a few screen plays/scripts of movies that I love and to me it didn't look hard but when i tried to write one I found it harder than anything.
Any comments,tips or suggestions are welcome
Thanks,
ButterFlyInk a.k.a Ink

Hullo Butterfly-

So I have about twenty book titles I could give you on screen writing. I have to be honest, I don't write for stage, I write for film. I want to be a director and writing your own stuff comes with the whole "starting out" thing, so I have been working on it.

Although I did get a book from a dear friend, who actually made a movie, and it was really good (i havent finished it actually) and very helpful.

When I first started writing a script it was for a story I was working on "Think" and I am actually still working on it. But the first draft was terrible, I was putting camera angles in and everything was jumbled and confusing. After I got this book (I really will have to get you the title) everything became so much more clear.

I learned a whole bunch of tips and tricks and most importantly found a format. It is a simple format and not all that complex, but in the case of scripts simple is better. Clean and straight to the point earns points. I learned what font to use, when to bold when to not bold.

Most importantly I learned that you should not over complicate your script but tyring to give every little detail. If you want people to know that the shade of green on the tree matched his eyes, then write a book.

When you write a script you have to remember that you are simply the writer (in most cases) and when it comes time you have to let the actors act and the directors direct. There is going to be improvisation and changes.

The rule of thumb is that one page of script = one minute of movie. Now that is not true for every single page, depending on editing and special effects and while in the script it may just say "They fight" the actual fight scene could take three to five minutes. Crazy stuff I know.

As far as your is it easier or not question, in my opinion writing scripts is easier then writing novels. I like the simplicity of it, and how much room for imagination it leaves and how much you can change things and work with them. But, while typing a script it is hard to have to remember to change text alignment and bold and unbold things all the time. That is the only hard part for me.

If you want to try to break into script writing slowly I would say it would be a good idea to actually take a favorite book (maybe not a four hundred page novel haha) and read it. (duuh-oh and try not to pick one that is already a move you have seen) Then go back and chapter by chapter or section by section turn it into a script.

Now easier said then done. I would say start out by just doing a page at a time, now maybe not every page, if your book is 300 pages long your movie would end up being about 300 minutes long- hmm not the norm. But just to get going do a page or two. Then once you feel comfortable, do sections. Try to make it different in a way, make it your own. The movie is never like the book, remember that. And don't overcomplicate!

I am a format freak so I have attached a document I made for someone else to give them a format. I hope I have helped and not bored you. =]

--Rory

Get "Teach Yourself Screenwriting."

It's ace.

Also learn the ins and outs of script format. Don't clutter your script with directions, camera angles etc.; leave that business to the director. Only include directions when absolutely essential. The sparer you are, the more dramatic your script will be.

Adapting stories, novels etc. into screenplays is a very difficult and specialised skill. I would recommend "Adventures in the Screentrade" by William Golding, in which the author gives himself the task of turning a 3,000 word short story into a screenplay. Well worth reading too.

I personally think it's easier to write a play, but it certainly is maddening because you have almost no control on how your audience will see your characters. You jsut have the skeletal structure and the foundation; it's the director and actors who really build the house. This makes it hard not to add in stage directions that aren't important; it's not like a story or a novel, where you can make your characters have their own tone or voice, their own idiosyncrisies, their own physical appearence. I, at least, think that's difficult to deal with. hahaha.

I wouldn't dive straight into a screenplay just yet. I think writing a play is easier than something that will be on TV or movies, simply because you don't have to deal with a camera. Writing dialogue and a few stage directions here and there is far easier than trying to gauge exactly when to snap back to a different scene, what the camera should be focusing on, whether you pan over or from the side, if you should do an extreme close-up or just a close-up....I personally think it's way too complicated.

Just keep in mind, if your already an excellent story writer (which you are), it's going to be very hard and frustrating switching into something your comfortable and good at to something that may very well fail as a first try. While I was writing my first play, I was crying, it was so bad. It was so frustrating....fortunately I was at a camp that was designed to help people like me, and when I came sobbing to my playwriting teacher, she sat down with me and helped me mop up what I thought was so bad. You may not have a playwriting teacher, but you have YWS. A first attempt is most likely going to be bad, but don't be afraid to post it up here. If you don't have anyone who can help you, it's really easy to get discouraged.

And I do have one bit of advice I found useful: in a play/screenplay/movie, characters never tell the truth. Even when they think they're telling the truth, they aren't. It's really hard, because in a story, you can make it very clear that they're lying by their thoughts or something. Scripts, you can't do that. I'm struggling with it, but that's how you make stage/TV characters real.

Hope I helped!

If you ever get a script up, tell me!

~Vee

Thanks everyone! All of your advice helped, once i have part of my script done i will post it up.
Ink

People think that just because scripts and plays are shorter in length, that they're easier to write, but this is very large misconception. They're very different styles of writing. In a novel the focus is one creating everything; the atmosphere, the setting, the descriptions, etc. In scriptwriting, it's all very dialog heavy, and rather than being exquisitely descriptive you need to learn how to write as little as possible while still getting your message across.

In the end, I'd say none of them are harder or easier than each other. They've each got their own challenges. It's just which one you think suits your style the greatest.

I think that scripts are about the same as novels in level of difficulty. I mean, in scripts it is mostly dialogue with a few bits of action to help move things along. With writing a novel, you have to worry about all of that and description.

My advice would be to forget about camera angles unless they were really important to the scene. And forget about what your character looks like, or the exact details on how he moves. The cold, hard truth is that only the directors and actors have to worry about that, your job is to get the story through.

That's not to say that you can't get across some of those details, you can subtly direct the director on where to focus on by what the Scene Headings say or how you put in the action or the dialogue. And you can control the actions of the characters further than just the bare bones.

For example, with my script, I had this part:

NATHAN GREEN bolts up from his sleeping position. His hand goes up and rubs his face.

The second sentence is completely frivolous. But that's what I saw my character doing.

Or this part:

Nathan finishes buttoning his shirt in the room before moving his jacket onto the BLUE comforter.

Nathan sits down on the chair and puts his shoes on.

Nathan grabs the jacket off the ORANGE comforter and leaves the room.

It really does help to envision what your writing, your story, as if it were a movie already. Like that part where the comforter changes color, you just envision each step along the way as if it were a movie, and it will be fine.

There are a few sites that should help you out with script writing, any kind of script writing.

Script Frenzy is the sister challenge to Nanowrimo, where you have to write 100 pages of a script during the month of April. Now, I'm not suggesting that you take the challenge, although it is really fun, but the site is an awesome resource. For example, there's the Writer's Resources which has all sorts of how-to guides and things like that. It answers the questions of formatting and such better than I ever could.

There's also the forums, which has the answers to all of those pesky little questions not answered in the guides. Although, those guides are pretty awesome. But, the forums shouldn't be wiped until sometime in March, so you'll have a bit of time to glean some knowledge from them.

Also, the greatest script writing program anywhere: Celtx. Celtx is truly awesome, does all of the formatting things for you. It only takes a bit of time to get used to the way the short cuts work, but other than that it makes script writing so easy. And, best of all, it's free! You can also surf around the Project Central and find scripts that others have written and chosen to make public.

Good luck with your script!!