Novel or screenplay? Which would you be better at?

I was going to say screenplay... now I just question my ability to write my own name.

 

I find novels easier because there's no breaking up of the text to explain motion and scenery. You just write in big paragraphs.

Then again, I've only completed one novel I actually wrote and that was for NaNoWriMo and I wrote the last 25,000 words in three days.

I'd still like to try again for a novel but I'm pretty sure my career as a screenwriter will never happen.

 

wenders -- I usually only make it five or six days into nanowrimo then i get annoyed/frustrated/distracted. how'd you do it (other than the crazy final three days)?

 

I've written both for fun, and screenplays are a hell of a lot more amusing to me. Unlike a novel, I never feel the pressure to make screenplay anything more than a silly little piece of popcorn entertainment. I mean who wouldn't want to see Wesley Snipes return to foil menacing terrorists disguised a waiters at an American Embassy function in "Table 57"? Or how about the Predator vs. Sam Spade in 1930s San Francisco in "The Maltese Predator"? Or how about a teen sex romp set in NYC's Chinatown called "Schzewan Pork"?" Or Danielle Harris avenges her father's death with the help of some Wayans brother in "The Last Girl Scout"? I've got 'em all, along with about 50 others, in a file cabinet somewhere.

 

Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

 

probably screenplay but i want to try the novel.

 

I'd have a much easier time writing a screenplay. From a writing standpoint, I'm much better suited to writing dialogue.

I struggled like hell writing my chapter in the SJ novel last year, I know that much.

 

I've written four screenplays, three of which have actually been produced (nothing big-time, believe me). It's kind of a mixed bag -- fun to see what you pictured become reality, but odd because it's not at all what you pictured.

 

i have enough material for the screenplay, just have to cull and refine it.

 

Now that gives me an idea.

After the New York Sun is bought out by the Sentinel, Henry Hackett, who already blew his chance to cover the world, learns he won't even get to cover Brooklyn from a barstool in Manhattan and is canned. He takes his creamy little friends with him and starts a newsletter, where they discover that Gil from Frasier really was sitting on Watergate on Long Island. Butter actually flows from pens.

 

"There is actual butter coming out of my pen" is one of my favorite movie lines ever.

 

Put together a great playlist of inspiring music. I usually have something similar to workout music, it pushes me and makes me want to do something. Then, it's all about having the willpower to not surf the Internet and watch TV and just sit there with something to drink and a snack food nearby and just channel the thoughts.