Screenwriting Principles for Fiction Writers
How to plan your novel (even if you hate planning)
When it comes to writing, are you a planner or do you figure it out as you go? Although I've never outlined a novel, I do generally have some sense of a plan when I begin. This isn't always the case, but sometimes. For me, a plan simply means that I know:
the primary settings
the protagonist
the big problem or situation
some sense of how I will make the situation worse for the protagonist
the length of time over which the story will take place
I also usually have a theme in mind, and the theme in some way guides the story
What I never know when I begin is how the book will end. The book also ends up traversing a setting or two I hadn't planned.
SCREENWRITING PRINCIPLES FOR NOVELISTS
Recently, however, as I revised one novel for publication and began revising a novel I shelved years ago, I stumbled upon a promising method of outlining. This happened by accident, after I decided to write a screen adaptation for one of my books. To this end, I bought The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film by Linda Seger, and Story Maps: How to Write a Great Screenplay by Dan Calvisi.
I highly recommend both of these books, especially Calvisi’s. I've never thought in terms of acts when writing a novel. For a screenplay, however, acts are a requirement.
Using an adaptation model to reverse engineer your novel is a good tactic if you feel you have a lot of "good material" but not enough shape. Maybe you've done much of the work of character development, description, voice, world-building, etc, but the story lacks drive, focus, or urgency. Maybe the urgency is there but the scenes feel scattered.
Here's what I learned from Story Maps.
First, answer a few fairly straightforward questions, questions most novelists ask themselves at some point. The memoirist must answer the same questions, by the way, but the skill is in selecting and presenting the facts and characters rather than making them up. Here are some of those questions: