Keep It Moving: How Thinking Like a Screenwriter Can Improve Your Novel
Presented by Cindy Carroll
September 6, 2010 through September 19, 2010
Writing scripts and writing novels are two completely different things. But Keep it Moving focuses on how thinking like a screenwriter can help your pacing, keep your writing active, get you to show instead of tell and focus on the essence of the story.
The class will include:
Finding the essence – coming up with your logline
Story structure – 3 act structure, the beat sheet, storyboarding
Show, don't tell
Pacing
Active vs passive writing
WHERE: This workshop will be conducted via a Yahoo! email loop. Email invitations will be sent 48 hours prior to the beginning of the workshop.
HOW: Just register for the workshop and complete the payment process via PayPal. The cost is $10.00 for FFnP members and $20.00 for non-FFnP members. Please note payment is due at the time of registration.
REGISTRATION: http://www.romance-ffp.com/members/ admin/event. cfm?EventID= 153
WHO: Cindy Carroll joined RWA in 1992 and started out writing novels but turned to scripts when an idea for one of her favorite television shows wouldn't leave her alone. That first attempt, and her second teleplay for the same show, garnered her honorable mention in the Writer's Digest 76th Annual Writing Competition in the screenplay category. She graduated from Hal Croasmun's screenwriting ProSeries intensive in June of 2008. Her interview with David Rambo, writer/producer for CSI appeared in the summer special edition of The Rewrit, the newsletter for Scriptscene, Romance Writers of America's screenwriting chapter. Currently working on the rewrite of her second feature, Cindy is also developing two new television pilots.
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- Elizabeth Barrette (
ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
- Mood:
busy
"Keep It Moving" Writers Workshop
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Setting notes for "The Little Shadow Across the Grass"
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Character notes for "The Little Shadow Across the Grass"
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August 26 2010, 18:19:43 UTC 10 years ago
but I have pretty much always thought like a screenwriter,
because that's where the money is-in movies.
So I figured that if I envisioned the movie version while writing the novel,
my chances would be so much the better.
But also, movies and television have very much influenced how and what people read.
So I'm caught between my loyalty to Cather,
and the world in which I must succeed if I'm ever going to succeed.
Thoughts
August 26 2010, 18:37:38 UTC 10 years ago
However, I do think in terms of cinematography and action scenes sometimes. There are places in fiction where I've used camera effects, like zooming from a close-up detail to a distant view as the character's attention shifts. If I'm writing a story that is heavy on adventure, I may well compare it to an action movie plot arc to see if the pacing is apt for that kind of story (because otherwise I'm liable to bog it down with excess description). If I'm writing Penumbra, I not only check the plot arc, I use a ... noir filter, I guess you could say. Less description and almost monochrome, very stark.
Conversely, I was startled when my editorial sense started reacting to movies. An early example was Kong ("Why are we staring at a ship's engine, again? We already saw this. Agh, where's my red grease pencil?") which I liked but found very repetitive in places.
I like having a really wide range of entertainment styles and examples to draw from when I am writing. Some of my stuff is very closely matched to a particular genre or style. Some is more exotic. So I consider anything fair game for inspiration!
Re: Thoughts
August 26 2010, 19:11:41 UTC 10 years ago
selling a screenplay is even more difficult
than getting a novel published.
But, yes, you've got the idea,
and hopefully there will be at least a few of us
who can avoid overdoing it.
August 26 2010, 22:58:51 UTC 10 years ago
The screenwriting world - the back end of it anyway - always appealed to me a little more than novel-writing, it seemed more user-friendly and accessible. It may have been that the teachers we had for novel writing (I also did a minor in creative writing) might have been caught up in the pretentiousness of it all, but yeah. One faculty destroyed my love of writing pretty thoroughly. The other allowed me to find it again.