Storytellersunplugged

by John Skipp

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Because I didn’t have a brand-new essay in me, this month – or, more specifically, the time to concoct one – I am dredging up a piece from my ongoing online column, THE HARD WAY.

Dating back almost precisely a year (5/9/05).

So here’s the essay, proper. I’ll have a follow-up Author’s Note at the end, to tell you how it all turned out.

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DICKENS AND J. LO MEET DICK AND JANE AT A DEVELOPMENT MEETING, IN THE DEEPEST FOLDS OF HELL
(A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE WRITERS IN THE CROWD)

Today, I have learned – and learned the hard way – a VALUABLE LESSON, which I would like to pass along. It involves the difference between writing fictive prose and writing fictive screenplays. Or outlines, for that matter.

It’s a lesson that I already knew. Knew all too well.

But, BOY, did I learn it again.

Here’s what happened:

As regular readers of THE HARD WAY know, I’m currently jamming ass on an impulsive literary project: adapting my original screenplay THE LONG LAST CALL into novel form.

I set out to write the adaptation in a month.

Seemed like a cool idea, at the time.

Now – nearly three weeks later, and counting – I can tell that it ain’t quite gonna happen that way.

Which is not to say that I’m not pressing on. Because I am, with great diligence and vigor.

Let’s just say that it has proven harder than I thought.

To whit: incensed that it’s taken me nearly three weeks to get 100 pages of prose I like (covering roughly 35 pages of screenplay), I took stock of my strategy, and came to the following conclusions.

1) LOOKING BACK AND FORTH IS UTTERLY FOR THE BIRDS.

Which is to say: I have the screenplay to my left, and the computer in front of me. I keep looking back and forth. Flipping pages, when necessary.

That is no way to live.

Therefore…

2) I WOULD SIMPLY TAKE THE WORDS STRAIGHT FROM THE SCREENPLAY, AND REFORMAT THEM AS PROSE.

Which I did: taking all the present-tense words and making them past tense. Putting the dialogue inside quotation marks. Turning instructional transition language (like INT. TITTY BAR DRESSING ROOM — NIGHT) into timeless prose (like, “Inside the dressing room of the titty bar…”).

And the good news was: I covered roughly forty pages of screenplay in maybe ten hours, taking me well past the halfway point.

The bad news?

As prose, IT SUCKED ASS.

I am utterly serious. It was painful to read.

Which is why I’m taking a break, and writing this column instead.

It was hard to stomach how fucking LOUSY my prose was, when streamlined down to screenplay form, and then posited as a book.

I mean, seriously. If YOU picked up a book that was written like this, and you made it past page ten, I would want to spank your ass.

Going, “NO, NO, NO! Life is too short!

“READ SOME GOOD BOOKS, INSTEAD!”

I would point you, with pleasure, toward genuine prose stylists who actually have something to say. The list is long, and well deserving of your time.

On a good day, I’m actually on that list.

Which brings me back to today’s little lesson.

Fact is, I’m going to continue with my little experiment: blowing through the rest of the screenplay, until it’s ALL done up as shitty prose. I think it’ll take another day. Maybe two.

And I will not rest until it’s done.

At that point, I think I’ll need a nice nap.

But when it’s done, the REAL work resumes.

And that work is the transformation of shit into gold.

Because, throughout this, I still really like the story.

And what I’m doing with this process is rendering it in the most remedial terms.

Which is, in fact, what the screenplay format demands.

Screenplays are to movies what pencil sketches are to paintings, or buildings. They are the rudiments, laid bare. The screenplay is the skeleton on which a movie is built; meat and muscle and soul follow, described by actors and landscapes and cameras and lights and microphones in motion, delivering the goods via picture and sound.

A screenplay for a book would be properly called an “outline”. Or, maybe, “synopsis”. Possibly even a “treatment”, or “bible”.

The question is: would you publish the outline?

Would you call that a book?

If you did, I would think that was really fucking sad.

There is a long-standing and sorrowful Hollywood tradition of writers who started out great with prose, and then winnowed their word count down to screenplay-friendliness. A necessary winnowing, for a completely different medium. But laden with a dreadful confusion.

Because screenplays are, from a literary standpoint, relatively graceless, instructional haiku – whereas works of fiction are actual literary acts – these people often went back to fiction as if writing fiction was as simple as JUST TELLING ABOUT THE STORY.

The result has been short stories that read like outlines. Books that read like book proposals. Epics that read like condensed oral histories.

And I just can’t do that.

So here’s what I’m doing.

I will continue to log the “Dick and Jane” remedial version of THE LONG LAST CALL, all the way to the end.

Then, when that’s done, I will take the requisite days and weeks to transform those bones into meat you can chew on. Characters that might inhabit your soul. Vistas that your mind’s eye can see, in immense detail. Almost as if you were there.

Writing great fiction – or even GOOD fiction – demands that the words take you all the way there. Not just tell you about it, but place you inside it.

As such, I will pretend that I am rewriting a REALLY SHITTY WRITER, who had a cool tale to tell.

I will then attempt to enliven that shitty writing – which, by the way, worked pretty well as a screenplay – and turn it into a book worth reading.

Hopefully, that will speed things up.

Hopefully, the book will rock as hard as the movie in my head.

Bottom line: WRITING NOVELS IS HARD, IF YOU DO IT RIGHT.

Which, I guess, underscores just how crazy I am.

Cuz, quite frankly, I’d rather just be MAKING THE MOVIE. Which is certainly harder.

But I live for this shit.

P.S. – The words that are holding up the best so far – thank God – are the dialogue sequences. Although they aren’t without their problems.

Flat out: some dialogue looks great on the page, but doesn’t play so hot out loud. And vice versa. A thousandfold.

It makes me wish I were William Goldman, whose books read just as well as his movies play. Watch MAGIC, then read the book. It’s pretty much verbatim. And way harder than it looks.

But, as Elmore Leonard says, “If the line is well-written, you don’t have to tell people how to say it”.

So many lessons, so little time.

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FOLLOW-UP AUTHOR’S NOTE: It wound up taking two more days to get all the way through the story.

And if you’re in San Francisco next week, for the World Horror Convention, please feel free to say hi! I’ll be drinking beer, shooting pool, signing books, talking way too much, hopefully judging the Gross-Out Contest, and generally gallivanting about. Cheerful mayhem will ensue.