One of my favorite jokes on The Office is when Dwight Schrute boasts, “I know everything about film. I’ve seen over 240 of them.”
It’s funny because it sounds reasonable at first, but then you realize 240 is a pittance. You’ve surely seen thousands of movies, not to mention thousands of hours of scripted TV shows. (That’s also when you realize just how much time you actually have on your hands).
When we tell stories, it’s almost impossible to get movies and TV shows out of our heads because they so thoroughly dominate popular culture. So when you sit down to write, it’s exceedingly tempting to visualize it like a scene in the movies. But it’s also extremely dangerous.
Novels are wholly different beasts than movies. Treat your novel like a glorified screenplay at your peril.
Even a movie is not just dialogue
Novelists are not just screenwriters. They’re also directors, actors, sound engineers, cinematographers, key grips, best boys… you get the idea.
As I pointed out in an interview with my friend Natasa Lekic, authors who write with film in mind often focus overwhelmingly on the dialogue. They construct scenes around two characters engaging in oh-so-witty banter with few other storytelling cues. If the characters don’t say it out loud in these kinds of novels, it’s almost like nothing else can happen.
But when authors do this, it means they’re not even taking advantage of all the things viewers are absorbing as they’re watching a TV show. Actors’ facial expressions and gestures, their vocal inflections, the setting, sound effects and music and countless other small sources of input. Reduce a movie to simply disembodied words, and you’d have a really banal experience.
At minimum, it’s up to writers to set the scene, to give good nonverbal cues, to articulate the physical action, and create a full picture of what’s happening, immersing the reader in all the senses.
But even just approximating film craft on the page falls short of novels’ full capabilities.
Novels are about why and how characters do what they do
Film and TV are visual and auditory mediums. As viewers, we absorb.
Novels are a mind-meld medium. As readers, we co-create.
Think about what’s happening when we read a novel. We attach ourselves to a perspective created by an author using some esoteric ink splotches on paper and fall into a trance where we’re both ourselves and not ourselves. Anything we visualize as readers arises in our own heads and is informed by our own experiences. Millions of people have read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and no two readers “see” the exact same wardrobe. It’s weird!!
Because of the nature of the medium, readers are much more intimately connected with characters’ minds in novels than they are in movies. Not only because we can delve into their thought processes to a vastly greater degree than movies, but because readers are literally constructing an entire world in their heads around the narrator’s point of view.
Why characters are doing what they’re doing matters so much more in novels than they do in movies due to this process of co-creation. We’re way more attuned to whether the world we’re constructing makes any sense! We attach to what characters want, which helps us wrap our mind around the story and helps us contextualize why characters are doing what they’re doing.
To be sure, motivations and the stakes matter in filmmaking, but it’s just not the same. In a movie, we will happily watch action stars do things that make absolutely no sense when you stop and think about them, or watch breathlessly as a beautiful actor simply mopes around.
Good luck making that work in a novel.
Even dialogue-heavy novels need novelistic craft
Yes, there are writers as varied as Colleen Hoover, Elmore Leonard, and Hilary Mantel who have written dialogue-centric novels. It’s absolutely possible to construct a novel that employs more than its fair share of talking. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu even includes sections that are literally constructed as a screenplay.
They’re still skilled novelists at the end of the day and take full advantage of the medium. Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman is famously constructed nearly entirely around dialogue and has no narrative voice. But look how it starts off. Does this sound like anything other than a novel to you?
–Something a little strange, that’s what you notice, that she’s not a woman like all the others. She looks fairly young, twenty-five, maybe a little more, petite face, a little catlike, small turned-up nose. The shape of her face, it’s…more roundish than oval, broad forehead, pronounced cheeks too but then they come down to a point, like with cats.
Dialogue-heavy novels tend to have an economy of physical description and narrative voice, but they still give readers enough cues to visualize scenes and understand motivations. The storytelling essentials are all present.
Great writers who dial up the dialogue tend to just be adept at sneaking the other elements in.
If you’re going to draw upon movies, think cinematically
Of course movies can be an inspiration for the way you write. It’s inevitable. But if you’re going to incorporate some movie tropes, think less about the dialogue and more about physical actions, immersing the reader within a scene, and keeping us attuned to motivations.
In other words, think cinematically.
One of my favorite series of scenes in a YA novel is in Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park. In the opening stages of the novel, the two eponymous protagonists oh so gradually escalate their relationship over the course of several morning bus rides largely without talking to each other at all. Instead, they’re simply sharing comics back and forth, then sharing music.
What’s important about these scenes are the gestures, those little physically acted moments. Park holding open his comics so Eleanor can see them, Eleanor showing interest and moving a little closer, escalating to sharing music.
Don’t think solely about what characters are saying, think much more about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
Remember that novels are about characters moving through the world, even if it’s just an interior world. It’s about motivated characters trying to get what they want, even if that’s just making sense of their constraints. Even dialogue in novels should be more about doing than simply saying.
Have you noticed your novels veering toward screenplays? How do you avoid movies getting in your head?
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MARCH 19, 2015
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Art: French photographer in old Yokohama by Yoshikazu Utagawa
This is very eye-opening to me. When I read a book, it plays like a movie in my head. When I write, I also see a movie, but your points will help me delve into it more… Always learning!
Love this advice! I like to read screenplays to remind myself how little dialogue is required to complete a scene–and what a load a few carefully chosen spoken words can carry. But you're right–the novelist has to provide a full range of clues to help the reader experience the word-bound story.
Excellent post! And the fun of it is that in a sense we novelists get to be the actors, directors, choreographers and even composers for our scenes, as well as the writers.
This was great! I got a chance to see Rainbow Rowell in person at YallFest a few months back and she went into detail about that very scene. Her editor and agent Sarah Burnes were there as well discussing the back back and forth of the revisions.
Are there any exercises you could recommend to help with this?
The best films depend on visual.
The best novels depend on narrative.
Good dialogue simply adds to both.
But I also think dialogue can be used as a tool…to show, to tell, and to tie things up in a tricky way readers don't normally notice.
I'd love to see you do a follow up post on "said bookisms," Nathan. You did one once that was excellent, and yet I still see so many painful dialogue tags and people who truly do not know the difference. It's embarrassing for them sometimes, because they don't know the difference and they seem so confident. It's like watching someone who thinks he can dance.
That Eleanor & Park bit is a really good example. That was some lovely relationship building going on there. And I appreciate you making me think about this. Screenplays can be kind of boring to write because you can't pull all the cool stuff in.
I was an assistant movie editor in the early 1980s, just out of film school, so I am ALWAYS worried my writing is too screenplay-ish! When writing narratively, I try to think like a cinematographer and and editor, and not so much like a screenwriter. That helps a lot.
Thanks for this, Nathan. Sometimes when I'm writing I have to remind myself that the only person who can see into my head is me (probably just as well!) and when I'm visualising a scene it's the small, unique to character gestures and emotions that should be on the page and experienced by the reader.
"If you're going to draw upon movies, think cinematically and not screenplay-y."
Love this! I try to actively involve myself in local writer's groups and some online critique groups and I feel like I see this a lot. However, I've always had trouble wording the issue concisely. Thanks!
Thank you for this – great comments! What does have me a little lost is that a common critique of my writing has been 'show, don't tell' – always said in a vague term without giving me specific examples from my work so I know which parts are 'too much tell' and need to be made into more show. When I asked someone to help me identify the parts in my writing that have too much tell, I was directed to a discussion which stated that anything that can be seen through a movie lens is 'show' and anything that couldn't be seen through a movie lens is 'tell.' Which is basically the exact opposite of what you're saying here, because in order to 'show, don't tell' I would have to write it as if it's a movie! Any help on distinguishing the difference? Thank you!!!
Screenplays must rely on only two senses: sight and sound. Novelists have the advantage of being able to use all senses.
Thank you for this post. "When you're writing a novel, you have to describe the interior and provide all five senses for the reader" – so true. And I often fall to the temptation of focusing on dialogue and not providing enough details to set the scene.
I completely agree with you about the finished product. But everybody has to find their own way through the first draft. For an auditory processor like me, starting with visuals/action is white-screen-hell because I literally can't see anything until I've *heard* what's happening. Dialogue can be a useful way to sketch. Then you chop it out and replace with action when you can see it.
To my way of thinking, if you're dialogue-heavy, it's not that you did it wrong, it's that you aren't finished yet.
ah… Thank you! It was so interesting to read this — because I feel like I over-rely on dialogue..
I gotta say I think it’s kinda cunty that for all of the praise and adornment coupled with as many question, Nathan has taken no time to respond to or even say thanks. In his defense I’ll add the article is somewhat new having only been written on March 19th 2015. (three years ago) The in all fairness he’s likely to busy helping others chase their dreams.
Bad day, Joe?
Nathan, my thoughts. I think ‘Two people simply talking can be interesting on the page.” Barry Gifford can write great (short) novels like Sailor and Lulu that are 99 percent dialog. Wyoming was ALL dialog, but not as good as the Sailor novels, granted. When I read I often skip ahead to the dialog. Especially if the in between stuff is dull. It’s like, come on, get to the speaking part. I also enjoy reading screenplays like In Bruges or plays like True West, so maybe I just don’t need the other stuff.