Passage of time can be mind-numbing to figure out in a screenplay. It's the easiest thing to do in prose, not just by writing 'four years later', but you can shift time in a sentence or two.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
A period of time is as much an organising principle for a work of fiction as a sense of place. You can do geography, as Faulkner did, or you can dwell on a particular period. It provides the same framework.
I mean, the first 'Back to the Future' is kind of a perfect script, I think, in terms of handling time travel the best. It depends on your definition. To me, that means it effectively uses it in the story.
I think that all writing is in search of lost time. I'm starting to realise that very clearly.
It's been 25 years now, and truthfully, time sometimes blurs the memory.
It's a lot to expect of yourself, to write a novel in a year. Anyway, you don't write a novel, you write a scene, and then another scene.
If you're writing a novel, you're in a room for three or four years. There's not much coming in from the outside.
I think the reason I wrote screenplays for nearly a decade was because it was my territory. I could stake that out.
I feel like I don't understand time in novels, really. I bumble forward, is all.
I am really interested in the way we relate to time. In particular, the way readers and writers talk to each other. Casting your voice out into the future is very beautiful to me.
The way you write a screenplay is that you close your eyes and run the movie in your head and then you write it down.