At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea - which needs empty space in my head - is barely formed yet.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Really, when I write a book I'm the only one I have to please. That's the beauty of writing a book instead of a screenplay.
If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.
Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.
I always find the first thing that really bothers me when I start a screenplay is, I have to find a different form. You can't follow the form of the novel. It's a different thing completely. It's impossible. You just somehow have to find a structure for the whole thing. You have to crack that.
If you're writing a novel, you can afford to see where the spirit takes you, but in terms of structure and engineering with a screenplay, you have to be quite pragmatic; otherwise, it will run away from you.
I always write these movies that are far too big for any paying customer to sit down and watch from beginning to end, and so I always have this big novel that I have to adapt into a movie as I go.
I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it.
I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline.
I didn't know how to write a novel, so I sort of let it happen in waves. The only way I could write it was to think like scenes in a movie.
A novel, of course, is a fully self-contained work of art. You pick it up off the shelf, open it, and there it is - a whole universe waiting for you to enter. A screenplay is just a blueprint for making a movie. Until the movie is actually filmed, the script really means nothing.
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