Screenplay or novel

When should a story be written as a novel and when as a screenplay?

Since I am working on several different screenplay treatments, I wanted to address this question.

The first “Do Ask Do Tell” book does provide a long autobiographical narrative over several decades, with each chapter basically corresponding to a period of history and a particular issue. The episodes follow a certain logic that links them together that in some ways is like a novel, although there is not the rooting interest and continuous buildup of tension that one expects in “breakout fiction.” The second DADT book was written as a followup to 9-11, and is more a loose set of essays to address certain policy problems. I did not really get to work on serious screenplay ideas until 2002 (although I had sketched a couple on the earlier version of this website as early as 2000).

The material invites treatment from the perspective of other people. For example, one treatment is from the point of view of a younger man who would question my motives and then find he can use them for his own purposes. Another would be a round-robin treatment of several characters in “Robert Altman” fashion. In some cases it is better to suggest, rather than explicitly state, a psychological concept with the visual opportunities in film, so this goal suggests that a screenplay is more appropriate for first publication than a novel.

Both a novel and a film should have a "plot kernel" or logline that summarizes the story, a central problem or situation around which ideas develop. In a film there is sometimes more abstraction and more meaning in the visual messages that may accumulate in a non-linear fashion.

But a novel is appropriate when one wants to give detailed explanations, built up over many characters and chapters, about how some kind of challenge to the characters or to civilization itself could unfold. One wants a few characters with compelling goals that relate to the external and history-changing events. But one also provides detailed explanations and narratives of the characters' motives and actions, rather than just suggesting them in images.

Literary agents and screenplay doctors make a lot of the "rules": both a novel and a screenplay should have something like a three-act structure, with points of no-return for the characters and "points of recognition." There should be some kind of plot payoff at the end that reveals something existential. But in a spec script (speculative screenplay, to be offered into coverage for possible sale), the action and dialogue should focus on the characters and story in straightforward fashion. The script reader needs to be able to follow the "story" readily. Generally, specific descriptions (especially about locations, or about characteristics of the characters) should be bare-bones and limited to what carries the story. The writer may want to keep other notes about how he or she feels that the movie should be directed in a separate file or database product. Some screenwriting software is starting to offer the ability to make other notes, in an area separate so that scriptreaders do not get distracted by what to them are irrelevant or personal-preference details.