What’s the difference between writing a screenplay for a movie and writing a novel?  Many of my friends and writers think if you can do one, the other is easy.  Not true.  Here are some differences:

1.  Length.  A novel can be anywhere from 180 pages to 400.  Most popular novels today are about 300 pages long.  (This is dictated because of costs.  Trade novels sell for about $15.  When the costs are subtracted from the sale price, in order to make a profit, the number of pages must be about 300)  Screenplays are exactly 120 pages.  Each page represents one minute of film time.  So, if the movie is 120 minutes long, (the average) the screenplay must be 120 pages.

2.  Novels can explore interior thoughts, motivations, and can explain things to the reader.  Screenplays don’t.  They give dialogue (like novels), stage directions, and brief comments about the interior thoughts of characters.  (Jim was furious, for instance)  It’s up to the actors to supply the interior thoughts and motivations during the filming of the screenplay.

3.  Novels can explore both plot and character.  Although screenplays introduce character by what they characters say, screenplays focus on plot—what happens from scene to scene.  Again the actors fill-out the personalities of the characters.

Are novels easier to write?  I write novels and still think screenplays are more difficult.  Of course, they’re shorter, but that creates the difficulty—the screen writer must convey lots of information in a lot fewer pages.

The skills for each type of writing are different.  And screenplays are a lot harder to sell, believe me.  I hired a screenwriter to adapt my first novel, Reprisal, into a screenplay.  We’ve been trying to sell it since 2011.  In the meantime, I’ve had four more novels published.

Next time you watch a great movie, think about the work that went into writing the screenplay for what you enjoy so much.