When a Film Junkie Writes a Book
When I was a kid, my screenwriter father used to let me out of doing the dishes if I watched a classic movie of his choosing. As someone who always loved film, this was a no-brainer, even in my rebellious teen years. I can thank my dad for hours upon hours of dishes avoided as well as exposure to so many incredible films that many people my age have never had the chance to enjoy. By my late teens I’d seen movies from Bringing up Baby to Forbidden Planet, and from to Farewell My Lovely to Quest for Fire. My dad’s curation was always focused on strong storytelling as well as execution and he rarely set me up with a film that didn’t hold up.
I began writing short stories, poems, and plays early as well. I loved the idea of manifesting whole worlds from the imagination. Similar to my developing taste in movies, even some of my earliest stories had a dark slant to them. In middle school, I wrote a story about a teen dropout stripper who decided to cut town to escape her abusive step-father. My 7th grade teacher was impressed, but also slightly concerned. In high school I won second place in a short story contest with a vignette about a monster chasing a girl through the dark woods.
I found that most of my stories focused on setting, dialog and expressions of emotion. I always shied away from long internal monologues and feelings. Maybe that was because of my love for the medium of film, or maybe was because I didn’t have great access to that kind of fraught emotional content. Regardless, I always wanted to guide people through the story and let my audience assign value and meaning.
As I got older, my love for film deepened. I was drawn to the offbeat and dark, peppering in obscure titles with major blockbusters on my list of favorites. Even during my broke college days, I always splurged on movies. My mail box was crammed with red Netflix envelopes, back when they used to send you the DVDs by mail. I always made it a point to see a few movies a month in the theater, though I would always smuggle in my water bottle, sandwiches, and candy.
I always loved literature and was an avid reader, but there was something about the crisp and succinct demands of cinematic storytelling that captivated me. During my junior year, I switched my major from English to American Studies. That change allowed me to diversify my course load. I took film courses and a screenwriting class and thrived.
The Carver Breed, Page 1
For my thesis, I wrote a 60 page paper along with a full-length screenplay, The Carver Breed. It was a teenage murder mystery set in the nihilistic recession years of excess. I loved the process and swore that would be my first of many screenplays. I graduated in 2006, the year the market tanked. Rather than chasing my dream, I put my head down and started building a career. The Carver Breed sat on my shelf for years. I picked it up with every intention of rewriting it, but became fixated on the minor character of the small town detective. Sometime in mid 2009, the idea for a sci-fi detective movie started haunting me. This would become a ten year pattern. I kept pushing the idea down, it kept rearing back up.
In the summer of 2019, I decided that enough was enough. It was time to write the damn thing. I spent months mapping out the plot according to the classic three act structure (you can read about that insane process here). It got to the point where I could play this story out in my head like a movie. But I hesitated.
With a screenplay, every single scene has to be so tight and so focused on moving the story forward. While a book audience doesn’t mind a tangent into a field of wildflowers, a theater audience sure does. What is creative and exploratory in literature can become self-indulgent and boring on the screen. Beyond that, you’re not writing for the audience at the onset; you’re writing for the studios who decide whether to make your movie. A movie takes millions to make, and a sci-fi movie often takes hundreds of millions. They do not take the selection process lightly, and you’d be unwise to write as if they don’t factor in.
After months of fence sitting, I decided to write a novel. First, I’d have room to explore the world and the characters. I could build the suspense, chemistry, and conflict at my pace. Second, it would be a surefire way to get my story out into the world. Many a great script has been doomed to die because of a simple twist of fate on the business side. I wasn’t ready to take that risk.
So here I am. I’m 120 pages into the first draft of my novel. I’m pulling out all of the stops that I’ve learned from my dad, my college courses, and all of the screenwriting books I’ve devoured over the years. My structure is rooted in film practices, but now I have so much more room to play. I still dream of seeing this story playing out on the big screen some day, but taking a more winding path to get there. My debut novel may not be a hit out of the gates, but I have high hopes that people will flock to it for more once they see the movie.