What I learned writing a screenplay

(and how it might help you tell your own story)

Telling a story in an unfamiliar medium with constraints you’re not accustomed to is a common theme in business. You may be the best story teller in your circle/medium/genre but if you need to tell your story outside of that it can be a challenge, a learning experience, overwhelming or all three.

Here’s my experience in writing the screenplay for The Sword and the Sunflower and how it might help you tell your story in an unfamiliar medium.

Book vs. screenplay

A book is a self-contained personal connection between you and the reader. It allows you to intimately tell a story, brain-to-brain. There’s nothing in the way other than rules of style, fonts, the reader’s imagination, your ability to tell a story, etc.

Little things like that. But overall it’s a straightforward medium for those that enjoy exploring it.

You as the author have the ability to focus on whatever you deem important, with no constraints. If a brief moment in time that lasts only a few seconds is vital to understanding a character then you can spend pages upon pages dissecting, explaining, and experiencing.

The length of your novel is not predetermined. Yes, there is an accepted minimum for word/page count and a realistic maximum due to physical limitations for a book, but if it’s too short it becomes a novella or a short story. If it’s too long it becomes a duet, a trilogy, or a series.

Your style is yours—that is, while adhering to the elements of style, grammar, etc. My approach to dialogue is fairly unique and is a direct product of my reverence for it. But the reader can switch from your unique style to another author’s style. They may enjoy a story but really like the writing style. The opposite can also be true.

The Sword and the Sunflower – a quick recap

After writing for nonfictions I took a walk in a cemetery and had an unusually clear mind. There was not going to be a ‘next book’ but just a break from the writing. Then I heard the voices. not the voices of the dead, but the voices of a conversation between two people. I played it out and was really inspired. I hoped to see “that movie” one day but realized there was no such movie. The I realized I had to write it myself. I ran home, and wrote a poem, and this poem because the outline of the book. The Sword and the Sunflower is actually a duet (two books) with a third as a prequel explaining what happened in 1,000 years.

The screenplay

One of the most common comments I’ve received for The Sword and the Sunflower is that “this should be a movie.” I’d like to think it’s because of the vivid descriptions, the attention to realistic dialog, and the emotionally impactful settings. Maybe people just want that medium instead.

A medium I’m unfamiliar with.

So I decided to see what it would take to write the screenplay for at least the first book. This is where I experienced the confusion, the learning curve, the overwhelming sense of not getting it right, and slammed hard up against the very real constraints that a screenplay has over a manuscript.

Unlike a book

Unlike a book, there is a very real limit on how many pages a screenplay can be. Unlike a book, you are not free to just describe anything and everything you want to describe to insure that your audience gets it. Unlike a book, you don’t get to narrate to your audience (yes there are movies with narration but most are not done well and can take away from the story). In a book, the description of the character is controlled by you, but more so by the imagination of the audience. I’ve been told many times by readers who should play Stojan or Anastazja and the actors they choose look or behave nothing like them. But that was their imagination and experience.

Unlike a book, you are not talking to your audience at all, but instead to someone else. They in turn will speak to your audience on your behalf and introduce their own style, perceptions, strengths and weaknesses.

In a fiction book I can point your attention to a certain thing, place, scene or person’s face. If I try to do that in a screenplay it becomes something else—a spec script. And directors aren’t keen on you telling them what to do (unless you’re a screenwriter hired by them, and in many cases they do their own screenplays).

So you write a screenplay, in the only acceptable font, with the only acceptable line spacing, with the only acceptable tags and formatting and stay within the page limit, and leave a lot up to the imagination of the director, you trust that they will see your vision.

The lesson I learned

If that last line sounds a little familiar it’s because that’s what we have to do sometimes with our plans and our vision—we hand it off to someone and trust that it will be handled the way we would handle it. This is one of the biggest pitfalls of both creatives and solopreneurs—being able to let go of something enough to allow others to handle it. it applies to marketing, sales, distribution and more.

Let’s talk about this in the podcast, and afterwards we can chat more on Patreon.

If you’d like to get your own copy of The Sword and the Sunflower it’s available as an kindle, ebook, paperback, hardcover and audiobook. You can read reviews on Amazon as well as on the reviews page of MarkBradford.org

As far as the movie, you’ll have to wait and see…

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