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  "path": "/screenplays-vs-novels",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-14T20:14:21.000Z",
  "site": "https://nofilmschool.com",
  "tags": [
    "Novel writing",
    "Prose",
    "Rhetorical devices",
    "Screenwriting advice",
    "Syntax",
    "Writing",
    "Screenwriting",
    "writing screenplays",
    "dialogue",
    "let the character speak",
    "action lines",
    "actions and dialogue",
    "format of a screenplay"
  ],
  "textContent": "\n\n\n\nIt is totally possible to move between writing screenplays and writing books, and many, many writers have done so. But to get good at it, you need to realize that the styles of writing are completely different, with different audiences and ultimately different uses.\n\nIf you've been a prose writer your whole life, don’t despair, and don't throw out everything you know. Your sense of rhythm and your ear for language will help you. But it serves you differently in film.\n\nIf you start your screenplay like you start your novel, there’s a chance no one will go past the first 10 pages. It applies both ways, too—if you try to write a book like a screenplay, the typical reader will be confused and wonder where all the internal stuff went.\n\nAvery Dohrmann's recent video dives into the topic. He talks about these writing types being two entirely different sports, although they both use the same “ball.” Watch the full thing here.\n\n## Dialogue Isn’t Writing, It’s Listening\n\nNovelists are trained to craft sentences. The written word in literature is called “prose.” It’s meant to be lyrical and interesting and emotional, and your syntax, rhythm, and rhetorical devices are valuable tools to a novelist.\n\nIn a film, the prose is dialogue. But those tools that novelist can use in their prose are often wrong for movie dialogue.\n\nDohrmann uses “anadiplosis” as his example, which is a rhetorical device where the last word of one clause opens the next. His example from _Star Wars_ : \"Fear leads to Anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.\"\n\nIt’s great syntax. And in anything but _Star Wars_ , it would probably be called overwrought dialogue. (But this is Yoda, so it’s fine.)\n\nWhen prose lives in dialogue, it can't be written the way a novelist writes a sentence. We don’t talk in prose. We talk in syntax, Dohrmann says.\n\nSyntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a language, mostly referring to word order and punctuation. For instance, in English, we typically follow a subject-verb-object pattern (“I went to the movies”). When we break syntax (like Yoda does), the sentence can feel a little odd, although we still understand it (“To the movies I went”).\n\nThat being said, real-life people often do break the rules of syntax, so realistic dialogue can, too. But you have to be aware of the rules first to break them.\n\nDohrmann's distinction is sharp. He says, \"Writers write prose first. Screenwriters find prose.\"\n\nYou don't engineer the rhythm. You let the character speak and then locate the rhythm and rhetorical devices underneath. If you force it, you hear the writer. If you find it, you hear the character.\n\n_Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back_ Credit: Lucasfilm\n\n## How to Find Dialogue\n\n“You need to understand syntax in order to write great dialogue, but you don’t need to start by writing in syntax,” Dorhmann says. “You just need to go back and make sure it’s there. If you start with syntax, it’s forced. If you go back, it’s natural.”\n\nWhat does it mean to let a character speak first and locate the syntax after?\n\nIt means drafting messily on purpose. Write the line the way a person would actually say it. Broken, incomplete, maybe wrong, maybe meandering. And then go back and hear what's underneath.\n\nThe rhetorical structure will be there if the character is alive. If it's not, forcing it in won't fix the character problem; it'll just disguise it with prettier sentences.\n\nThis can be the thing that separates writers who understand dialogue intellectually from those who write it well. Bad dialogue often still has good syntax, but no life behind it.\n\n## Don’t Show Off in Your Action Lines\n\nThe second place novelists get into trouble is in the lines between the dialogue.\n\nIn a novel, that's the “meat.” It’s the interiority that makes you want to read. You get into a character and learn their backstory because they happen to be thinking about it in a scene. This can go on for pages and pages.\n\nI just started a new sci-fi book about a doctor on a ship, and I learned all about how she comes from a wealthy space family but has chosen the life of a lowly medic, much to the consternation of her people. However, she’s on her last trip at the start of the story and plans to return to her parents, hat in hand.\n\nAll of this reflection happened in the beat where she was standing in front of a patient. Nothing was said out loud. Obviously, you can’t do that amount of exposition in one scene of a screenplay, not even with voiceover, because it would grind the pace to a halt. You want characters standing around 10 minutes? No.\n\nIn a screenplay, the instinct to get into every single detail will bloat your action lines and slow your read to a crawl.\n\nDohrmann says, \"When you're writing a screenplay—the absolute last thing you should think about is the lines between the lines.\"\n\nHe says a screenplay is a court transcript, not a journal. You need to establish what happened and move on.\n\nThis doesn't mean action lines don't matter. They do. But their job is clarity and momentum, not literary texture. If something can be cut and the story still moves, cut it.\n\nThe real story lives in your characters’ actions and dialogue. That’s the beautiful challenge of screenwriting. How can you show, not tell, all those little details you’ve built in your mind?\n\n## Format Is Important\n\nRemember, the format of a screenplay isn't arbitrary. All those white margins and short blocks are the document communicating something about how stories work on screen.\n\nA reader (or producer) skimming your script is clocking your instincts. Dense blocks of action prose signal that the writer hasn't yet made peace with the medium.\n\nThe novelist's job is to create a complete experience on the page. The screenwriter's job is to create a blueprint for one. Those are different goals, and the tools are different too. The sooner a writer internalizes that distinction, the cleaner their work gets.",
  "title": "Screenplays Aren't Novels, So Stop Writing Them Like They Are"
}