Novelizing a Movie Never Made

Imagining a story as a movie is much more exciting than imagining a literate exposition. I love the way words can weave details with commentary to form a rich tapestry, but I find wordsmithing can digress from the storyline, a considerable hazard.

Therefore, I'm attempting a fusion between the two forms, first writing a screenplay, or at least the treatment for a screenplay, in order to chart the story spine, and then writing the novel. I might in some cases follow this plan scene by scene, so that what happens in the story, and the meaning of that action, remain connected.

I don't know how anybody else works, and I don't care to find out. Creative workflow solutions are idiosyncratic.

What this amounts to is a novelization of a movie that will never be made.

Much of the inspiration for this approach came from the extras on the Harry Potter movie Blu-ray discs, where J.K. Rowling and Steve Kloves discuss their creative relationship. She had final approval of all divergences from her novels, and Kloves had great discretion in proposing changes. They trusted each other.

Having read all the books at least twice, and having seen all the movies at least three times, after viewing these extras I went back to some of the books and some of the movies for another look. This experience could be interpreted as a case study in the differences between novels and movies, but I took it as a lesson in the complimentarity of these two forms. To me this could be the foundation for a working method if the order of the tasks were flipped.

I think some scenes in the movies were better handled than they were in the books, and would have worked better if originally written that way. They were cleaner and more dramatic, tying into story and character themes better.

A movie must get to the action quickly and stay with that action relentlessly. A movie is like white water rafting; you hang on for a wild ride. A novel allows the reader to drift contemplatively upon slack water and take side trips up slot canyons. These digressions can prove relevant to how the characters experience the story, if the story spine is well defined. Eventually, the characters are back in the raft, sliding fast down the tongue of the rapids, beating hard against the overwhelming waves of fate, trying to control their destiny.

What I hope my amalgamated method will accomplish is a story flow that can be enriched with observations.