Posts tagged "Sid Kali"

When I Write a Novel or Screenplay I Write Alone

When I Write a Novel or Screenplay I Write Alone

When I write a novel or screenplay I write alone. I should be more accurate. I’m only working on writing my first novel. I love reading a good novel, so now I’m going to see if I can write a novel that doesn’t suck. Authors are rock stars in my eyes.

I’ve never had a writing partner to work with for any of the screenplays I’ve written. I usually have Slice of Americana Films Co-Producer Tim “Timbo” Beachum, my pops and a couple of friends read my first drafts.

They never hold back and are brutally honest if I wrote crap. Notes from people are a great help when writing. You might not always like the feedback, but it helps the entire creative process. Timbo’s notes are excellent because he’s a film editor and is already thinking of the cuts when I write a screenplay.

I’m not a musician, but writing for me reminds of “I Drink Alone – George Thorogood…

I drink alone, yeah

With nobody else

I drink alone, yeah

With nobody else

You know when I drink alone

I prefer to be by myself.”

Writing a novel is a brand spanking new creative adventure. I’m not starting with a clean story slate. Instead I’m turning a screenplay I wrote titled “Crazy Love Story” into a novel. Film financing has fallen through twice, once during preproduction – creative heartbreak.

I’m tired of the film financing dance for “Crazy Love Story” and no longer want to wait to share the story with people, so a novel doesn’t take film funding, only my time and desire to entertain readers. The upside is with a novel I don’t have to write with a film budget in mind.

I have a nasty habit of writing screenplays with budgets in mind because I don’t plan on trying to pitch a script to a studio or well-connected producer with deep pockets. I approach film investors outside of the entertainment business or write screenplays we can produce with in-house money. We fall into a strict film budget range as indie movie producers.

Writing a novel feels so free. I don’t feel like anyone is looking over my shoulder or I have to tame the story to fit a movie budget. I’m just alone writing and sharing a story I hope will entertain readers and leave them feeling they got their time and money’s worth.

Writing a novel is not easy. It’s a transition from screenwriting because in novels you have to describe every detail. In a screenplay you know movie viewers will see what actors, locations and action on screen will look like.

The novel format has my creative writing mind somewhat twisted right now, but two novel authors from Twitter shared great advice with me that made me feel I could really do this. Follow them. They’re George Pappas @GPWriter and Everett Powers @EvPowers

Before making movies or racy reality videos I fell in love with short story writing when I was in my wild younger days. It was a great release for me to write short stories despite whatever life situations I was dealing with. I never did anything with the short stories, but they did help me pursue screenwriting, filmmaking and now novel writing.

I’m glad there is the finished “Crazy Love Story” screenplay to help go off of while turning into a novel. One challenge is the screenplay was written as a shooting script and is only 58 pages long. There was going to be a lot of physical fight action, wild gun play, and sexy love scenes in the movie that didn’t require lots of dialogue.

Turning it into a novel is going to take much more description. Right now I’m taking the advice of authors George Pappas (MONOGAMY SUCKS and DEAR HEF) and Everett Powers (THE MIGHTY T and CANALS).

I’m not going to over think the format or editing at this first stage of novel writing. That will come later during serious story editing. Right now it’s about getting a very rough draft of the entire novel done. I’ve been working a good pace on “Crazy Love Story” novel. I’m trying to avoid going back as much as possible to rewrite what I’ve done the night before.

I’m letting words hit the page. At the end I’ll go back to rewrite, then edit. I work the same with screenplays pretty much. Except I do go back to look at what I wrote the night before when working on a screenplay, do a quick rewrite then move forward.

I honestly can’t say what will happen with this novel writing journey. I am enjoying the newness of novel writing. When “Crazy Love Story” novel is done I’m going to really hope that some of the filmmaking talent I’ve been lucky enough to work with Tim Beachum and U.K. filmmaker Wayne Daniells (LiarDice Films) can help with the artwork and book trailer in between indie film projects.

When the novel is done I want to market it like an indie film to get readers attention. Attention grabbing artwork and a book trailer. The cool creative dream would be that a studio bought the rights to adapt a novel based on an indie screenplay into a Hollywood script. This is indie filmmaker Sid Kali typing FADE OUT