Earlier this week I wrote about outlining and the preparation that goes into building each scene/chapter/arc brick by brick in order to create a rich, layered novel, something I hope comes across in the finished product of everything I produce. Outlining, for me, is a sense of freedom, the ability to let anything happen and then piece it together, hacking and slashing until it makes some form of sense. It is one of my favorite parts of the process. My other favorite and one I have done for every project since college is scripting.

Scripting? Is this necessary?

No. But then nothing is necessary until it becomes part of your process. I went to school for screenwriting and playwriting. Dialogue is my go to strength when putting together a story. There is an art to it, sitting and listening to the way conversation is held between people. When you reach for something to say, fighting the urge to say something because you know you’ll be heading into a darker place or unknown territory. The distinction between having a chat with a family member or a talk with a friend. The way conversations change depending on setting, time of day, mood, etc.

I love thinking about everything involved.

But is it necessary? No. Is it fun? Hell, yeah.

How can scripting help?

It runs the same as the outline phase. Preparation makes or breaks some books. Most people think preparation denotes research and to some extent it does, sure. But one doesn’t just sit down at the keyboard and go, at least in my experience. The roadmap mentioned previously is required.

Scripting adds the next layer to that roadmap. Scripting adds context to the scene. It adds tension. It makes you pull apart the actions and the staging set up during the plot breakdown and think about the players involved. What is being said here? What HAS to be said here to advance the action? Where are the characters in their individual arcs? Does that play a role here? By thinking through each question and by piecing together the necessities and the subtext, you can add to the scene. Through dialogue you essentially revise your first pass, your outline, into a stronger, more cohesive journey for you and your characters.

Preparation = success.

Objectives when scripting

I have a simple process when it comes to scripting a novel.

• Print out the Outline/Plot Breakdown
• Go through and note every scene that requires NO dialogue. This requires some thought on the objectives of the scene and what is needed. With each chapter you start to build the image in your mind, coming back to that perfect image at the start of the process.
• Go through each again for the little touches. Some scenes have dialogue but it isn’t conversation. It is the musings of a lone figure, possibly the ramblings of a sociopathic villain. It could be pages of a soliloquy or a single line acting as a cliffhanger. (i.e. Loren investigates an seemingly empty warehouse and comes across a body. He crouches down to investigate and hears a noise behind him. He spins and yells “Holy sh–“) Boom. Dialogue down to one and a half words. Image being built and cliffhanger in place. “Mission completion” as they say in Little Einstein’s.
• From here there are any number of ways to go. Typically by this point you are so engrained in your story that you can pick any scene and script it. Sometimes I follow character arcs. Sometimes action scenes or connecting scenes. Rarely do I tackle things in a linear fashion. Too constricting, though it would save time in the long run from coming up with a genius bit of dialogue in Chapter Six being reinforced in a scene written weeks earlier in Chapter Eighty-Two. Can’t win them all.

Putting it all together (so far).

After you’ve checked off every chapter with your script it is time to put it all together. I use Scrivener but I used to use Final Draft. Both are great programs for typing up scripts, though Final Draft has way more functionality. (There are only so many times I want to type character names and Final Draft remembers them as you go. Very nice feature.)

Because I handwrite the dialogue in the first go around now it needs to be typed. I do this for two reasons. The first is for flow. Typing can feel like a burden sometimes. I want everything perfect without keeping a finger over the back space button all the time. Writing it out longhand allows me to stay in the moment and keep up with my thoughts without censoring myself. It is also easier to visualize on paper rather than scrolling up and down all the time.

The second reason, and the most important one, is that by handwriting I am forced to go through everything again when I type it up. It gives me a second pass to clean up and tighten up speeches and conversations. When I go through the beats to the scene sometimes I realize how much dialogue is completely unnecessary to the moment and can toss it out. Sometimes I figure out the best way to start the chapter is with dialogue and lead with it. Other times I realize I need to start the chapter later or my readers will get bored hearing how the weather is in Portents. (It’s miserable. Always.)

Multiple passes through scenes strengthen them in preparation for the first prose draft. Exactly where you need everything to be strongest to save your sanity during the editing phase.

Trust me.

Thanks for reading.