Living the Fictional Dream

Have you ever gotten a story idea that would be better in a different venue than your usual medium?

When I write, it’s short stories or novels, definitely prose. I wrote a screenplay once for a class during graduate school, and it was fun, but it’s not my usual thing. But every once in a while, I will get this “brilliant” idea that wouldn’t work well as prose, but would look great on screen.

I’ve had a plot bunny floating around for a year or so for a romantic comedy. The idea would be crap as a novel, but as a 2-hour movie, I think it would be great. It could star John Cusak and Amy Adams and pull the audience in with quick scenes and witty banter.

Too bad screen writing is such a crazy business. My understanding is that you can’t really break into it unless you’re in Hollywood and have an agent to book you pitch sessions with studios. And, also, probably more importantly, as I learned back in graduate school, writing screen plays is not really my thing. I’m not good at cut scenes, transitions, or even the really strict format that you have to use.

Also, I think horror is a really challenging genre to write. Not gross-out horror, but suspense. A lot of my favorite suspense and horror stories take place on the screen, where you have music and visuals to get that creepy feeling across.

Now, I’m not saying that horror can only be written for screen. The best sellers of Stephen King would prove me wrong there. But I guess writing horror is just not something I’m talented at. I can see this idea that I have for a scary story, but I don’t know how to write it as prose. It needs to have shadows that the watcher can see in the background and ample opportunity for the evil supernatural creatures to pop up for a big scare. It would make a great episode of a show like Supernatural.

The easy answer to this conundrum would be for me to try my hand at writing for the screen sometime. It might not go anywhere, but one never knows. And maybe while writing the screenplay, I would realize that I could actually write the story in prose instead and have my first best seller ready to go (yeah, right!).

If I had the time, I think I might do that. It would definitely be a stretch for me writing-wise. Maybe I could even do Script Frenzy, which is put on by the people behind NaNoWriMo. Sadly, the time for something like that will be a long time coming, though. If I have any writing time these days, it’s gotta be devoted to all of my regular writing. I don’t have enough time for that right now, much less random experiments.

However, it is fun to think about. And it is interesting when my brain decides to take a flight of fancy and go off in a new direction. I look forward to the day when I can follow that direction for a while and see where it leads.

Have any of the rest of y’all out there (oh, my dozen blog readers!) ever tried your hand at something really different from your normal style? Do you ever get the wild hair to write screenplays or poetry or just something entirely different from your writing bread and butter?