Just a few scattered thoughts....From what I dimly remember, screenwriting tends to lean heavily on the structure of three (or four) acts: setup, rising action, TWIST in act II, obstacle, disaster, denouement/resolution, &c &c. I haven't read Save the Cat but the MCU movies are good examples of conventional screenwriting storytelling. With the Avengers (2012), you have the opening exposition setting up the initial Macguffin and drawing them all together, the rising action of fighting Loki, TWIST when Coulson dies and there's an even bigger threat on the horizon of the space invasion, team comes all together now for the final fight, heroes win! hurrah. Writing for US movies is really formulaic and strict, writing for US TV even moreso. (William Gibson compared writing his X-Files episode to being assigned a sonnet.) Joss Whedon also used the structure of 1) established group has conflict 2) group is torn apart by so-called "Little Bad," estrangement ensues 3) group rallies to fight off "Big Bad" repeatedly in his TV shows, especially Buffy. I don't think a lot of people study screenplays on their own, but a lot of writers have absorbed the grammar of screenwriting from TV and movies.
In contrast, structure in fiction seems to have nearly infinite possibilities, unless someone's deliberately writing in a genre format, which doesn't tend to be as strict as screenwriting but as far as I can tell still depends on those narrative beats. I think you're right on that thrillers and other fast-paced books tend to have shorter chapters and even sentences. (Jonathan Kellerman, who writes that wildly popular long-running Alex Delaware series, sometimes almost lapses into sentence fragments. So does Stephen King.)
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yati
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Date: 2020-08-25 05:50 pm (UTC)In contrast, structure in fiction seems to have nearly infinite possibilities, unless someone's deliberately writing in a genre format, which doesn't tend to be as strict as screenwriting but as far as I can tell still depends on those narrative beats. I think you're right on that thrillers and other fast-paced books tend to have shorter chapters and even sentences. (Jonathan Kellerman, who writes that wildly popular long-running Alex Delaware series, sometimes almost lapses into sentence fragments. So does Stephen King.)