Musicians often limber up by playing music different from what they’re used to. It keeps them fresh, gives them a new perspective on what they’re doing. Novelists can do the same thing–limber up by trying different forms of storytelling.
I’ve recently done this, and enjoyed it immensely. Here’s what I tried and how I felt about each.
Flash fiction. These are very short stories, usually 500 words (around two double-spaced pages) or less. It’s extremely challenging to find a small gem of an idea and develop it in so few words. It’s also a good exercise in boiling a story down to its essence. Here are two of the stories I came up with:
I wrote suspense/mystery flash stories because that’s what my novels are, but I plan to leave my comfort zone and try other kinds of flash fiction as well.
Screenplays. I recently collaborated with producer/director Billy Tooma, owner of Icon Independent Films, on Seeking Nirvana, a screenplay about the rocky relationship between a literary agent and his top client, a brilliant young novelist. I learned a lot writing this screenplay. First of all, the dialogue I’m used to writing in my novels doesn’t fly in a screenplay. Less is more, and I learned to my surprise that in a movie, more is said with action than with dialogue. My dialogue was stagey and too long. I also tried to learn but still haven’t mastered screenplay format. It’s (to my mind) incredibly complicated, and it hampered my creativity enough so that when I wrote the first draft of the screenplay, I used my own simplified format. Obviously, since a film is completely visual, there’s none of the interior stuff we’re used to putting in our novels. It’s all exterior, and you have to find new ways of saying things and getting information to the viewer. One unexpected bonus was that I got to appear in the film. Watch for me–I’m Harvey Kramm, a desperate author trying to get the agent to represent him!
Plays. Play format is far easier than screenplay format, refreshingly simple. There’s far less stage direction, so that you’re working almost entirely with dialogue. Extremely challenging. Less is more–leave a lot to the director’s interpretation. I wrote a mystery/suspense play (again, within my comfort zone) called The Station, and to my amazement it was accepted by a one-act festival for this summer. I couldn’t be more excited . . . and I’m already noodling with a new idea for another one-act. If you’re in North Jersey, come to a performance in late July/early August and say hello!
Have you tried limbering up by venturing into a new storytelling form? The results can be gratifying and exciting.
