Adapting the Screenwriting Paradigm to a Novel By Lynn-Steven Johanson

I have worked in various areas of theatre most of my life, primarily as a director and later as a playwright. In the early 2000’s, I began to experiment with writing screenplays and wrote two crime dramas. Both did well in screenwriting contests, but I concluded that if I didn’t live in Los Angeles and schmoose with the right people, selling one would be next to impossible. So, I chalked up the writing to a good learning experience, and both scripts languished in a database on my hard drive.

 

What does this have to do with writing a novel, you may ask? Well, I mentioned to my wife one day that I had dried up on ideas for a new play, and she suggested adapting one of my screenplays into a novel. I scoffed at the idea saying, “I can’t write anything that long.” I eventually went on to write a few more plays. Then, a couple years later, I hit another dry spell and remembered what she said about writing a novel.

 

I pulled up what I considered the better of the two screenplays and looked at the first scene. Throwing caution to the wind, I wrote the narrative and expanded the dialogue. The result was chapter one. I handed the draft to my wife and had her read it because I trusted her opinion. A former English teacher, Joyce consumes at least one novel a week, and her favorite author is Dick Francis, who wrote some great mysteries. Her response was, “Keep going. I’ve read worse.” With those words of encouragement, I continued adapting scenes into chapters, and about six months and thirty-six chapters later, I had the first draft of Rose’s Thorn. Following numerous revisions, a fruitless search for an agent, and a few publisher inquiries, Rose’s Thorn was picked up by Level Best Books and published in March 2020.

 

I didn’t have the luxury of having a screenplay to adapt for my second novel, Havana Brown. I had to write it from scratch. But being a person who needs structure, I decided to adapt the screenwriting paradigm espoused by Syd Field in his book, The Screenwriter’s Workbook, into a structural paradigm for a novel. Now, some people swear by Field’s book and some people swear at it. Personally, I happen to like it because I used his paradigm for writing my two screenplays.

 

What this paradigm does for a novel is to break it down into a three-act structure. As Syd Field defines it for the screenplay: Act I is the setup, Act II is the confrontation, and Act III is the resolution. At the end of Act I, a major story event needs to take place, and at the end of Act II, another major event needs to happen. Since Act II is twice as long as Act I and Act III, a midpoint needs to be established that acts as a link to connect the first half and the second half of the confrontation. This link can be an incident, an event, a piece of dialogue, or anything that directs the second half of the confrontation forward toward the resolution. Now, keep in mind the events in this paradigm are fluid and subject to change as you write. While the paradigm structure itself doesn’t change, the events often will.

 

Without giving too much away about Havana Brown, the paradigm works like this: Act I (74 pages in length) ends with plot point one which is the detective noticing pet hair on a particular individual; the Act II (136 pages) midpoint at page 143 is the killer committing a minor traffic violation; and Act III (41 pages) begins at page 211 with plot point two, which is the murder of a person close to the detective.

 

The rest of the events in the story are constructed in between these plot points. They are the incidents, clues, reveals, dead ends, red herrings, and all the other things writers of mysteries use to tell the story. Havana Brown has a main plot as well as two subplots. But the paradigm’s plot points focus only on the main plot—apprehending the serial killer.

 

I know that some writers are not like me and don’t require the kind of structure that I do. They can keep basic story ideas in their heads and write freely. I envy those people. But if you are like me and need to structure your novels ahead of time in some outline form, I recommend reading Syd Field’s book. Even if you write freely, the book is worth a read. I find getting different perspectives on craft is always important and thinking outside the box can add additional techniques to the writer’s tool chest.

 

Lynn-Steven Johanson is an award-winning playwright whose plays have been produced on four continents. Born and raised in Northwest Iowa, Lynn holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His most recent novel, Havana Brown, was released in May 2021, by Level Best Books. Lynn lives in Illinois with his wife and has three adult children. He is currently working on the third installment of his Joe Erickson Mysteries.