Screenwriting Goes Mainstream

A changing of the guard has occurred in fiction writing. The novel has been replaced as the king of writing aspiration by the screenplay. Where once an entire generation of aspiring fiction writers were writing novels, and hoping to see them published, now, increasingly the aspiring fiction writer is not hoping to publish a novel, but to sell a movie script.

Playwriting has always held an appeal for some fiction writers, but not to the extent that the novel once did. The playwriting community has pretty well constantly been centered in New York, the theater capital of the United States, and perhaps this geographic reality had a limit on the number of potential playwrights. Additionally theater, certainly in years past, didn't have the same perception of importance that novel writing did. A great novel could win a Pulitzer, after all.

Then the screenplay came along. The watershed event in screenwriting's popularity may have been the publishing of the book "Screenplay" in 1979. "Screenplay", written by so-called screenplay guru Syd Field, is a how-to book about writing screenplays, and is probably the first ever book of its kind. "Screenplay" explained a process for writing screenplays, and the book proved to be a phenomenal success. Before "Screenplay" was published, the art and technique of screenwriting was known only to those in the entertainment industry, writers specifically. After "Screenplay" was published, anyone who wanted to learn to write a screenplay could, presumably, just read Syd Field's book.

But "Screenplay" caused debate. Firstly, a number of screenwriting professionals disagreed completely with Syd Field's diagnosis of how screenplays are written. Some also noted that Syd Field didn't have any screenplay credits. He was teaching a trade that he himself had apparently never professionally accomplished. Perhaps as a critical response to Field's book, perhaps just as a means of cashing in on a new niche, a slew of screenwriting books followed "Screenplay" into the market. And the genie was forever out of the bottle.

Screenwriting is probably the most popular form of all fiction writing. People everywhere, in every remote corner, are writing screenplays. Screenwriter gatekeeping has even become an industry itself, through screenplay contests and other methods. And the novel? The novel continues on, to be sure. But aspiring fiction writers in fewer and fewer numbers are attempting to do novel work. The positive in this, of course, is that the market for novel writing has cleared. It may just be the perfect time to see a novel get published.