Some writers stick with a single form throughout their careers – short stories, novels, poems – others like to try different forms. I’m one of the latter, and the new look of my website is a way of underlining the creative change. For more than a year, I’ve been writing Hollywood-style screenplays.
UPDATE! Check out my first five screenplays.
Starting in 2021, I felt the energy slipping away from science fiction stories. Since 2008, I’d made climate change a main theme of my work after noticing that only a few writers had tackled it. I’ve published six novels, a novelette, and numerous shorts with climate change at least a major narrative thread. But the well of ideas gradually dried up, and I didn’t feel quite so passionate about it any longer.
How creative change happened
I was working with a character idea when I realized he might make a good protagonist in a detective story. However, I’d never written crime fiction or a mystery. But I’d read them, and I’d admired writers such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. I’d also loved noir detective movies, such as The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon, both with my favorite mid-20th century actors, Humphrey Bogart.
Why not write my own screenplay?
Awful writing experiments
That set me on the road, and I wrote my first blueprint for a movie. It’s called Doomer, and it’s awful. But like all good experiments, I learned a lot. As of today, I’ve written four screenplays, some with the help of AI, all with detectives or detective-like protagonists.
In the future, I’ll share more details of the screenplay process, particularly the adventure of attempting to sell a screenplay in a cutthroat world I know next to nothing about. And about an attempt to hedge my bets with novellas. And maybe even getting an award or two, now that I’ve picked up a second round placement in the 2024 Austin Film Festival screenplay competition. Woohoo!
If you’d like to follow my story, please subscribe to my blog and comment below.
12 responses to “Embracing Creative Change: Moving from Climate Fiction to Hollywood-Style Screenplays”
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