"His airspeed nudged 450 knots as the line of destroyed vehicles came clearly into view. Maria was sure Mike was going to make a high speed pass over the site."
I noted the time to get out of the house and get to work wast fast upon me. As usual, I saved the file on my computer and emailed the updates to Ken and left for work. When I got there, Ken was at his desk and had merged the files from work done at our repective homes. He had added the line "She was wrong." to the last line I had written - exactly the same words I had planned. Spooky, but nice. We then went over the combined text, line by line, and polished the narrative and punched up the dialogue. We feel we get a better product when we edit our stuff together and can discuss dialogue verbally. Often we'll try five or six different lines aloud to see which retort has the right "ring" for the situation. Spoken dialogue is far different than most author's written prose. It is far more fragmented, shorter and usually doesn't include the names of the person addressed unless the situation is a conference room and a task is being assigned.
We have years of screenwriting experience and it helps when making the jump to novels. But the two venues are very different in form and intent. Novels must paint an eidectic picture the reader can create. Film provides the visual of the "who", "when" and "where". The screenplay provides the "what" they said and did. We took a 670 page single spaced novel and condensed it to 120 page double spaced screenplay.
But that is another story... until next time.
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