From Script to Scream: How Filmmaking Informed My Horror Fiction
Writer, actor, and director Brian Asman shares how the screenwriting and filmmaking has informed his horror fiction in positive ways.
I never planned to be a screenwriter.
Honestly, I never planned to be a director or producer, either. I loved drama class in high school (shout out to Mr. Rickel!), but acting for a living seemed about as impossible as playing in the NFL. I’ve always loved movies—which I’m realizing sounds like a banal dating profile statement a la “I’m a foodie” or “travel is my passion”—but I never actually thought I’d make them myself.
When I was growing up, making movies, books, or comics for a living seemed like an impossible dream. Sure, I dabbled with writing stories, and I even made a short film in high school—a thinly-veiled rip-off of Clerks called “Carousel,” about a depressed and tyrannical amusement operator with a substance abuse problem.* But that didn’t feel like a real short film, nor did the stories I wrote feel like real stories. Now, the worst thing you can do as an artist is question the legitimacy of what you’re producing, if it even is art, but I wouldn’t learn that for a long time.
The point is, filmmaking never felt like a viable path for me, so I spent my 20s doing stupid things I didn’t really enjoy because they sure passed the time, didn’t they?
The thing that got me into filmmaking was actually horror fiction. I’d gotten pretty serious about writing prose and had a few small successes, so I applied to grad school at UCR-Palm Desert, hoping to hone my craft. The only problem was, you couldn’t just write fiction. You had to pick a “cross,” sort of like a minor. So I said what the heck, let’s try this screenwriting thing.
My professor, Joshua Malkin, and I immediately hit it off. He’s a horror nerd and co-wrote Cabin Fever 2, amongst other projects. While the idea of learning the screenwriting format seemed super complicated, I was game to give it a shot.
This is probably the part where you’re expecting me to say, writing scripts isn’t easy, but I never thought it would be. There’s a reason why it’s such a hyper-selective field, to the point where you can even earn a living as a screenwriter and still not get anything made.
They don’t call it Hollyweird for nothing, right?
I don’t think any kind of writing is easy, but there’s degrees of difficulty. If you have more constraints format-wise, that ups the difficulty level. See, in a novel you have the advantage of interiority. You can convey thoughts and feelings in a straightforward manner. In film, you don’t have that same advantage. You can use a voiceover to similar effect, sure, but VO can be cliche or even passe depending on who you talk to. It can be a crutch.** You have to think of new, creative ways to convey things to the audience without simply telling them.
Writing movie scripts was like learning to walk all over again. Instead of just riffing, like I do when I’m writing prose, I had to write with intent. I needed to take a second and picture the scene in my mind.
Eventually, I got the hang of it. Enough that a movie I co-wrote actually got made*** and a short film I wrote and directed won a couple awards. Which is cool, but even cooler? I was able to take what I learned as a screenwriter back to my fiction. My prose is more visual. When I’m writing a scene in a novel, I tend to picture it as a movie scene in my head. What the characters look like, what they’re doing, each action, even if I’m not writing it down per se (there’s only so many times a person can nod, right?). And it’s paid off wonderfully. One of the most common things I hear from readers—besides what’s wrong with you—is that my work is “cinematic.”
Pretty neat, for sure.
The other interesting change I noticed was that I got much better at plotting. Pre-grad school, I was a confirmed pantser. I liked to feel my way through each book. While some books can get away with being more mood or voice pieces, depending on the genre, a screenplay is a precision instrument, part work of art in and of itself, but primarily a blueprint that directors, actors, editors, stunt people, visual effects artists, set dressers, and all the rest can build upon. Architects can’t improvise their way through a building design, and screenwriters can’t improvise their way through a script, or the whole thing will fall apart.
Writing screenplays forced me to practice plotting. Now, when I’m planning a book, I’m doing so much more intentionally, thinking through beats and arcs and individual scenes, making sure the whole thing hangs together before I type “Chapter 1.” And for my fellow pantsers out there, this has not diminished the sheer fun I have writing prose one iota. In fact, it’s made writing a less anxious experience. I know exactly where the story’s going next, which frees me up to discover all the strange and wonderful sights to see in between.
So no, I never thought I’d be a screenwriter. And I certainly never imagined that screenwriting would inform my fiction to the degree it does. Which is funny, because when you’re in any creative field, imagination is your bread and butter. Finding new ways to use your imagination, new ways to express your creativity, doesn’t just open potential paths you never dreamed possible.
It also makes the journey along the one you’re already on that much more interesting, and that much more fulfilling.
*****
*I had smoked approximately 3 pots at this point in my life and absolutely hated alcohol. Boy, have times changed!
**Morgan Freeman excepted
***A Haunting in Ravenwood, available on Amazon
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