To novelize or not to novelize... that is A question

Roland from the UK had a follow-up question to the issue I addressed here, that I've been struggling with...

He asks: "Many of the movie ideas I have first come to me as longer stories more apt for the written page. Due to the time-intensive nature of writing long fiction, do you think it would be better to just write a long treatment and try to flog it for both screen and print at the same time, hope I get lucky with one aspect, and then make sure I get the rights for both? Or do you think it would be more ideal to focus my efforts on developing an idea through to the final product in one format, and worry about the other format later?"

I keep wrestling with this and coming back to the reality that it's hard to know what to tell you without knowing the idea or more about your process. Certain ideas lend themselves better to one medium than the other, and still others can be developed either way. As a wacky example of how this can play out in real-world Hollywood, the movie biz urban legend is that David Benioff first conceived of 25TH HOUR as a movie, then expanded it to a novel when he couldn't get it sold as a screenplay, and then later sold the book and got himself attached to develop it as a screenplay... which is what he'd wanted to do with it in the first place. Whether that story is true or not, it illustrates that even though the two mediums are so vastly different, writers have been moving back and forth between them succesfully for a long time. But since many of the best movies ever made were based on books, you didn't really need me to tell you that.

As far as securing the rights goes, it's fairly standard for novelists to get the first crack at adapting their book for the screen if they want to, so you don't have to worry about selling the book and then getting cut out of the process. If they want the book badly enough, they'll give you a shot at it first, knowing they can always hire a seasoned pro if you crap out on the first draft.

The two mediums are so different in terms of what you can do in them. Screenplay writing is SO much more constricting than novel writing... many times you can do things in books you could never do in a screenplay... like get inside a character's head, for instance. I've long suspected that this is why most Stephen King books result in terrible movies because so much of his stories are internal rather than external.

I guess what this is making me think about most of all is that we may need to do a general discussion of the screenplay format. Does everyone fully understand the three act structure, the hero's journey and all the basic academics of screenplay writing? Would anyone like a full-on lesson of those elements, or a refresher course?

If so, post in the comments and I'll give it a shot. It's possible that really getting into the nuts and bolts of what is required of you as a screenplay writer might make it more clear as to which format your idea would be most comfortable in.

UPDATE: One thing that occurs to me is that I haven't answered the question of whether or not a treatment is important. I do encourage you to write a treatment before typing the words "FADE IN." Often a treatment will reveal the landmines inherent in your story before you write yourself into a place where you can't help but step on one. I think of writing a screenplay like walking through a series of hallways filled with an infinite number of doors. As you open doors and move through them (i.e. make choices about directions your story and characters will go), certain other doors, or character and story options, become unavailable to you, and as you reach the end of your script you may find yourself in one final hallway with one single locked door that doesn't take you where you'd hoped to go. That's called writing yourself into a corner. There's a great script that's been kicking around Hollywood for a while now about a small-town man who has spent years performing an incredible task in hope of attracting the attention of the woman he loves. The story is told from the perspective of another character who has come to town to witness this amazing task. The story unfolds brilliantly, but as it reaches its climax, you find you have been boxed into a corner. For the movie to work, the woman must fall for the newcomer, and yet the audience would likely revolt if the young woman turns her back on the poor guy who has been, essentially, torturing himself for her love. It's a significant roadblock that I think has kept the movie from getting made. Great script, but just so damned hard to resolve that final landmine. I think treatments are a great way to minimize the chances of that happening and to give you a road map for your script that will be helpful when you're deep in the second act and have lost perspective as to where you are in the story and what needs to happen next.