Who're you calling a writer?

Something I read today:

I've written all my life, both non-fiction and fiction. i've wanted to tell stories all my life. but writing fiction - specifically screenplays as i've done little short story writing and no novels - has always been very difficult, painful and not a process i would ever describe as one i enjoyed.

Should they teach you screenwriting at all?

An interesting post I've read on the Twelvepoint blog. There's this agent, he represents both screenwriters and book writers. Now, he thinks screenwriters should write prose as well. Why? Read on.

No, you know what? Don't read. You're just escaping writing again, aren't you? I'm just going to quote this agent here, very short, so you could go back to whatever it is that you are writing at the moment. Me? I'm stuck since two weeks on page 12 of my first draft for a script that may never see a green light, or any light at all.

I believe that one of the great fallacies in the teaching of scriptwriting is precisely that I do not believe we should be teaching ’scriptwriting’. Instead I believe writers should study (and learn to appreciate) storytelling. One of the most important motivations, apart from making money, for a writer should be that he or she is compelled to be a storyteller and after forty years of working with writers, I believe it’s easier to tell the story in prose than in script. As Alexander Mackendrick, the director of The Ladykillers said: ‘Don’t try to work out story in script form; do it in prose first.’