Learn why dialogue-heavy, screenplay-style writing weakens novels. Discover the unique strengths of prose fiction and practical techniques for creating immersive, novelistic storytelling.
The Subtle Sabotage of Cinematic Thinking
You’re drafting a pivotal confrontation scene. Two characters face off, tensions high. You can see it playing out like a movie—the camera angles, the dramatic pauses, the perfectly-timed zingers.
Your draft looks like this:
“You lied to me,” Sarah said.
“I had no choice,” Mark replied.
“There’s always a choice.”
“Not this time.”
Sarah crossed her arms. “I can’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t enough.”
Clean. Crisp. Cinematic. And completely failing to use the novel medium’s actual strengths.
This isn’t a scene—it’s a transcript. You’ve written what characters say and minimally what they do, but you’ve neglected everything that makes novels distinct from screenplays: interiority, sensory immersion, narrative voice, psychological depth, and the unique mind-meld relationship between reader and character.
The diagnosis: Your novel has screenplay syndrome, and you might not even realize it’s happening.
The Cultural Dominance That Corrupts Our Storytelling Instincts
By the time you sit down to write your first novel, you’ve consumed:
- Thousands of hours of television
- Hundreds (possibly thousands) of films
- Countless YouTube videos and TikToks
- Maybe a few dozen books, if you’re a reader
The mathematical problem: Your brain’s storytelling template is overwhelmingly visual media, not prose fiction.
When you imagine scenes, you default to movie thinking:
- “The camera pulls back to reveal…”
- “Cut to: different location”
- “Close-up on character’s shocked face”
- Dialogue-heavy exchanges you can “hear” actors delivering
The result: Novels that function like film scripts with stage directions—technically telling a story, but failing to leverage what makes novels uniquely powerful.
Understanding the Fundamental Medium Differences
Film: The Outward-Facing Medium
What film does brilliantly:
- Shows physical action and facial expressions instantly
- Conveys setting through visual composition
- Uses music and sound design for emotional cues
- Communicates through actors’ performances
- Delivers information through what viewers see and hear
What film struggles with:
- Internal character thoughts (voiceover feels clunky)
- Abstract concepts (requires visual metaphor)
- Extended periods of introspection
- Subtle psychological nuance
- Nonlinear time without confusing viewers
The viewer experience: Passive absorption. You watch what the director shows you, interpret performances, and construct meaning from external cues.
Novels: The Inward-Facing Medium
What novels do brilliantly:
- Direct access to character consciousness
- Psychological complexity and nuance
- Abstract ideas and philosophical exploration
- Temporal flexibility (time can expand/contract freely)
- Sensory details beyond sight and sound
- Narrative voice as storytelling instrument
- Reader co-creation of imagined world
What novels struggle with:
- Instant visual impact (requires description)
- Simultaneous action across locations (requires cutting between scenes)
- Pure spectacle (explosions and action sequences read differently than they appear on screen)
The reader experience: Active co-creation. Readers construct the entire visual and sensory world in their imagination, guided by the author’s words. This creates deeper intimacy with character perspective.
The Critical Distinction: Showing vs. Mind-Melding
Film shows you what happens. You see character faces, hear their voices, observe their actions. You interpret their emotions from external evidence.
Novels mind-meld you with characters. You experience their consciousness directly. You know their thoughts, feel their emotions from inside, understand their motivations as your own (temporarily).
This is why “show don’t tell” is incomplete advice for novelists. Film must show because it can’t access interiority. Novels can do both—and should strategically use both.
The Screenplay Syndrome: Symptoms and Examples
Symptom 1: Dialogue-Only Scenes
The screenplay approach:
“We need to talk about last night,” Emma said.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jake replied.
“We can’t just ignore what happened.”
“Watch me.”
“You’re being childish.”
“And you’re being controlling.”
Problems:
- No sense of physical space
- No sensory details
- No internal reactions
- No body language beyond dialogue tags
- Reads like a script excerpt, not a novel
The novelistic approach:
Emma cornered him in the kitchen, her voice low enough that the kids wouldn’t hear from upstairs. “We need to talk about last night.”
Jake kept his eyes on the coffee maker, watching the dark stream fill his cup like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Anything to avoid looking at her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
The words hung between them, and Emma felt that familiar tightness in her chest—the one that appeared every time he shut down mid-argument. She’d spent twelve years trying to pry him open at moments like these, and twelve years learning it never worked when she pushed. But this time was different. This time the stakes were too high to let him retreat into silence.
“We can’t just ignore what happened.” She softened her voice, trying a different tactic.
“Watch me.” He grabbed his cup and turned toward the door.
The casual dismissal ignited something in her. “You’re being childish.”
That stopped him. He turned back, and she caught the flash of anger in his expression before his face went carefully blank—the look he always wore when he was about to say something he’d regret. “And you’re being controlling.”
What changed:
- Physical setting established
- Body language and micro-expressions included
- Emma’s internal reaction provided
- Sensory detail (coffee visual)
- Emotional context and relationship history
- Strategic use of interiority for key moments
Symptom 2: Pure Action Description Without Motivation
The screenplay approach:
Marcus ran down the alley. He jumped over a dumpster. A car pulled up. He got in. The car drove away.
Problems:
- Reads like stage directions
- No sense of why Marcus is running
- No emotional context
- No sensory immersion
- Camera-like external observation only
The novelistic approach:
Marcus’s lungs burned as he sprinted down the alley, his footsteps echoing off brick walls that seemed to narrow with every stride. Behind him, shouting—close enough that he could make out individual voices now, which meant they were gaining ground.
The dumpster appeared ahead, rust-red and massive. No time to think, just vault—one hand on the metal edge (warm from afternoon sun, oddly specific detail his brain noted despite the panic), legs tucking, landing hard enough to jar his knees but he couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, because stopping meant—
The black sedan materialized at the alley’s mouth like an answer to a prayer he hadn’t known he’d prayed. Marcus didn’t recognize the car, didn’t care. He wrenched the door open and threw himself inside.
“Drive,” he gasped. “Just drive.”
What changed:
- Marcus’s physical sensations (burning lungs, jarred knees)
- His fear and urgency through interior experience
- Sensory details (warm metal, echoing footsteps)
- Motivation embedded in action
- Reader experiences events from inside Marcus’s perspective
Symptom 3: Talking Heads in White Space
The screenplay approach:
Characters discuss important plot information while apparently floating in a void, with no sense of where they are, what they’re doing, or what else is happening around them.
The novelistic approach:
Characters exist in physical space, interacting with environment while talking. Their actions during dialogue reveal character and emotional state.
Example transformation:
Before (screenplay style): “I need your help,” Tom said. “Why should I help you?” Lisa replied. “Because you owe me.”
After (novelistic style): Tom found Lisa in the studio, clay caked under her fingernails as she worked a shapeless lump on the pottery wheel. She didn’t look up when he entered.
“I need your help.” He hovered in the doorway, suddenly aware of how much he was asking.
Her hands stilled on the clay, but she kept her eyes down. “Why should I help you?” The wheel still spun, and she resumed shaping, pressing harder than necessary.
“Because you owe me.”
That made her look up. Her expression was unreadable—potter’s hands, poker face, that’s what he’d always said about her—but the wheel slowed to a stop. “We’re really doing this? Keeping score?”
What changed:
- Specific setting (pottery studio)
- Lisa’s occupation and activity
- Physical actions during dialogue (working clay, stillness, resuming)
- Tom’s physical position and internal hesitation
- Nonverbal communication (not looking up, stilling hands, expression)
The Unique Powers of Novelistic Writing
Power 1: Direct Access to Consciousness
What this enables:
- Character thoughts and reactions readers never voice aloud
- Internal contradictions (saying one thing, thinking another)
- Stream of consciousness and associative thinking
- Psychological complexity that can’t be shown externally
Strategic deployment:
Use interior access to:
- Reveal motivations
- Create dramatic irony (readers know what characters don’t)
- Show character self-deception
- Complicate simple exchanges with subtext
Example:
“I’m fine,” Rachel told her mother, while internally cataloging every reason she wasn’t fine: the job she’d just lost, the relationship circling the drain, the student loan payment she’d skipped last month. But her mother’s face already carried that tight look of worry, and Rachel couldn’t add to the weight of it. “Really. Everything’s great.”
Power 2: Narrative Voice as Character
What this enables: Your narrative voice—the way you describe action and setting—can characterize the POV character as much as dialogue.
Example – Anxious Character: The party sprawled across the house like a living thing, pulsing with too-loud music and too-bright laughter. Every surface held abandoned drinks—potential spills waiting to happen. Every cluster of people was a conversation David would have to navigate, small talk landmines he’d inevitably trigger. He counted exits: front door, back door, maybe a window if things got desperate.
Example – Confident Character: The party owned the house, exactly as Morgan had planned. Music thundered from speakers she’d spent three hours positioning for optimal sound. Groups clustered and scattered and reformed in the choreography of successful parties, and she moved through them like a conductor, orchestrating introductions, refilling drinks, the perfect host.
Same scene, different consciousness, completely different narrative voice.
Power 3: Sensory Immersion Beyond Sight and Sound
Films primarily use: Sight and sound (sometimes subtly suggesting touch/smell through visual cues)
Novels can directly access: All five senses plus internal sensations (hunger, nausea, exhaustion, arousal)
Strategic use:
Choose sensory details that:
- Reveal character background and obsessions
- Create atmosphere and mood
- Ground readers in specific moments
- Trigger emotional associations
Example:
The hospital waiting room smelled like industrial cleaner trying to mask something worse. Sarah’s mouth tasted like the six cups of coffee she’d consumed in the last four hours—metallic, bitter, making her teeth feel coated. The vinyl chair stuck to the back of her bare legs, and the too-cold air conditioning raised goosebumps on her arms. Somewhere down the hall, a monitor beeped in steady rhythm, counting time she couldn’t feel passing.
Power 4: Time as a Flexible Tool
Films must: Show events in real-time or use clunky transitions (fade to black, title cards, flashback sequences)
Novels can: Expand a moment across pages or compress years into a paragraph, seamlessly shift between timelines, pause for reflection or memory
Example – Expanding Time:
The bullet took forever to reach him. Or maybe it was instantaneous, but his perception of time stretched, pulled taffy-thin by adrenaline. He saw the muzzle flash. Understood what it meant. Started moving, but his body felt slow, drugged, fighting through water. The bullet was traveling at 1,200 feet per second—he’d learned that in physics class, sophomore year, Mr. Henderson droning on about ballistics while Marcus sat in the back row and daydreamed about Jessica Pham—but physics didn’t explain this subjective eternity, this expanded now where he could count the molecules of air between him and the gun.
Then the bullet hit, and time snapped back to normal speed.
Practical Techniques for Writing Novelistically
Technique 1: The Interiority Layer
For every major scene, add three layers:
- Dialogue and action (what a camera would capture)
- Sensory and physical detail (what characters experience)
- Interior reaction (what characters think/feel)
Practice exercise: Take a dialogue-heavy scene and add one interior thought after every three dialogue exchanges. Notice how it changes reader experience.
Technique 2: The Gesture Catalog
Expand your repertoire beyond:
- “She smiled”
- “He frowned”
- “She shrugged”
Develop library of:
- Micro-expressions (jaw tightening, eyes narrowing)
- Nervous habits (nail-biting, hair-twirling, foot-tapping)
- Confident gestures (steady eye contact, open posture)
- Context-specific actions (character doing activity while talking)
Example:
Instead of: “She was nervous.”
Try: “Her thumb found the edge of her sleeve and worried the fabric, rolling and unrolling the cuff while she talked. A tell Alex had learned to recognize—whenever Claire’s hands got busy with some small task, her mind was working overtime on something she wasn’t saying.”
Technique 3: The Motivated Action Principle
Every physical action should serve at least one purpose:
- Reveal character psychology
- Advance plot
- Create atmosphere
- Show relationship dynamics
- Provide sensory grounding
Bad: Characters perform random actions that don’t mean anything
Good: Characters’ physical choices reveal their emotional states
Example:
Instead of: “Mark paced the room.”
Try: “Mark couldn’t stay still. He crossed to the window, checked the street, returned to the couch, sat for three seconds, stood again. Waiting had never been his strength—his whole life was about forward motion, doing, fixing, solving. Forced inactivity felt like suffocation.”
Technique 4: The Dialogue Interruption
Instead of pure back-and-forth exchanges, interrupt with:
- Physical actions
- Sensory observations
- Interior reactions
- Environmental details
- Memories triggered by conversation
Example:
“I don’t believe you,” Sarah said.
Mark’s hand tightened on his coffee cup. Through the window behind Sarah, he could see the oak tree they’d planted when they bought this house—fifteen years ago, barely a sapling. Now its branches reached the roofline. Everything changes, he thought. Everything except what people choose to believe.
“I’m telling you the truth,” he said.
Technique 5: Show Thought Process, Not Just Thoughts
Instead of: “She was angry.”
Show the anger forming:
“The second he said it, Emma felt the anger bloom—starting in her chest, hot and tight, spreading up her throat. She knew she should breathe, should count to ten like her therapist recommended, should do literally anything except what she was about to do.
She did it anyway.
‘Get out,’ she heard herself say, voice eerily calm. The kind of calm that preceded explosions.”
When Cinematic Thinking Actually Helps
Screenplay syndrome is dangerous, but cinematic thinking (different from writing like a screenplay) can enhance novels.
Beneficial Cinematic Elements:
Visual Composition Think like a cinematographer: What’s in the frame? What’s in focus? What dominates the visual?
“The gun sat on the table between them, black and matter-of-fact, drawing the eye like a lodestone. Everything else in the room—the family photos on the wall, the vase of flowers Anna had arranged that morning, the children’s drawings on the fridge—receded into soft focus. The gun was all that mattered now.”
Scenic Pacing Use scene structure like film: establish setting, introduce conflict, escalate tension, resolve or complicate.
Physical Choreography Stage fights, action sequences, intimate moments with attention to bodies in space.
Atmospheric Detail Think production design: What details establish mood and theme?
The key: Use cinematic techniques while adding novelistic layers (interiority, voice, full sensory palette).
Dialogue-Heavy Novels Done Right
Some novels are legitimately dialogue-forward—and they work because they’re still fully novelistic.
What Dialogue-Heavy Novels Include:
Economy of description doesn’t mean absence of description: Strategic, precise physical and sensory details that ground scenes.
Distinctive voices: Characters sound different from each other. You could identify speakers without dialogue tags.
Subtext: What’s happening beneath the surface of conversation matters as much as the words spoken.
Physical grounding: Even minimal gesture and action, precisely deployed.
Strategic interiority: Brief glimpses into perspective character’s mind at key moments.
Example from dialogue-heavy novel:
“You’re leaving?” The question came out sharper than Anna intended.
“Just for a few days.” Tom didn’t look up from his packing, folding shirts with hospital corners—military precision, even now. Old habits.
The shirts bothered her more than they should. The careful folding, the precise stacks. Like he was trying to impose order on something that had spiraled beyond anyone’s control.
“A few days,” she repeated. “Right.”
That made him pause, hands stilling on a sleeve. “Don’t start.”
She wasn’t starting anything. She was just watching her husband pack a suitcase while their daughter slept upstairs, unaware that Daddy was leaving. Again. But she didn’t say any of that. Instead: “Drive safe.”
Your Novelistic Writing Action Plan
Diagnosis: Review your last scene
Count:
- Lines of pure dialogue (no action/interiority)
- Physical descriptions beyond dialogue tags
- Interior thoughts/reactions
- Sensory details
If pure dialogue dominates, you have screenplay syndrome.
Treatment: The Layering Revision
Pass 1: Physicality Add one physical action or gesture per page minimum.
Pass 2: Sensory Detail Add one non-visual sensory detail per scene.
Pass 3: Interiority Add POV character’s thoughts at 3-5 key moments per scene.
Pass 4: Motivation Ensure readers understand why characters are doing what they’re doing.
Prevention: Draft Mindfully
When drafting new scenes:
- Start with where characters are physically
- Include at least one thought/reaction per dialogue exchange
- Add one action beat per character turn in conversation
- Choose one sense beyond sight to emphasize per scene
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can I write fast-paced action with all this interiority and description?
A: Yes. Sentence length and structure control pacing, not presence of interiority. Short sentences. Staccato rhythm. Fragments allowed. All while maintaining novelistic depth.
Q: Don’t readers skip description to get to dialogue?
A: Only if description is boring or excessive. Strategic, vivid details enhance reading experience. Readers skip when you’re not serving the story.
Q: What about genre fiction where plot matters more than literary prose?
A: Genre fiction readers still expect novels to feel like novels, not screenplays. Suspense thriller readers want interiority during tense moments. Romance readers need access to developing feelings. Sci-fi readers need world-building beyond dialogue.
Q: How much interiority is too much?
A: When it stops the story’s forward momentum or repeats information. Strategic > constant. Key moments > every moment.
Q: Should I ever write screenplay-style for drafting speed?
A: Absolutely! Draft however works for you. Just recognize you’ll need revision passes to add novelistic layers. Don’t mistake a screenplay-style draft for a finished novel.
The Medium-Specific Truth
Screenplays are blueprints for films—collaborative documents that require directors, actors, designers, and editors to become art.
Novels are complete artworks on the page. You’re the entire production team. You must provide everything: the performances, the cinematography, the sound design, the emotional score, AND the interior access that film can never provide.
When you write like a screenwriter, you’re giving readers 20% of what novels can deliver.
When you write like a novelist, you’re creating experiences that film can’t replicate.
Stop imagining the movie adaptation. Start creating the novelistic experience that makes adaptation impossible because the real story exists in the protagonist’s consciousness, not just their dialogue.
Your novel isn’t a screenplay. Stop writing it like one.
It’s so much more.
