Marty Thornley

Marty Thornley started writing short stories as a teenager, inspired as much by favorite books and movies as the environment and characters that define the South Shore of Massachusetts. The pull of the movies dragged him first to film school and finally to Los Angeles, where he poked at the outskirts of the industry with screenplays and short films. As his interest in a film career fizzled, he rebuilt himself bit-by-bit as a programmer. He spent the next decade building websites, finally realizing that something had been lost. His stories were collecting dust in the back of his brain while he sat through conference calls and code reviews. So he returned to the woods of New England and the calming darkness under the trees. He returned to find the things that crawl in the undergrowth and turn them into words on the page. He dusted off one of his screenplays and turned it into his first novel. In the process, a dormant storyteller was awakened and is now seeking the next blank page to fill.

On Process: Screenplay vs. Novel

By Marty Thornley

January 9, 2019

While they may share the end goal of “telling a story,” a novel and a screenplay are two very different products, each with its own requirements, approaches, and styles. The most significant difference is that a novel is a finished product, while a screenplay is a blueprint for a film that might get made one…