I am a playwright, but I have found here at Stage 32 that most of its patrons lean towards screen writing, not that I am against it, still learn a lot from the posts and connections that I make here. So other than writing plays for the stage and writing screen plays for the big screen, how does it differ one from the other. I know that I am writing for a live audience, one take and that I am limited to capabilities of the theatre, where screen plays are versatile in various methods from film shooting C.G.I. What is the approach that one takes in writing a screen play if one is use to writing for the live stage and can a play script be translated into a screen play? Gavion E. Chandler~ 'Man is his own devil.'
Screenwriting : What is the difference between writing a 'screen play' versus a 'play script'?" by Gavion E. Chandler
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I know this is similar to Terri's inquiry, but it is more about approach on writing the screen play and approach to doing so.
There are so many differences... some just subtle, others not. I will only address the screen play. 1. you are writing for the camera. 2. Action and business may be more or less written out (and this depends whether you are writing your script for an investor or prepping it for production.) 3. The screen play should be written with a ballpark budget in mind - so the writer should have some idea of, say, how much a given action sequence or fight scene might cost and how complex it might be to film. 4. Formatting, as film and TV have specific written formats which equate to roughly 1-page-per-day of filming time. 5. Camera angle, camera viewpoint, OTS (over-the-shoulder), VO (voice over), OS (Off Screen) and then cut-to, crossfade-to, dissolve, match-cut scene endings which add to the visual style of the script and are often expressed by the writer... 6. Idiomatic style - film and tv usually require a more common language style then theater, even today. 7. Exposition in language - show don't tell applies even more in a screenplay because there is the requirment and opportunity for things to be shown... often what is acceptable exposition in theatrical dialog is just bad film dialog. There are more.
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Delivery device. A screenplay tells the story through the lens of the camera, so it is visually told. A stage play tells the story through the actors, so it is mostly told through dialogue. A stage play is confined to a set (or a couple of sets), a screenplay can be in New York one minute and on the Moon in the next. Also, a stage play is right there in front of you... real... and so the stories tend to be reality based. A movie is something we experience in the dark, with larger than life images, and it more closely follows the way dreams work (you can be in NYC one minute and on the Moon the next)... so the stories tend to be more fantastic and dreamlike. Less realistic.