Lian Dolan is the USA Today bestselling author of The Marriage Sabbatical, a People Magazine Best Book of the Week. Her other books are Lost and Found in Paris, The Sweeney Sisters, Helen of Pasadena and Elizabeth the First Wife are all LA Times bestsellers. She’s written regular columns for O, The Oprah Magazine, Pasadena Magazine and Working Mother Magazine. She’s also written for TV and radio. Her latest novel, Abigail and Alexa Save the Wedding releases May 20, 2025.
In my career, I’ve written novels, personal essays, magazine pieces, short form videos, live event scripts, radio and podcast segments, business plans and party invitations. I’m a big believer that one kind of work informs another and you can build on your craft no matter what genre you’re working in. But no writing has helped me more in my overall work than screenwriting.
When I moved to Los Angeles in the 90s, it was the law that every writer had to produce a screenplay. We all had fantasies that we could be Nora Ephron or Shane Black. To that end, I took classes and wrote my romcom that never sold. But the class and the experience did lead to other opportunities. Since then, I’ve sold a pilot Nickelodeon for a sitcom and developed several shows for various networks and producers, as I continued to work in fiction, magazines, live events and podcasts. And I’ve gone back to my screenwriting experience time and again while working in other genres, particularly fiction.
Here’s what I’ve learned from screenwriting that can help you as you develop your fiction:
Pitching
Surprise! The first item is not writing at all, but how to express your ideas clearly and succinctly in a high stakes meeting. The pitch meeting sounds like a Hollywood cliché, but it’s real and it’s stressful. Most pitch meetings are highly structured, about fifteen minutes long and your one shot to sell your story idea to a studio or a network.
You can’t wing a pitch.
By the time you’re ready to pitch executives, you’ve spent months developing the idea, the characters, the storylines and the point of view. All that work gets boiled down into a ten-minute talk that explains your connection to the material and your vision for the characters and the story.
You pitch in the voice of the show. Comedy? Leave them laughing. Drama? Leave them feeling.
Before we sold our show to Nickelodeon, my writing partner and I practiced in front of our production partners a dozen times. And we refined the pitch after the first meeting revealed some weak areas. We sold the show in the next meeting.
When I first started, I didn’t understand how important talking would be in shaping my writing career. But lots of projects are sold on verbal pitches, not just TV shows. Like my novels. So, remember to develop, practice, refine, practice more, pitch, and then, sell.
Structure
The typical structure taught in a screenwriting class is the three-act structure:
- the set-up which introduces characters and their desires
- the confrontation with rising action and complications
- the resolution where the characters fall in love or the hero prevails or the empire is saved.
Of course, there is nuance to the structure and some of the most admired screenplays don’t follow the rules. But honestly, a structure that includes a beginning, a middle, and an end works well for most kinds of writing projects.
I stick with the three-act structure for most of my work, including fiction. Once I nail down the story beats for a novel of seventy-five thousand words, then I can play around with the structure a bit. Having a built-in structure gets me through what novelists call “the big middle,” the hundred pages between the boffo set-up and the ending you know is right.
Pacing
My first screenwriting teacher taught an outline technique with note cards that has never let me down. On the card, he instructed us to write the characters, the conflict and the resolution for every scene.
In screenwriting, the action has to move forward, so there’s no room in the script for characters sitting around and sharing the details of their childhoods or their dreams of the future. Unless those details are part of the resolution to the scene, they aren’t necessary. It’s the exact opposite of fiction writing where entire chapters are dedicated to backstory or memory.
I continue to use my screenwriting teacher’s technique and actual notecards when I plot my novels. With six novels under my belt, I know that I can be more expansive in prose than in a script. But following this basic pacing principle of conflict/resolution for every major scene keeps my story moving forward even if I take a detour for a flashback.
Dialogue
When you look at a screenplay, there’s a whole lot of wide-open space on the page. That’s because there shouldn’t be any extra words. Tight. Sharp. Minimal. Those are the watchwords for scripted dialogue. No greetings, no goodbyes and no monologues about a new keto diet unless it is a vital part of the plot. Keeping dialogue tight and focused is part of my fiction-writing process as well. When I craft dialogue in a novel, I think of it as writing the highlights, what a conversation would sound like if you could edit in real-time. The most important details, the sharpest jokes, the cleverest flirty dialogue, the most touching life lessons. Let the reader assume pleasantries have been shared and just give them the good stuff
Abigail and Alexa Save the Wedding by Lian Dolan
Penelope and Chase are getting married and it is going to be a swanky affair in California. Penny is a bubbly personality driven by her work and Chase is a charming man, the event should be perfect. But their mothers could not be more different. The Mother of the Bride is a single mom who doesn’t believe in marriage and the Mother of the Groom is a wife and mother desperate to maintain the appearance of wealth that is slipping away. These two moms end up in charge of the planning the wedding and must work together to give their kids the big day they deserve.
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