People often ask me if I write fiction with the movies in mind. A friend once asked me if I picture how a scene will play out on the big screen as I'm writing it on the page. Another asked f I always write characters picturing an actor or actress in my mind.

The short answer to all of those questions is no. When I write a novel or a short story, I'm writing a novel or a short story. I rarely think of how a scene will play on screen, and I hardly ever imagine an actor's face in a character's place.

The long answer is that of course I'm influenced by the movies in a very real and obvious way. I'm a movie buff and have been since I can remember. I don't remember much from my early-early childhood, but I remember my Uncle Jim taking me to see Star Wars. I couldn't have been more than four years old, and I was probably two or three given the release date. (I was born in late 1975; the movie came out in 1978, although it's likely it played for a long, long time in my hometown.) When I was in elementary school, when the videotape era began, my friends were checking out the Police Academy movies while I was renting Peter Weir's Mosquito Coast or John Boorman's Hope and Glory. I was watching the old musicals with my mom. In 1985, Back to the Future changed this ten-year-old's life.

My writing is undoubtedly influenced by the movies, just as it is influenced by all art I see and appreciate. I only wish my descriptions of a night sky could evoke half the wonder of a Van Gogh, or my compositional painting of scenery appear nearly as tactile. I only wish the silly banter in a portion of playful dialogue sounded half as sharp and half as witty as an exchange from "Seinfeld" or a Woody Allen film. Sometimes when I mention in my narrative that a certain song can be heard, I wish the reader could hear that song playing throughout the scene, much like a soundtrack on a movie scene.

I am most conscious of writing cinematically when trying to punch up an action scene. The trick in writing an action scene for a story is not to tell too much. If you over-describe, if you load down the reader with too much information, you strip the scene of its pacing and impact. If John and Jimmy get into a fistfight, I want you to feel as if you're there watching. I want it to have the same visceral effect as watching a fight scene in a movie. The movies are immediate, though -- just a few frames tell you everything about the first punch. On the written page, if I try too hard, it won't seem like a frantic, frenetic fight scene. It will seem like a boring exchange of blows.

So when I write an action scene, I usually write less than I do in the surrounding narrative. My goal is to give you enough information to know everything but in the fewest amount of words possible so that it feels like it's playing out in real time.

Sometimes I write scenes of dialogue hoping they will play out like a movie exchange. In my first novel, there's a flashback where the college-age protagonist interviews the girl he will eventually marry. An obvious flirtation takes place. Because it is the transcript of playback of the interview tape, I wrote the scene in script format with no narrative description at all. I hoped the flirting and the "meet cute" would shine through just in their short lines to each other. I will admit that in writing this scene I hoped to bring to mind all the good flirty dialogue of first meetings in all the good romantic comedies I've seen.

There are other times when I want to create a cinematic mood. It's typically when I mention a piece of music playing. Some of the most vivid movie scenes in my memory involve no dialogue at all, just action set to music. In my first novel, I have a scene where the protag is all alone in his house, feeling lonely and despondent. I write that he's listening to Miles Davis on the stereo. I would hope that readers familiar with any of Davis's music would bring a particular selection to mind and picture this scene cinematically. A loud and rolling jazz number playing while a sad, sad man lolls about his house.

In my second novel, I wrote a scene that just hit me one day as perfectly beautiful and inconceivably funny. It came to my mind like a scene in a movie. I picture my two protags riding in the large bed of a rickety truck with ten or so illegal immigrants from Mexico. They are traveling through the dusty roads of the desert. The driver is listening to "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies, and he has it on full blast. I see the camera panning slowly over each brown and dusty, deadpan face while this bizarre pop confection blares over the soundtrack.

I like this movie scene. It is funny and inventive. It's also a neat way to capture in a moment the absurdity of a white missionary sneaking into the country with a load of Mexicans, the incongruity of his presence among them.

The trick is writing it in a way that approximates the cinematic image.

Characters are the tricky ones. I almost never picture a famous face when I write my fictional ones. I can think of one or two actors who might play roles in the hypothetical adaptation of my first novel, Otherworld, but that's about it. And none of the names I can think of -- Eric Bana, Klaus Kinski -- really and truly fit the way the characters appear in my mind.

I'll be honest in saying that when I write a character, sometimes even I can't picture their face. I know certain distinguishing details, and I share those with the reader -- hair color, eye color, relative height or weight, complexion. Some characters of course have distinctive features that stand out -- a missing arm, a scar on their forehead, etc. I don't describe everyone's nose, but if someone has a huge one with a mole on it, of course I will. For the most part, I like readers to fill in the blanks with their own mental images of the character. To make them their own, I guess.

The question asked by the friend in the second scenario I mentioned above was inspired by my saying I like Colin Farrell as the protag of my second novel. I don't picture Farrell when I write the character of David Jordan, but I think he could pull it off. Farrell is the right age, has the right features. He's a good actor and I think he could manage all the complexities of the character.

I also mentioned in that conversation that when I wrote David's love interest in the first part of the book, I picture Penelope Cruz. The character of Isador in fact looks nothing like Penelope Cruz, except that she is pretty. Isador has a vague Venezuelan accent, so I suppose she might sound a little like Cruz (who is Spanish). But they don't really look anything alike. What I'm trying to capture with Isador, though, is the same mystic enchantment Cruz seems to have in Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky. I want Isador to "feel" like Cruz's character in that movie. I don't even know if that makes sense. It's me trying to translate a feeling or impression or romantic sensibility to cold, hard words. Not sure if it's possible, but I gave it a go.

I also hope to evoke the literary quality of some of my favorite filmmakers. Some of my favorite "literary" film influences include Kurosawa, early Scorsese, Wes Anderson, the Coen Brothers, and especially Woody Allen. If I could write a literary novel akin to Allen's Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters, I'd be a very happy man.

I'm a writer, which means I'm an artist. It only make sense that art be influenced by other art, whether it's the same format/medium or not. My goal, though, is to write mainly in spite of those influences. A novel is a novel; it's not a movie. I do believe, and have written elsewhere, that movies are the new mythos. I think most people would rather watch a movie than read a book. So if I can write a great novel with resonant cinematic moments, I will feel like I've done the particular job I'm called to as well as I can.