The screenplay format is so flexible, allowing for such easy revision, that it has a special appeal for obsessive-compulsive scene polishers like me. Furthermore, a screenplay is not meant to be published and read by the public, as is a novel. In addition, the word count of a screenplay is but a small fraction of the word count of the average novel. This never happens to screenwriters because even the most famous film critics seem to be oblivious of their contribution and think that every frame was extemporaneously conceived by the auteur director and his cast. Screenwriters are often anguished about this lack of respect, but anonymity ensures against the assaults to which novelists are subjected.
Novelists mostly sit alone in their studies.
Screenwriters can have names like Babaloo Mandel and be hugely successful. Novelists must have more serious names if they wish to sell books. Screenwriters can look like Joe Esterhaz and be acclaimed as great talents. But novelists who look like Joe Esterhaz are under continual surveillance by state and federal police agencies. By now you probably believe that I would exhort every aspiring young writer to focus his or her efforts entirely on the screenplay and to forego writing novels at all costs.