I’ve been writing for most of my life, professionally for the last two decades, and throughout all that time one thing has been constant – I’ve been terrified at the thought of writing a novel.

You see, with plays and screenplays I always feel I have a lot of help. I have others to help realise the work: cinematographers, directors, designers, actors …

And on a television series, the story and characters are even given to me. There’s someone to come to the rescue if I stuff it up. Or for me to blame if things don’t turn out well.

I don’t feel alone, either, when doing non-fiction – reviews, journalism, books. I have written a full-length biography of actor Rod Taylor and a PhD on early Australian television drama, both of them a lot of work, but throughout the process I could rely on the mental security blanket of research and facts. If people didn’t like the facts, I rationalised, it wasn’t my fault!

However, all novelists have is … themselves. And their words. No facts or pretty pictures to save them. Just prose. Terrifying.

That’s how I felt, anyway. Then, a few years ago, I finally plucked up the courage to write a novel. Mind you, there was a limit to that courage.

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I decided to adapt an existing work – All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane – which I wrote in 1998 as a film script then adapted into a stage play, then turned back into a script. The film came out in 2007 – see it here:  youtube.com/watch?v=rSxmzWa8kSg. I’d just finished writing All My Friends Are Back in Brisbane, a spiritual sequel to All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane, so the world was very much on my mind.

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Turning All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane back into prose form, I figured all the hard yards had been done – the characters and story had already been created. I just had to flesh things out a little. It would be a novelisation, like film studios used to arrange back in the day, an art form that has not completely died out (Quentin Tarantino with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood).

Easy, right? Well, yes, but also no. Because, as mentioned, in a novel you don’t have actors, cinematographers or designers to help you. Writers have to do those jobs yourself. They need to create emotional states, atmosphere and images with nothing other than their own words. You know – writing!

The flip side is writers have these extra things up their sleeve – they can go into characters’ heads, change point of view, reveal information in different ways, go off on detours. The basics of drama don’t change – characters, intention, obstacle – but there is a different array of weapons to use.

The story of All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane concerns two best friends in their early 20s, Michael and Anthea. She wants to leave Brisbane, he doesn’t. She decides to go and they’re forced to examine their feelings about each other. It’s based on a dilemma that was going on in my own brain in Brisbane in 1998, when I was a lawyer. I split the argument into two people to give it some sexual tension, and set the story in a world that I knew.

I could have updated the story, as I did for the film version, but I figured I may as well make the book a period piece

When doing the novel, I kept the 1998 setting because that was when I lived the life of the characters. I knew where they lived, what they did for a living, how they socialised, and so on. I could have updated the story, as I did for the film version, but I figured I may as well make the book a period piece. Why do more research than I had to? Also, that enabled me to say a few things about where Brisbane and Queensland were at the time, to contrast with the present day.

Novelising All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane presented another challenge – it was plot-lite, to put it mildly. The original stage play ran for under an hour while the film only went for 70-odd minutes. I’d actually tried different versions by adding more plot, but they never seemed to work. The whole story is, after all, about inertia.

So, I decided to keep the novel true to the original film script – plot minimal. In doing so, I didn’t make it all the way to novel length, reaching just 42,000 words – a novella. Thus, I wound up doing a novella-isation of the movie.

If you want to create something of value, it will be hard

Writing All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane in prose form was trickier than I envisioned, although also rewarding. I had to use new writing muscles to access thoughts, description, atmosphere. But I got there in the end, and it’s been published as an e-book.

And I’m so glad I did it. Because now, having written a novella, I realise that prose isn’t harder than other forms of writing. And that’s because they’re all hard – plays, articles, PhDs, screenplays, whatever. They all have different challenges, opportunities and rewards.

Writing is hard, full stop. And AI isn’t going to change that any more than the invention of the quill, the pen, the typewriter, the word processor, the internet or any other key technological development. If you want to create something of value, it will be hard.

So, if you’ve ever considered doing a novel (or novella) but were too scared, like I was, just have a go. You’re probably right to be scared, but do it anyway. You might surprise yourself by how much fun you’ll have.

Now for the final frontier … trying to write a poem. The thought of doing one of those is petrifying.

Stephen Vagg is a Brisbane writer and producer whose latest film, All My Friends Are Back in Brisbane, is currently in cinemas.  His novella, All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane, is available as an e-book at amazon.com.au/All-Friends-Are-Leaving-Brisbane-ebook/dp/B0H5WNQW2P