Adapting Novel to Screenplay

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Are you an author and written a novel? Has your novel been appreciated by many?

I jumped into the project. Bought several copies of the book, hired a researcher and started to imagine how to build this book into a movie. Then the email arrived.

His literary agent demanded we cease all work on the screenplay. You must have an option agreement before you begin working. According to Steve Stockman, writer, director and author of How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck , terms of adaptation deals are percent negotiable.

There are no standard deals. That said; if a friend gives you the rights to their book and they have faith in your ability to get a movie made, you might have it forever for nothing. On the other hand, if a highly paid writer charges a fortune for their best-seller, you may pay a lot for a much shorter period and lose all of it if you don't get the movie deal put together in the appointed time.

Although this article focuses on novels, one can write an adaptation of a stage play, a comic book, a song or a magazine article. The same procedures apply for any work, you must secure the rights. And when you write a screenplay, the powers that be want you to format it correctly.

The challenge comes because of two different audiences.

How to adapt

Part of the audience, especially if the book was highly successful, will be big fans of the novel. They always judge your screenplay against their pre-conceived notion of the pictures in their head as they read the book. The other part is the people in the audience who just want to watch a great movie. You need to write a great story, in spite of the fact that it might not be exactly like the book. Story telling is what a writer does.

After reading the book the second and third time, put the novel down, close your eyes and think: What is this book really about? What is the driving force in this story? Is there a quirky premise that works as a short description of a movie? Use the classic analysis of antagonist vs. Where are the moral choices that lead to genuine changes in your lead character? You need to find the gems and capture those quotes that create the voice of your characters.

You can improve them by editing, placement and interaction as you flesh out your story. Becoming frustrated by the process, he wrote himself, along with an imaginary twin-brother, into an adjacent plot line of this Academy Award-nominated screenplay Adaptation. He created a story within a story that combined the themes of evolution and adaptation. A brilliant movie to watch before you attempt an adaptation.

Look Before You Leap

In this article, we'll take a look at this challenge and a few others that a writer may encounter when adapting a novel to screenplay form. Figuring one page of a screenplay equals one minute of film, a page screenplay translates into a two-hour motion picture. It took the author of your source material pages to tell the story. How can you possibly tell the same story in pages, the ideal length for a screenplay by today's industry standards?

And the answer to this question is no joke. Determine the through-line and major sub-plot of the story and viciously cut everything else.

It helps to pose the through-line as a question. After all, your goal is to excerpt the most memorable parts of the novel, and what you remember best certainly meets that criterion. In most cases, everything off the through-line or not essential to the major sub-plot has to go. Develop your outline, treatment or "beat sheet" accordingly. The temptation to adapt such, using tons of voiceovers, should be resisted. If they wanted to HEAR a story they'd visit their Uncle Elmer who drones on for hour upon hour about the adventures of slogging through the snow, uphill, both ways, to get to and from school when he was a kid, or perhaps they'd buy a book on tape.

The old screenwriting adage, "Show, don't tell! Quite often, lead characters in novels suffer from this disease. Yet she caused such a stirring in his loins, he could think of nothing else. He feared someday he would give in to this temptation named Judith, and his surrender would surely bring about the end of his marriage! All we would SEE is Mike sitting there, "long-thinking".