Adapting novel to screenplay

Question

Okay, you guys. I do not know how to start this and have read the "Bible," Syd Field and some screenplays. And, no, I'm not a dumbass troll, I just feel like a dumbass, and I don't expect step by step instructions throughout this venture, just a boost, a spark, anything. Is it okay for me to begin with a description of the setting and a description of the main characters? Honestly, I sit here with my novel beside me, knowing I can't put every conversation in it in the sp, and I feel lost no matter what I have read to inspire and educate me on screenwriting. I think it's fear. Why can't I get started? I never realized how hard this would be.

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Is it okay for me to begin with a description of the setting and a description of the main characters? ... me on screenwriting. I think it's fear. Why can't I get started? I never realized how hard this would be[/nq]
You do have the rights, right?

That being said, figure out the story you're trying to tell. In most novels, there are many possible stories. You have to pick one.

You can't start on the surface, "oh, I want this converstaion and that conversation." You have to dig a little. Once you figure out the spine of your story you're telling (which is probably parallel to, or a subsection of, the spine of the novel) you can use that to guide you in your choices.

It needs to read like a screenplay. You don't start a screenplay by describing the setting and characters -- you do that as we encounter the characters and setting.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Okay, you guys. I do not know how to start this and have read the "Bible," Syd Field and some ... me on screenwriting. I think it's fear. Why can't I get started? I never realized how hard this would be.[/nq]
If this were another century and you had to illustrate key scenes in your novel, which would you choose?

If you were a scenarist in the beginnings of Hollywood and had to sketch out which scenes to film, which would you choose?

There's an old story that John Huston was going away for the weekend and gave "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" to his secretary and said "Turn this into a script." I don't believe the story, but it's illustrative of how good the book was for turning into a novel.

In contrast, it took a long time for anyone to figure out how to turn the cerebral SF classic "I, Robot" into a movie. Too much "interior" stuff in the novel. No one ever figured out a popular novel in Hollywood called "The Blue Train."

So it's not always easy, but I'd try to make a silent movie of your book first and then go from there. I've had novels of mine optioned but I've never adapted one into a script. I will this year, though. Good luck with it.

-- Skip Press http://www.skippress.com

You'd better learn secretarial work or else get married.

-- Dir. of Blue Book Modeling Agency to Marilyn Monroe, 1944

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Okay, you guys. I do not know how to start this and have read the "Bible," Syd Field and some ... me on screenwriting. I think it's fear. Why can't I get started? I never realized how hard this would be.[/nq]
For format, get hold of The Screenwriters Bible by David Trottier. For content read a lot of good scripts to see how it's done right and read a lot of bad scripts to see how it's done wrong. Best book on the subject as far as I'm concerned: How to Make a Good Script Great, by Linda Seger.

How many scripts have you read?

--

"I think everybody likes to see the fat girl get the hot guy and win." --John Waters

CASTRATE TROLLS: http://www.schmuckwithanunderwood.com/trolls.htm

Usenet · Answer

First of all, don't feel bad. Adapting your own novel into a screenplay is incredibly difficult, so give yourself time and energy.

Re the redneckin' subdivision, you have to find a way to show that through action and to a lesser extent, dialog, instead of lengthy descriptions.

on the plus side, you can just write:

EXT. TRASHY TRAILER PARK - DAY

A man in a mullet and wife-beater slams out of the worst trailer in the park.

I once heard an hysterically funny speech by a B-level producer that went something along the lines of "if it's a British pub, don't tell me about the lace curtains and glasses hanging from racks--it's a British pub, I know what they look like, the set designer knows what they look like, don't waste my time!" Of course, if a character ends up hung by the neck by those curtains, you'll need to mention them

Someone threw at him "what about science fiction?" and he said something like 'you know what, maybe I want to know if it's a bug alien dripping ooze or a pteradactyl or whatever, but I'm not even sure I need that.'

So, forget everything you loved about that novel, and put on your screenwriter's hat, and remember that you'll have one main plot, related subplots, fewer characters...in fact, if you were forced to write your novel as a novella, what would you leave out? You have to stay on the "spine" of the plot in a movie much more than a novel...oops, just read Bill Martell's posts for the rest of that advice

Check out screenplays of adapted novels in your genre, teach yourself about the pitfalls and advantages of this kind of adaptation...maybe the book and movie version of Wiseblood is a good place to start if you can find a copy of the script, since Flannery O'Connor was a very concrete-physical-world-but-implies-intense-spiritual-issues kind of novelist...

You're stuck because you're beginning a very difficult task, and might be missing a few tools. Reading the adapted screenplays (only 21 or so of the best picture oscars have gone to original material, can you believe that?!) will help. Be careful though, reading & viewing The Shining might just make it MORE confusing

Good luck!

Mysti

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[nq:1]Okay, you guys. I do not know how to start this and have read the "Bible," Syd Field and some ... me on screenwriting. I think it's fear. Why can't I get started? I never realized how hard this would be.[/nq]
Well, my two cents -- and it's probably worth about half that -- is that you've got to think of a screenplay more like a short story. Short stories start with something happening. When you look at screenplays you'll usually see about four short paragraphs setting the scene and describing the character(s) and then you're into the story. But even in the two to four line description of the character he/she should already be doing something.

As for description of the scene -- what I try to do is think of two or three things that make the location stand out and give it a certain mood -- and let the reader fill in the rest.

I've never tried to adapt a novel -- which I think would be a lot more work than starting from scratch. Have you considered doing that -- taking the same basic story and rewriting from scratch, maybe changing the scenes a bit, finding a new character or two, and thinking of it as a fresh story?

-- RonB "There's a story there...somewhere"

Usenet · Answer

a tip about it:

http://www.scriptsecrets.net/tips/Tip309.htm

And it *is* difficult. Main thing you need to do is forget the novel exists and tell the story in the medium of film.

Biggest problem with adaptations I read from other writers is that they don't actually adapt* the story, they just put it in screenplay format. Screenplays are about characters *doing things - not thinking about doing things or talking about doing things or talking about what they have done.

So - focus on what the charaters do. And read ton of scripts, because that's what you're trying to write. - Bill Free Script Tips Every Single Day: http://www.scriptsecrets.net

Usenet · Answer

Okay, you guys. I do not know how to start this and have read the "Bible," Syd Field and some screenplays. And, no, I'm not a dumbass troll, I just feel like a dumbass, and I don't expect step by step instructions throughout this venture, just a boost, a spark, anything. Is it okay for me to begin with a description of the setting and a description of the main characters? Honestly, I sit here with my novel beside me, knowing I can't put every conversation in it in the sp, and I feel lost no matter what I have read to inspire and educate me on screenwriting. I think it's fear. Why can't I get started? I never realized how hard this would be.

Why start a screenplay with a description of the main characters? Does your novel start off this way?

As for a description of your setting -- this can be two pages or two lines. The point is -- how much story is encompassed in the description of your setting, as opposed to tone?

"A dreary, run-down mill-town somewhere in Northeast -- drab nineteenth century brick rising up behind twenty-first century strip mall."

Three lines. Next paragraph is where ever your particular character is going to be coming out of or driving up to or meeting whomever.

Seriously -- what more do you need -- unless you're setting up something for some sort of intricate action scene where the physical environment has to be set up in some sort of way for the action to play out.

Otherwise, if the market is one place and the diner is across the street, and down the street is Marge's house -- these geographical relationships can be established in bits and pieces as the reader (who is a surrogate, but not an actual viewer) needs to know them.

Same thing with characters. You introduce them as they appear. And as they appear, they ought to appear in a way that lets the reader (viewer) learn what kind of character they are -- at least to get some initial compass reading on them.

I've adapted novels to the screen on three occasions, and on all three occasions, my process was pretty much the same. I would read the novel, usually several times, then I would arrive at my version -- either an actual treatment or simply a treatment in my head as to how the screen version was going to lay out -- which, depending on the book, has run from rather different to radically different from the source material -- and then I would put the novel away and virtually never refer to it during the writing of the movie.

Because that is what I was doing -- writing a movie -- not "adapting a novel" -- that was simply source material that took me to a treatment, whether literal or figurative. That treatment was the basis for what I was writing.

Now, that experience is obviously very specific to the books that I've adapted. None of them, for instance, had dialogue that was really directly adaptable (at least not in my humble estimation).

While there are a few novelists whose dialogue works well on screen (The Maltese Falcon's dialogue is taken almost verbatim from the novel) most, frankly, do not. That doesn't mean that it "bad" dialogue. Virtually no dialogue, whether written on the page or spoken on the screen is truly realistic -- it's all stylized in one way or another. The problem is that the way in which much novel dialogue is stylized makes it virtually impossible for it to be spoken by actors in a way that is believable. You can read it and it works on the page just fine -- try to act it, and it sinks like a lead balloon.

Maybe what you ought to do is to take a step back from the screenplay and write a treament -- that will force you to free yourself from the dialogue and the specifics of the particular scenes of your novel -- and make you think in terms of larger story issues -- what are the specific scenes of which your movie must consist and what is the story stuff that is happening in each of those scenes that must be advancing that story.

When you are forced to free yourself from the detail of the dialogue -- dialogue that you may love -- and write scenes in that stripped down way --

"Joe and Marge meet at the diner. She's quiet, trying to hide that she' upset about something, but not succeeding. Joe keeps trying to find out what's bothering her and she resists. He continues to press the issue until she finally she finally reveals that she's been having an affair. Refusing to reveal who the other man is, she turns and leaves the restaurant."

Who knows how many pages that might take up in the novel? Ten, twenty, twenty-five? And the dialogue paced accordingly. But now you're in movie land -- and that scene may take two pages, three pages. If it's much longer than four pages, it had better be a really pivotal scene.

And so you may be making a big mistake when you sit down to write that three-page movie scene to be doing it with the novel opened up to that twenty-page scene at your elbow.

Because what you really need to be doing is asking yourself how is this critical story information -- she tells him that she's having an affair, doesn't tell him who, and they part -- best be conveyed on screen.

And maybe the best way to do that isn't to have a scene at a diner at all. Maybe there is a better way to do it that conveys the crucial scene information with a minimal amount of talking. He's driving by a motel and catches her coming out in the middle of the day -- when she was supposed to be at work. And they see one another -- and she just turns and hurries off, and by the time he gets his car around the turn and into the parking lot -- she's gone -- and the guy at the desk, of course, won't tell him who she was with.

Much better than two people talking at a diner - makes better use of the visual nature of the medium -- it involves action and movement -- more than simply having people sitting and talking.

You shouldn't think that, because you've already done all of this work, and have written all of these scenes -- for your novel -- that therefore your work is largely done.

The fact is, you haven't done any work writing the screenplay -- and excluding a very few exceptions -- you can't write a novel adaption with a copy of the novel and a pair of scissors.

It just doesn't work that way.

It's a different medium with different strengths and weaknesses. It's not a novel and it's not a stage. If you're going to write a movie -- make it a movie.

NMS

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]There's an old story that John Huston was going away for the weekend and gave "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" ... script." I don't believe the story, but it's illustrative of how good the book was for turning into a novel.[/nq]
Close, but no cigar. This happened with "The Maltese Falcon," not "Sierra Madre."
[nq:1]In contrast, it took a long time for anyone to figure out how to turn the cerebral SF classic "I, Robot" into a movie. Too much "interior" stuff in the novel.[/nq]
Don't you think it had more to do with the fact that the "novel" of "I, Robot" is really a collection of barely related short stories?
[nq:1]So it's not always easy, but I'd try to make a silent movie of your book first and then go from there.[/nq]
I guess that's one way to do it, but I've done adaptations of half a dozen novels, and that approach never occurred to me. I've found the process varies tremendously from work to work. Sometimes it's a matter of finding the core of the novel, then building from that, while other times it just involves narrowing down the scenes and characters without changing very much of the overall structure.

We've done scripts that used almost none of the dialogue in the novels they were base on, (absolutely none in one case), while for the adaptation that got us the most praise, we photo copied the novel, then cut out and pasted dozens of lines and series of lines onto 3x5 cards and used them virtually verbatum. (Then again, this was just a fraction of the dialogue in the very dense and talky source material, and we still had to write tons of bridging material to make it all work.)

Ken

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]There's an old story that John Huston was going away ... how good the book was for turning into a novel.[/nq]
[nq:1]Close, but no cigar. This happened with "The Maltese Falcon," not "Sierra Madre."[/nq]
I heard a different story than you. I didn't read it, I heard it, from the son of a famous director.
[nq:2]In contrast, it took a long time for anyone to ... into a movie. Too much "interior" stuff in the novel.[/nq]
[nq:1]Don't you think it had more to do with the fact that the "novel" of "I, Robot" is really a collection of barely related short stories?[/nq]
Sorry to ruffle your scales, Mr. Nitpick. I should've said book, so sue me - the point is it's in one volume.
[nq:2]So it's not always easy, but I'd try to make a silent movie of your book first and then go from there.[/nq]
[nq:1]I guess that's one way to do it, but I've done adaptations of half a dozen novels, and that approach never occurred to me.[/nq]
The reason I said it was because I got the idea she had a lot of dialogue, thoughts, etc. and not much action.
[nq:1]I've found the process varies tremendously from work to work. Sometimes it's a matter of finding the core of the ... and talky source material, and we still had to write tons of bridging material to make it all work.) Ken[/nq]
-- Skip Press http://www.skippress.com

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

-- Frank Outlaw

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2] Close, but no cigar. This happened with "The Maltese Falcon," not "Sierra Madre."[/nq]
[nq:1]I heard a different story than you. I didn't read it, I heard it, from the son of a famous director.[/nq]
I wasn't trying to put down either you or the famous director's son, but the origin of Huston's script for TMF is one of this famous director's more widely written-about bits of trivia. (Admittedly, I never heard it, just read about it many times.)
[nq:2]Don't you think it had more to do with the ... Robot" is really a collection of barely related short stories?[/nq]
[nq:1]Sorry to ruffle your scales, Mr. Nitpick. I should've said book, so sue me - the point is it's in one volume.[/nq]
Jeez, Skip... I wasn't nitpicking, and no scales were ruffled. I was just pointing out one of the major reasons (in my opinion) why this book/novel/collection hadn't made it to the screen before, in spite of many attempts over the years to get it up there. Admittedly, it's been years since I read it, but I don't recall anything particularly cerebral about the material, (most or all of which started out in pulp Science Fiction magazines), nor do I remember it being any more "interior" than any other book/novel/collection of short stories. It's the nature of the beast.

I don't question that Forrest Ackerman and various studio execs told you that it couldn't be done by Hollywood because it had too much "novelist type stuff." Short stories, novels, journals, letters... all of those are more internal than a screenplay, so it's a pretty good way to explain why any of those forms can turn out to be too tough a nut to crack. In this particular case, however, I'd be willing to bet that the "anthology" nature to the material was an even tougher one.
[nq:2]I guess that's one way to do it, but I've done adaptations of half a dozen novels, and that approach never occurred to me.[/nq]
[nq:1]The reason I said it was because I got the idea she had a lot of dialogue, thoughts, etc. and not much action.[/nq]
Yeah, it sounds like it does. Which is why making a silent movie out of it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. After all, films *do* get made that are largely dialogue-driven, where the only action revolves around setting up situations where the characters can engage in all that dialogue. I'm not saying it's a recipe for a blockbuster, but it can be (and is) done, and that kind of thing is anything but silent.

Ken

Adapting novel to screenplay

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