Adaptation

How does someone go about adapting a written
story to film format? Thanks.

–Sam Ruin

Probably half the movies made are adaptations of one sort or another. The
original source material might have been a novel, a short story, an article
or even a 1970’s TV show (such as "Charlie’s Angels," coming to a theater near
you November 3).

Sorry for the blatant plug. Back to the question.

The first issue you face with any adaptation is rights. The author of the
original material generally holds the copyright, which means he or she has
say over whether or not a movie can be made based on the material, and for
what price. So if you’re serious about adapting the work, you’ll want to check
with the original author’s publisher (in the "sub-rights" department)
and get contact information so you can start the process of buying or optioning
these rights. ("Optioning" is something like "leasing-to-buy," where
you pay a fraction of the money up front, with a promise to pay more later
if the movie gets made.)

It’s important to note that copyright expires, so if you’re looking at adapting
something originally written in the 1800’s, there’s a good chance the work
is considered to be "in the public domain," which means you won’t
have to secure any rights at all.

Of course, there’s a big difference between having the rights to a story and
actually having a movie to make. Adapting a story into movie form is a lot
harder than it might seem at first.

The basic problem is that movies work so differently than most fiction or
other prose.

In novels or short stories, the prose is the final product. Screenplays, on
the other hand, are blueprints. They’re a plan for making a movie, but not
the movie itself. While the author of a novel has the final say about everything
that happens in a story, the screenwriter is by default only one of many hands
in making the movie, and everyone who becomes involved with the project will
change it in one way or another. Thus the screenplay has to communicate the
overall vision for the movie, above and beyond all the details of character,
plot and theme. In short, a book is just a book, but a screenplay has to be
a story, a plan, a sales tool and a mission statement all in one.

Fiction can ramble. Screenplays have to be ruthlessly efficient.

In fiction, the author can say what a character is thinking. In movies, a
screenwriter doesn’t have that option, without resorting to some device like
a voice-over or flashback.

The reader of a book can put a book down and think about it, or flip back
a few pages if something was confusing. Sitting in the theater, the audience
doesn’t have that opportunity. The movie keeps going, 24 frames per second,
no matter what. Therefore, the screenwriter has to be extra attentive to make
certain the audience will be able to follow the story at every moment.

Finally, movies are fundamentally a visual medium, so the screenwriter has
to be able to tell the story with images. Yes, there’s sound and dialogue,
but the picture is king. In a book, the author can say what a character tastses
or smells or feels. In a movie, all the audience can experience is sight and
sound, so the screenwriter needs to communicate everything through only these
two senses.

Given these challenges, it becomes clear why adapting a book into a movie
isn’t a matter of feeding the pages into a projector. It also explains why
so many bad movies are made from good books.

So how do you begin an adaptation? The most important thing is to approach
the project as a movie, with all the strengths and limitations of the medium,
rather than as a novel or short story. Focus on the primary characters, their
goals and obstacles. Rather than trying to winnow down the source material
to fit into 120 pages, try to invite in only the elements you really need;
that is, build up rather than strip down.

And most importantly, remember that adaptation isn’t any easier than writing
a screenplay from scratch. So don’t beat yourself when certain aspect worked
in the novel but not in your script. They’re different beasts.

From the perspective of a screenwriter, what is essential in creating an adapted
script? Is it possible to keep the true essence and theme of a piece of literature
when translated to film? Can literary techniques be directly transformed into
cinematic terms? Should the two even be compared?

–Jeremy Vandiver

Sure. Books and movies should be compared, if only to understand what each
does well.

Using words alone, a good book manages to evoke images and emotions in the
reader that add up to a coherent story. The best writing makes a reader feel
like he’s seeing, hearing and touching what the character experiences, putting
you "in his shoes." Of all the literary tools available to the writer,
the most valuable may be insight. The novelist can choose to tell the reader
what the character is thinking, or fill in extra details, or sketch out relationships,
that have nothing to do with the current scene. In fact, the novel doesn’t
need to have "scenes" at all. Moments and observations can float
freely in space and time, arranged in whatever order best suits the story.

A movie — and by movie I mean what’s actually projected on the big screen
— has basically the same goals as a novel. It wants to transport the viewer
into a different place and time, making him feel like what he’s seeing and
hearing is real. A movie has many advantages over a novel. Not only are there
concrete visuals, but you hear the characters speak and watch them fight.
It’s an exaggeration to say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it
would be very hard to capture the essence of THE MATRIX’s bullet-time on paper
without having seen if first, or the feeling of a John Williams soundtrack.
But this efficiency comes at a cost. With rare, art-house exceptions, movies
have scenes. The viewer is seeing and
hearing something that is taking place at a specific time and location. Movies
move relentlessly forward at 32-frames
per second, and the viewer cannot choose to stop and think about something,
or flip back a few pages to catch something he missed.

Most importantly, movies lack insight. Aside from an occasional voice-over
or narrator intrusion (done recently, and effectively, by AMELIE and Y TU MAMA
TAMBIEN), a movie can’t communicate anything to the viewer beyond what is seen
and heard. Since a movie can’t flat-out tell you what the hero is thinking,
it has to be very specific with its images and sounds to let you know what’s
going on inside a character’s head.

Now for the terrifying truth: a screenplay is the worst of both worlds. It’s
a work of literature that has to conform to all the limitations of a movie,
yet without any of cinema’s special abilities. That above all else is why screenwriting
is so hard.

In terms of adaptation, the screenwriter has to look for ways to take ideas
that "float" in a novel and tie them down to specific moments, locations
and times. Sometimes this means simply repurposing internal thoughts as dialogue,
but more often it involves a fundamental rethinking of the structure, storyline
and characters to achieve the goal.

I think one reason that many adaptations rely on voice-over is that the filmmakers
never found a way to externalize the essence of the novel they were adapting.
Instead of making a movie that could stand on its own, they created the cinematic
equivalent of a book-on-tape. To me, these movies always "feel" written,
a huge limitation.

This question is going to suck. I have an idea to turn a computer game (I
feel so cheap) into a screenplay. Just as a side-note, it’s more of the atmosphere
of the game that’s appealing, not the quick buck mentality. Obviously I can’t
afford to buy the rights, but where do I lie submitting it to agencies? Would
they even look at it?

–Chris

Your question doesn’t suck. I adapted a computer game into
a movie ("American McGee’s Alice"), and I didn’t feel a wee bit cheap.

But then, it was a damn cool game, and I got paid. So there you have it.

Since you don’t think you can get the rights to the game, ask yourself if
you’re still willing to write a script that can never get made (or even sold).
If the answer is yes, go for it.

Some agents will avoid reading your script, simply because they know they
can never sell it. But some agents will read it as a writing sample, and if
the atmosphere of the game world is as cool as you say, maybe they’ll like
it and see you have potential.
Make sure you identify your source material on the cover page, which would
read:

TITLE

written by Chris Somebody

 

based on the videogame "Underpants Wars"

published by Powerful Software Company

Considering you’re probably broke, and the fact you won’t be able to sell this anyway, there’s
very little danger
Powerful Software Company would bother coming after you. But you’re
morally and karmically better off giving credit where it’s due.

I’ve heard it being said that one of the ways to get producers interested
in your screenplay’s story is to do it the long way and write the book first.
Do you agree, and is it harder to get a book published than a screenplay bought?

–Brian

Wow. Writing a screenplay, and then writing a book based on the screenplay,
seems like a tremendous amount of misdirected work. Yes, some producers do
like to read novels, but the vast majority would prefer a script to a novel
any day of the week. After all, a script is a lot closer to being a movie than
a book is. Plus it’s shorter, and you can throw it across the room without
damaging your walls.

My advice is to pick the format you’d prefer to write, hopefully the one that
best matches your story. If you choose to write a book, make it the best book
possible — don’t go overboard trying to load it up with "this would be
a great movie!" moments. If you choose to write a script, trust that the
quality of your writing is all you’ll need to sell it.

I recently adapted a book called BIG FISH by author Daniel Wallace. Meeting
with him for the first time, I was surprised to see he had never thought of
his book being a movie. The moments I thought were cinematic, he thought were
just good storytelling.

As for your second question, I’m not sure whether being published is easier
or harder than selling a script. My gut instinct is that it’s easier to be
published, simply because there are so many different publishing houses, and
frankly, so many books. But there’s a big difference between being published
and making money.