Adaptation: welcome to your story

The process of adapting a book to the screen is something I enjoy doing. It’s a unique screenwriting skill – quite unlike writing a screenplay from a screenplay synopsis or film treatment.

You need to understand the plot of the book you are adapting very well in order to adapt it to the screen. What that means is that when adapting a book to the screen, the screenwriter effectively assesses the plot of the book. A kind of plot cross examination goes on that may reveal book plot strengths and areas for improvement.

A plot point that may not be obvious when described by thousands of words of prose may leap out when the book is adapted to the screen. Why? Because screenwriting is such a sparse form of narration. The bare bones of a story are visible in a screenplay, whereas the story or plot may be harder to perceive amid all that verbiage – however good.

When adapting for the screen, I create an adaptation synopsis or treatment first for my client. This script treatment (or bible, if it’s an episodic adaptation) details the plot as re-examined by the screenplay form. This examination may find flaws. It may even shine a light on the quality of the book being adapted. But the adaptation process will certainly give the story of the book a thorough examination. Changes may be required to the plot of the book to create a story and plot that works in screenplay form. Some books can be adapted with few changes; other books require deeper changes to be made during adaptation.

The fact is that a screenplay is a very different narrative form to a book.

The 'clay' of the narrative may need to be remoulded into a different shape. But the clay itself – the essence of the story and its world - will remain if you hire a screenwriter who is skilled at doing adaptations like me.

Get in touch to have your book assessed for adaptation initially. I will tell you how adaptable your book is, or how it will need to be changed, if at all, to be adapted for the screen. Doing a full screen adaptation or just a initial film adaptation assessment will provide you with a different view of your book that may highlight its strengths and weaknesses as a story, and enable improvement. In any case it will be fun and informative!

Get in touch to find out about my book to screen adaptation services.