Adapting Your Novel to a Screenplay

Hollywood loves Adaptations (See? I even capitalized the “A”.)

The number of Academy Award Winning movies that were once novels, memoirs, comic books, stage plays, etc. is staggering.

A studio executive in the movie industry is more likely to read an adaptation from a successful book than a screenplay with no history of fans and nothing to speak for it.

Even if your book isn't a NY Times Bestseller, it might translate well to screen.

Have you ever thought this?

Me too. 

A few years ago, I attended a Sisters In Crime event at Universal Studios Hollywood that brought together a group of Hollywood’s Who's Who to talk to a select group of crime writers about turning a book into a movie. It was highly inspirational, to say the least. I got to talk to the woman who wrote Batman Forever, the show runner (big shot writer) of Bones, the woman who negotiated Gone Girl for Gillian Flynn, Shari Smiley, and many other big wigs. I came home pumped and ready to find a screenwriter for my novel.

Cut to a year later and I still hadn't found someone to write the screenplay, but I was wondering about writing a script. I attended another conference, this one in my home state of Washington and it was there I met my book to film agent and shortly after that, was offered an option for my 3-book series. Luck had something to do with it, being at the right place at the right time, then having an agent with connections and vision and tenacity had something to do with it too, although the book is high concept.

Before I’d signed the option contract, which is a very thick bundling of legal papers talking about subsequent film deals, merchandising, payment, option length, consequences if the movie doesn’t get made, legal rights etc I was asked by my agent to write the screenplay.

ACT I, ACT II and ACT III

And, because I didn’t want to tell this amazing angel from my dreams that I couldn’t write a screenplay, I started reading everything I could find about how to do such a thing. I read Save the Cat three times, I read the Screenwriters’ Bible twice, I read how to Adapt a Novel to Screen, and anything that was written online that suggested it was possible for a verbose novelist to reduce their 100,000-word book to a mere 100 pages of mostly white space. My agent reassured me that she just wanted to have a spec script in hand. It looked better than having a book in hand with no script.

It took 3 months to polish the script to a blinding shine, but I wrote the thing. I went through a lot of recipe cards. There were loads of rewrites, scenes were dropped or rewritten or combined until everyone thought my screenplay of 102 pages sounded marketable. The company who optioned the 3-book series, 5 x 5 Productions, liked the script and set about showing it around Hollywood to draw other producers in to the fold.

Films take a really long time to get made. Many optioned books, or screenplays never see the camera lens and although I know this, I am hopeful mine will. To help the project, I’ve begun looking for investors, actors, awards for the script. At this point, I'm trying to get a TV actor interested in the project. The production company is in pre-production for another book to film project and mine is next. They don’t object to me dabbling in producer-type activities and I’ve been looking for investors to help with the money needed. That’s what I’m working on in my spare time between writing books.
 And as far as awards are concerned, The Dream Jumper’s Promise screenplay won The Los Angeles Film Awards Best First Screenplay, semi-finaled in the Burbank International Film Festival Screenwriting Competition and won Best Feature Screenplay in the Royal Wolf Awards. There were other smaller wins, but these were the biggies, the ones I’m most proud of.

I wrote another script from a Christmas Romance novel (these are wildly popular!) and then wrote a TV one-hour pilot, then wrote the book from the pilot, something I don’t recommend. I found it hard to go back to write a big ole book after finishing the screenplay, but that could be just me. Then I wrote another script called Christmas in Crystal Creek about a country music singer stranded in Maine over Christmas. I wrote the novella to that one simultaneously with the script.
Writing both at the same time was confusing. It isn’t hard to confuse me.

These days, I speak on the subject of adapting your novel to a screenplay at writer conferences and promote the idea that novelists make fantastic screenwriters, especially of their own work. No one knows the story like you. You already know how to write. Boiling your story down to 45 key scenes that are visually pleasing to carry the story line to a satisfying end is all you have to do. Here's how to start:

Read Save the Cat.
Isolate those 45 scenes in your book that support the story and would translate visually. 
Buy screenwriting software like Final Draft and watch the tutorial.
Buy The Screenwriters Bible by Dave Trottier.
Start writing it scene by scene. 
Only write what the movie audience can see.
Enter scenes late, leave early.
Make all dialogue necessary to the story.
Polish it.
Send it out to a pro for "Coverage"
Rewrite
Register it with WGA
Join Screenwriter Support Groups like Blue Cat, ISA and local chapters of screenwriters.
Upload your screenplay to Film Freeway and enter contests!

Good luck everyone and be sure to keep in touch on Facebook at my private beach where everyone looks great in their bathing suit!
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https://www.facebook.com/groups/188081488503196/

KIM HORNSBY is an Amazon Bestselling Author best known for The Dream Jumper Series, which is optioned for film, with over 400 reviews on Amazon at 4.5 stars.
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NOAH (the Movie) Misses the Boat!

Saturday night is typically date night for many couples and I went to the movies with my hubby of 21 years to see Noah, a film that had all the components in place to be a blockbuster good time.
It wasn't.
I'm not extremely familiar with the Bible story and this review doesn't come from a Christian background. Or a Muslim background, or anything but a background of someone who enjoys a good movie. Noah did not deliver.
Let's just start by saying that in the theatre of maybe 70 seats (it was one of those order drinks and food to your chair), three people walked out of the movie. I would've gone too but tickets were expensive and I didn't know until afterwards that my husband was hoping it would get better, make sense, justify the time and money.
For me, Noah was not worth the price of admission. And then some.
Where to start?
The studio that made this disaster headed off Christian group dissention  by saying that Noah is not the Biblical story--not exactly. No, no it is not. But that's not entirely responsible for this flop.
The movie opens with a cheesy explanation of the biblical tale of how the world began with Adam and Eve, saying that angels came to earth called Wanderers to protect one family that had branched off after Cain killed Abel. Turned out Wanderers were giant rock monsters that talked and judged mankind. Come on People!
What genius at producer headquarters ok'ed this? This guy to the left.


Hubby and I both surmised that the rock monsters were drawn and voiced by Optimus Prime people. Hauntingly similar to a transformer.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's the story in a nutshell. Noah's family moves from a wasteland to find Methuselah, his grandfather, for wisdom. Noah has seen visions and believes he's been chosen to save the world. He's had a direct message from the Creator. When Methuselah's seed from the Garden of Eden sprouts a landscape of forested hardwood, the building of an ark begins. The enormous ship's construction is largely due to the strength and power of the Rock Monsters. Otherwise, how could a family of five create logs to make this football field-sized floating box?
The ark on screen was impressive but when the animals arrived, the film took on a new cheesy quality with fake CGI animals arriving in droves that immediately went into the ark and fell asleep due to an herb that Noah's wife, played by Jennifer Connelly, concocted.
The animals slept side by side in great lumps, thereby eliminating any cool scenes with actual animals. Missed opportunity.

Noah himself becomes Daddy Dearest as he refuses his sons potential wives on the ark --wives that would help them repopulate the world. He's interpreted the Creator's mission to mean that he is supposed to repopulate the world with animals only. Humans are too selfish, hateful to continue and Noah and his family must live out their final days knowing they are the last of a species. But the "adopted" daughter becomes pregnant with his eldest son's baby and as the rains come Noah vows to let the baby live only if it is a son. Why? Because there are no girls besides mom and grandmom in the world to repopulate with? If it's a girl he's worried that one of his sons will impregnate the female? The implication was that one of the boys would eventually rape their niece/daughter.
The rain comes, the rock monsters head back to the sky in a firework display (Transformers) and the ark floats off. They've battled Cain's people (a barbaric lot) who are trying to get in the boat, and one of Noah's sons, who's devastated that he didn't get a wife, harbors Cain in the animal hold as an act of revenge on his father.
Let's stop here for a bit to tell you that Noah and family are veggies. They don't understand or condone the eating of meat. The film is touted as having an environmental edge. Is this why? But, Cain eats meat and sets about eating the animals to stay alive and get stronger from his injuries incurred in battle. My hubby, in his infinite humor, thought Cain should have been seen eating a unicorn instead of the rat/lizard we saw, thereby explaining the unicorn's extinction.That was how bad/boring the movie was. We had to think up funny stuff to amuse ourselves. Connelly turned in a good performance, her best scene where she defied Noah. I must note that Anthony Hopkins also did a fine job as Methuselah. He was lucky his part was as small as it was.
The best part of the whole movie was Emma (Hermoine Granger) Watson as the adopted daughter.
She turned in a solid performance, had the best part in terms of future damage control for an actor's career, and actually got to challenge Noah at the end.
The character of Noah was a controlling, delusional patriarch who went on a bender after the ark beached on a hill and an island eventually appeared. When he sobered up he returned to his family to take his place at the head of the pack. I found this the most unbelievably insulting part of the whole film. Not the bender. But that a man who'd been willing to commit unspeakable crimes a month earlier and had driven off his son was allowed to resume his place as the leader. Accepted again. Yuk.
Not only did the women let him back in the family but they let him lead them. The final scene was insulting to women. Even after making the mistake of believing they would be the last of their species and steering them all to horrific heartache, he was still the best one to lead the group?
I'm not familiar with how the world became repopulated according to the Bible but I left the movie thinking that one of Emma Watson's children would be in charge of having the babies, adding a whole new dimension to the words family love.

 

When the movie ended, my husband and I hurried out of the theatre with a bad taste in our mouths and talked all the way home about the lack of anything redeeming in the movie Noah. If the CGI's were impressive we didn't notice because we were too busy being talked down to by the sheer unbelievability of the movie. According to media packets Noah wasn't screened before release. If it was, I think it would not be the top box office winner this weekend.
Go ahead, spend your money if you're curious, but be sure to take hand cream or a book so you won't feel like you wasted 2 1/2 hours of just sitting there.

Kim Hornsby is the Bestselling author of THE DREAM JUMPER'S PROMISE a story with no rock monsters or similarities to the Bible. With 206 reviews on Amazon, most 4&5 star, Jumper is becoming known as an Indie Favorite. Nominated for Best First Book by Indi RomCom and up for Best Paranormal of 2013 by Chanticleer Reviews, Jumper is on sale now at Amazon.

Despicable Me 2- What the Heck?

Last night I went to the movies to see Despicable Me 2 and encountered something I've never seen before. Well, I've seen it but never to this degree. When it started, I wondered what was going on but soon realized that people loved the first movie and were ready to laugh when they bought their ticket for the second in this series.
Yes, it was laughter that I encountered. I've never heard an audience laugh so much for a full 90 minutes. Maybe I haven't been going to the right movies. The family beside me was in hysterics over everything and a huge group down at the front of the theatre hooted every time the minions came on. The group I was with laughed heartily at almost every joke. I'm a very quiet audience member and even I laughed out loud many times. It was like having our very own live laugh track and you know what purpose those things fill. Or should I say 'filled' because I don't think any self respecting comedy uses them anymore, do they?
I don't usually review movies. I leave that to my sis who writes SusieQ'sMovieReviews.  but I must mention that this movie is really funny. As well as having a terrific story line (bad guy disguised as a mall business owner wants to take over the world), the animation was superb, the characters were compelling and the voices were top-knotch. Steve Carrell does a fine job as Gru, the loveable former villain who's turned into a devoted Daddy of 3 girls. And Kristen Wiig was his partner in fighting crime and that gal is always good. I was particularly impressed with the colors and visual presentation of the movie. WOW! The purples are really purple and the reds are as red as anything you've ever seen. I think I've been staring at a black and white keyboard too much. It was a gorgeous movie in many ways and the silly minions are worth the price of admission. Even when the charming teenage boy said when he grew up, he wanted to play video games for a living, the theatre laughed. (I was sitting with an Xbox game designer and he snort laughed!).
So if you're looking for a movie this month, I highly recommend this one for all ages.

Kim Hornsby is the Best Selling Amazon author of THE DREAM JUMPER'S PROMISE and NECESSARY DETOUR available on Amazon as well as a short story series based on THE BACHELOR - THE HUSBAND HUNT