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ADAPTATION 101

Brimming with confidence, you’ve just signed the check
purchasing the rights to adapt John Doe’s fabulous, but little
known novel, Lawrence of Monrovia, to screenplay form. Suddenly,
panic sets in. “What was I thinking? How the devil am I going to
convert this 400-page novel to a 110-page screenplay?”

The answer is: “The same way you transport six elephants in a
Hyundai… three in the front seat and three in the back!”

Old and very bad jokes aside, how does one pour ten gallons of
story into a one-gallon jug?

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.

CHALLENGE NUMBER ONE - LENGTH Screenplays rarely run longer than
120 pages. Figuring one page of a screenplay equals one minute
of film, a 120-page screenplay translates into a two-hour motion
picture. Much longer than that and exhibitors lose a showing,
which translates to fewer six-cent boxes of popcorn sold for
$5.99 at the refreshment stand. It took the author of your
source material 400 pages to tell the story. How can you
possibly tell the same story in 110 pages, the ideal length for
a screenplay by today’s industry standards?

And the answer to this question is no joke. “You can’t! Don’t
even try!”

Instead, look to capture the essence and spirit of the story.
Determine the through-line and major sub-plot of the story and
viciously cut everything else.

By “through-line” I mean, WHO (protagonist) wants WHAT (goal),
and WHO (antagonist) or WHAT (some other force) opposes him or
her? It helps to pose the through-line as a question.

“Will Dorothy find her way back to Kansas despite the evil
Wicked Witch of the West’s efforts to stop her?”

The same needs to be done for the major sub-plot.

“Will Dorothy’s allies achieve their goals despite the danger
they face as a result of their alliance?”

One workable technique is to read the book, set it aside for a
few weeks, and then see what you still remember of the story’s
through-line. 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.

CHALLENGE NUMBER TWO - VOICE Many novels are written in the
first person. The temptation to adapt such, using tons of
voiceovers, should be resisted. While limited voiceovers can be
effective when properly done, remember that audiences pay the
price of admission to watch a MOTION (things moving about)
PICTURE (stuff you can SEE). 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!” applies more
than ever when writing an adaptation.

CHALLENGE NUMBER THREE - “LONG-THINKING” Some tribes of American
Indians had a word to describe those of their brethren who sat
around thinking deep thoughts. Literally the word translated to,
“THE DISEASE OF LONG-THINKING”. Quite often, lead characters in
novels suffer from this disease.

“Mike knew in his heart that Judith was no good. 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!”

If adapted directly, how on Earth would a director film the
above? All we would SEE is Mike sitting there, “long-thinking”.
That is not very exciting to say the least. And as mentioned
previously, voiceovers are rarely the best solution.

When essential plot information is presented only in a
character’s thought or in the character’s internal world, one
solution is to give this character a sounding board, another
character, to which his thoughts can be voiced aloud. Either
adapt an existing character from the novel or create a new one.
Of course as always, you should avoid overly obvious exposition
by cloaking such dialogue in conflict, or through some other
technique. Even better, figure out a way to express the
character’s dilemma or internal world through action in the
external world.

CHALLENGE NUMBER FOUR - WHAT STORY? Mark Twain is quoted as
saying about Oakland, California, “There’s no there, there”.
Similarly, some novels, even successful ones, are very shy on
story and rely for the most part on style and character to
create an effect. Some prose writers are so good at what they
do, that their artful command of the language alone is enough to
maintain reader interest. Such is never the case in
screenwriting.

Successfully adapting a “no-story-there” novel to screenplay
form is a daunting task. One approach is to move away from
direct adaptation toward, “story based upon”. Use the brilliant
background and characters created by the original author as a
platform from which to launch a screen story. In fact, if for
any reason a screenplay doesn’t lend itself to screenplay form,
consider moving toward a “based upon” approach, rather than
attempting a direct adaptation.

Congratulations! You’re now an expert on adapting novels to
screenplay form! Well maybe not an expert, but hopefully you
have a better understanding of how to approach the subject than
you did ten minutes ago. And if the subject still seems too
daunting, you can always get professional help as outlined on
our web page http://www.coverscript.com/adaptation.html

Copyright © 2004 Lynne Pembroke and Jim Kalergis,
Coverscript.com

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How to avoid mistakes that undermine your credibility

You’re probably already familiar with the spell checker built into your software. Some work automatically as you type, others only run when you activate them.

Spell checking is just the start of your proofreading tasks. Don’t let simple grammatical errors, or text omissions, sabotage your message. Here are some things to check for that go beyond the capabilities of your software program’s spell checker.

But, spell checkers are not infallible! Know what yours checksand what it doesn’t check. Does it check text imported from other programs? Does it flag words containing numbers?

Spell check limitations

Monitor your spell checker’s recommendations. Make sure each suggested replacement is a correctly spelled version of the original word, and not an inappropriate substitution. Double-check the spelling of proper nouns and industry-specific terms. Use care adding them to your custom spell check dictionary, or they will be misspelled forever!

Grammatical errors

Watch for homonymscorrectly spelled, but misused wordssuch as to, two, and too, or affect and effect. Most spell checkers are not context sensitive. Watch for singular nouns paired with plural verbs, and vice versa. Make sure you have used correct punctuation, like Em dashes () to indicate duration, instead of two hyphens (- -).

Check all dates, times, prices

Have someone else verify dates, times, and prices. It’s both costly and embarrassing to send out information that you have to immediately correct.
Pay particular attention to numbers. Transposed numbers, i.e., 1,324 instead of 1,234, etc., are very difficult to notice. Before submitting a proposal, posting web content or distributing a newsletter, call telephone numbers, visit web sites and send e-mails and faxes requesting return confirmation.

Make sure you have included all ordering information necessary for recipients to respond. Order your own product, to check autoresponder performance.

Widows and orphans

Check for subheads and the first lines of new paragraphs, isolated at the bottom of a column or page. Ideally, at least two lines of a new paragraph should appear together at the bottom of a column.

Likewise, edit or rewrite to eliminate word or sentence fragments isolated at the top of a new column or page.

Hyphenation

Check that you have not hyphenated headlines and subheads. These look awkward and are hard to read. Make sure body copy has been hyphenated. In justified text, i.e., lines of equal length, hyphenation eliminates awkward word spacing. In flush-left/ragged-right text, (i.e., lines of unequal length), hyphenation eliminates alternating long and short lines.

Double-check hyphenation to make sure that words like “therapist” have not been split into “the rapist.” Use non-breaking hyphens to keep proper nouns from hyphenating.

Word breaks

Check that you have used non-breaking spaces to keep first names and last names, or dates, together on one line.

Working links

When creating Adobe Acrobat PDF files, check that all links perform properly. Just because URLs and e-mail addresses appear in blue and are underlined doesn’t mean that the links are working properly! Recheck links when you edit your original publication file and create a new PDF.

Updating information

When publishing a newsletter, check that issue date and/or issue number information are correct. Double-check headers, footers, captions, and pull quotes.

Formatting and spacing

Check for correct headline, subhead and body copy text styles. Watch out for short paragraphs that should be formatted as subheads. It’s very easy to inadvertently change styles during editing. Watch for extra spaces between words and sentences. It is also easy to inadvertently add unwanted space when copying and pasting text. Use Find and Replace to replace two spaces with one.

Duplicate or missing text

Read text out loud to locate awkward or redundant words and phrases as well as omitted words that your mind inserts because it “knows what you meant.” Watch for overflow text in text frames at the ends of articles. Often, hidden text is only indicated by a relatively small icon.

Roger C. Parker knows the secrets to promoting your business one page at a time. Find out the simple way to keep in constant touch with your customers, while saving you time and money. Visit http://www.OnePageNewsletters.com for your three free reports.

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