Your Novel Is Not a Screenplay: What Has to Change for the Screen

Your novel is brilliant, and the story is crafted for the medium that it was intended for —  a book (two pieces of card stock with roughly 289 medium-weight pages bound by polyvinyl acetate, a.k.a. glue); it is NOT a movie…yet.

Not every book can be a movie, and screenwriters who know how to adapt a book well, know how to edit. They can assess your book and choose the most necessary and entertaining elements to cull for the screen.  They know what elements can be cut to tell the story in the most efficient manner, keeping the script to less than 120 pages.

We’ve all experienced walking out of the theater and saying, “Well, it wasn’t as good as the book.”  Unless you read that book inside of 120 minutes, it’s never going to be.

Adaptation is an art form in and of itself. I’ve seen amazing movies come from unrecognisable pages of books never to be placed on a “best seller” shelf. I’ve also seen movies that have mirrored the original content so closely that even children who have not yet learned to read were able to predict what was going to happen next.

Each book experiences its own transformation to the screen, and the authors who embrace this process hold the key to successful adaptations that delight both readers and audiences. Allowing your script to evolve and be told in a visual manner is a strength that serves both the story and the film/series that story is about to become.

What has to change for the screen? 

The book.