How to Adapt Books to Scripts
After reading a tremendous book, you cannot help but realize how amazing it would look as a movie. Soon, you find out you have the rights to turn this book into a movie, only you do not know how to take a 500-page book and turn it into a 90-page movie script. Follow this tutorial and you will have a start.
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Instructions
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How to Adapt Books to Scripts
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1
Read the book a few times. Before turning one carefully thought out medium into another, you need to carefully think. Be able to recap everything that happens in detail.
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2
Using 3-by-5 cards, write the details of each scene on a separate card.
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3
On more 3x5 cards, write down interesting lines of dialogue written in the book. Though you will add much more dialogue, there are usually lines in a book that need to be heard on-screen.
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4
Remove any scene that does not need to be there. Books deal with plot on multiple levels. Choose one or two levels and remove anything not dealing with them.
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5
Decide if you want a straight adaptation, or a loose one. Loose ones refer to all of the modern movies that have been based off of a Shakespeare play.
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6
Feel free to shift some points around or change motives. This is an adaptation and what happens in a book may need to be altered to make sense on a movie screen.
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7
Sit down and write the script.
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