How to Adapt Existing Material into a Screenplay

Your favorite book is moving, powerful, evocative... it's a story that needs to be seen all across the country on the silver screen. If you're a writer of films and you have your heart set on writing an adaptation, follow these guidelines to help get you started. As for selling it, you're on your own.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A computer with screen writing software
• Rights to the material

1. Before you even get started, you need to know this: you need to get the right to use the material from the author. Talk to the book's publisher, or the newspaper, and discuss licensing the property. It will be easier if you have a story your friend wrote, but stranger things have happened.

2. Become intimately familiar with the source material. Read and re-read it. for the purposes of this article, it's assumed that you're working from a novel. Obviously, more research and interpretation are needed for adapting, say, a newspaper article.

3. Make a list of all the major points in the film. You need to boil down your 200 to 500 page book into a 120 page screenplay (about a two hour film). The internal monologue of the narrator's voice is the first thing to go. Movies are not as intimate or introspective as books. Instead, focus on the visual elements: character action and dialogue.

4. When you're ready to write, keep to the spirit of the story, and try to include as many of the major scenes from the book as accurately as you can. In some longer works, some sub plots and characters will have to be sacrificed. Make sure they are ones you can lose. Your audience has come for the book you loved in the first place.

5. When you finish typing up your screenplay (I hope you're using formatting software, like Final Draft), read the book again. Read your script, and compare it to the novel. Is it a true adaptation, or is it unrecognizable against the source material. If that's the case, get back to work on a new draft. If it's good: congratulations!

Tips & Warnings

• I can not reiterate this enough: make sure you have the rights to adapt the material. You could write the best adaptation in the world, but if you don't secure the rights to the material, all you'll have is a typed up paper weight.

[RIPADON]

on 10/2/2008 Can some one tell me the best way to change my book which in microsoft word into a script format?