All right, folks. In this clip, we're going to talk about how to adapt a book into a script. This is not going to be easy, especially if the book that you're adapting has any kind of fan base. They are expecting you to do their favorite novel justice and that is a massive responsibility. First thing you're going to want to do is read the book cover to cover many, many times. You want to know the meat and potatoes of the book. What's it really about? What's the underlying theme? What are the obvious themes? You want to be able to inhabit the characters' heads, and that's the real difference between a book and a movie. It's a lot easier for an audience to crawl inside the head of a character in a book than it is in a movie, simply because in a book, we are the directors. We are literally watching the movie play out in our minds as we read, whereas with a film, you're being told, you know, how the story goes through someone else's perspective. So really try and tap into the universal theme of the book. As you're sitting down to write, really try and really suss out what it was the author was trying to do with the story and get that down on the page, first and foremost. If you're true to the original intent of the story, that will be, by far, the most important thing that you ever do when it comes to adapting it. Other than that, you're going to want to outline all the major scenes in the...in the book and make sure that you get as many of them onto the page as you possibly can. You want to try and utilize as much of the interaction between characters as you possibly can. Definitely make the screenplay and the dialogue your own, but fans of the book will appreciate it if you are faithful to a lot of the source material and you write in little exchanges that were there in the book. It's kind of like almost a wink to them saying, "Hey, yeah. This is the book that you remember." Other than that, you really have to just be a fan of the book at the end of the day. You have to really appreciate the material and in order to adapt it faithfully, you have to really allow yourself to perceive it as countless others that have read the book have perceived it. And therefore, translate it in a way that they will hopefully appreciate.
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