Approach to Adapting Novels

[PhantomScreenwriter]

As an exercise, a few years ago, I had a certain strategy in mind in how to adapt Stephen King's The Stand into a screenplay. The strategy was to analyse the novel chapter by chapter and as each chapter was analysed the idea was to turn that chapter into screenplay format. Obviously doing it this way would make the screenplay almost the length of the novel itself thereby being impossible to turn into a film but more plausible and possible as a series. However, the other part of the strategy would be to only leave in what needs to be left in that ensures the story makes sense, and that it's faithful to the events and characters of the novel and of course to keep it to standard screenplay length and adhering to format. Keeping the second part of the strategy in mind would this overall be a good way to adapt any novel into a screenplay? What other approaches would there be to adapt a novel into a screenplay?

Ultimately I never started this self learning project and I have no intention to do so any more but I would still like people's opinions on my proposed strategy and any other strategies that would be beneficial if I ever want to adapt a novel into a screenplay or if there are others who would like to at some point as well.

 

[Dustin Bowcott]

The second way is the way I'm going. I've been commissioned to write an autobiography. True life stories can generally run longer anyway... but I'm going to be taking the key facts and aiming for a 2-hour film.

 

[maz]

As an exercise, a few years ago, I had a certain strategy in mind in how to adapt Stephen King's The Stand into a screenplay. The strategy was to analyse the novel chapter by chapter and as each chapter was analysed the idea was to turn that chapter into screenplay format. Obviously doing it this way would make the screenplay almost the length of the novel itself thereby being impossible to turn into a film but more plausible and possible as a series. However, the other part of the strategy would be to only leave in what needs to be left in that ensures the story makes sense, and that it's faithful to the events and characters of the novel and of course to keep it to standard screenplay length and adhering to format. Keeping the second part of the strategy in mind would this overall be a good way to adapt any novel into a screenplay? What other approaches would there be to adapt a novel into a screenplay?

Ultimately I never started this self learning project and I have no intention to do so any more but I would still like people's opinions on my proposed strategy and any other strategies that would be beneficial if I ever want to adapt a novel into a screenplay or if there are others who would like to at some point as well.

The problem with your strategy (and I adopted a similar one a few months back) is that a large amount of what is in any novel is internal to the characters and is effectively unfilmable and also unwriteable in a screenplay format.

What I found a better approach was to identify all the key beats in the novel and then concentrate on filling in the gaps around those key events with material based on the source, but not necessarily directed by it. Sometimes you have to omit several great scenes in the novel, but you can make up for it by creating a new scene that captures some of what made those scenes great while still driving the filmable story forward. Just writing up everything (which wouldn't be possible most of the time anyway due to aforementioned internal monologue etc) and then just cutting a load of stuff scene-by-scene is far too blunt an approach.

In summary, it's hard

 

[PhantomScreenwriter]

How much time roughly would you need to complete Dustin?

Lol very hard Maz, yeah the strategy I proposed would be very tedious. I mean, perhaps as an exercise to apply for a short story it might be more feasible. The collection of short stories by Stephen King, Everything's Eventual, had some pretty good short stories. It also included 1408 which was adapted into film with John Cusack and Samuel L Jackson. I felt that was quite good considering how much material they had to use from the source, which wasn't very much. But there are other great short stories in the collection too.

 

[mad_hatter]

As a general rule-of-thumb, I’m not a huge fan of novel-to-film adaptations. So much great stuff tends to get cut, that the film always seems to be missing something… The internal thoughts and feelings of the characters within a novel are a huge part of what makes a novel so good. The inability to transfer that to film tends to make the film lack.

Probably the best adaptation (best, as in, most faithful) I’ve seen would be “Fight Club”. It works perfectly, as we have Ed Norton’s narration, as we have in the book. It’s also a very short novel, so little needs to be cut due to time constraints.

“The Silence Of The Lambs” is another very good adaptation, although they cut a lot of exposition from the novel.

I’ve never read any of “The Lord Of The Rings” books, but I imagine the films, being so long, are pretty thorough, at least doing the novels justice. Having said that, “The Stand” has more pages than “The Fellowship of the Ring” and “The Two Towers” combined. Those two films run at over 7.5 hours! “The Stand” would require a very long film to do it justice. Also, “The Stand” was already adapted into a 6 hour series, but I never saw it. I’m sure there’s talk of adapting it again…

As another example, although a number of plot points are the same in “Jurassic Park”, it’s really only a loose adaptation. The writer seemingly took the characters and the concept of ‘a “dinosaur zoo”, where the dinosaurs escape and kill a bunch of people’, and ran with it. Certain scenes are cut, new scenes are added, characters are changed, different people live and die… But still, the film is great; it’s just different.

I think that may be the best approach; just know the story inside-out, then write the screenplay based on that.

If you’re wanting to adapt Stephen King, take a look at “Night Shift”. It’s my favourite of his collections. Are you working on this as a “Dollar Baby”?

 

[Adeimantus]

The second way is the way I'm going. I've been commissioned to write an autobiography. True life stories can generally run longer anyway... but I'm going to be taking the key facts and aiming for a 2-hour film.

Great thread!

I've written three biopics, two of which made it to this year's Nicholl semifinals.

The problem with biopics, as opposed to novel adaptations, is that a person's life almost never follows the beats of classical storytelling. At least with a novel that's worth adapting, one can assume the author has a strong plot-line and story structure. The usual problem with a biopic is that it succumbs to the "This happened, and then this happened, then this happened..." collection of scenes that don't gel into a satisfying thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

One way to approach that is to remember that a screenwriter (or film) isn't bounded by the limitations of traditional linear storytelling. A great example of a good biopic is "The Last Emperor," in my opinion. It's actually two stories that run simultaneously; a current-time story, and a "past" story told in flashback. Using that technique, it frees an author's hand to manipulate life-events into the proper position within the script/story to hit important beats.

But the biggest issue in biopics is the degree to which an author can or should deviate from historical accuracy in the name of good story-telling, also known as "poetic license." I was freed of that concern for the most part in one of the bipics, because the actual historical record on the life of my main character is actually rather sketchy, which freed me up to be creative, so long as I didn't deviate much from what IS known about him. In my opinion, a good screenwriter tries his/her best to be as accurate as possible when writing a biopic, but shouldn't shrink from changing or inventing details when called for by the story in order to give a deeper and more meaningful portrayal of your character's life. Screenplays are structure, lives aren't.

I've never done a novel adaptation, but would love to do one. It's always fun messing with other people's shit.

 

[PhantomScreenwriter]

Originally Posted by mad_hatter
I’ve never read any of “The Lord Of The Rings” books, but I imagine the films, being so long, are pretty thorough, at least doing the novels justice. Having said that, “The Stand” has more pages than “The Fellowship of the Ring” and “The Two Towers” combined. Those two films run at over 7.5 hours! “The Stand” would require a very long film to do it justice. Also, “The Stand” was already adapted into a 6 hour series, but I never saw it. I’m sure there’s talk of adapting it again…

The film adaptations of Lord of the Rings, while missing a great deal of scenes, and having a lot of additions, is the best that could have been asked for so far, and it could have been much, much worse. I say worse not that I think the film adaptations are bad, I believe they're great movies and great adaptations of the source material, but if they went with the original plan the producers had of adapting it into one feature length film then it would have been a very bad adaptation indeed, and two films wouldn't have done it justice either. The novels themselves have their chapters split in two and are listed under Book One and Book Two in Fellowship, Book Three and Book Four in Two Towers and Book Five and Book Six in Return of the King.

The Stand mini-series was pretty decent. It was directed by Mick Garris who also directed the mini-series version of The Shining but I think he did a better job on The Stand than The Shining, which isn't a bad adaptation, it's a bit closer to the novel except it too has differences especially a scene at the very end that's not in the book or the Kubrick film. But yeah The Stand had a great cast of actors, and there were a lot of things not included, certain characters were cut and some were combined into one but overall I think it's an admirable adaptation. A three hour feature film is currently in the works. A director named Josh Boone has been hired and they're still working on the screenplay. One of the actors rumoured to be considered for a role is Matthew McConaughey as Randall Flagg, which I think would be a very good piece of casting if he were to accept if an offer was made to him.

Originally Posted by mad_hatter
If you’re wanting to adapt Stephen King, take a look at “Night Shift”. It’s my favourite of his collections. Are you working on this as a “Dollar Baby”?

I have looked into it in the past but currently don't have any plans to pursue writing an adaptation of one of King's "Dollar Babies" but I would definitely take it as a serious endeavour were I to actually to intend the task, that's for sure. I think it's a great idea that he came up with too.

Originally Posted by Adeimantus

Great thread!

I've written three biopics, two of which made it to this year's Nicholl semifinals.

The problem with biopics, as opposed to novel adaptations, is that a person's life almost never follows the beats of classical storytelling. At least with a novel that's worth adapting, one can assume the author has a strong plot-line and story structure. The usual problem with a biopic is that it succumbs to the "This happened, and then this happened, then this happened..." collection of scenes that don't gel into a satisfying thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

Thanks, I think it's a topic that has a lot of areas that need to be researched and is ripe for discussion! Congratulations on making it to the semifinals!

That's true because while a person can experience shocking, thrilling, happy, tragic or other kinds of events there's sometimes no rhyme or reason to the timing of such things and life doesn't follow the same structures a film does, so yeah a person's life never follows the beats of classical storytelling as you say.