It is not uncommon for authors to want to adapt their books into movies. Netflix alone will spend north of $13 million on new content this year, the bulk of that jaw-dropping amount on films. Netflix is just one streaming giant. So it’s understandable that authors interested in the book-to-film pipeline are taking screenwriting courses and reading how-to books like Save the Cat. Who among us wouldn’t want to see our stories in all their cinematic glory? Writing for the small and big screen became a goal of mine as a teen, which is why my YA debut novel, Malcolm and Me, started off as a script. My story is about an insightful Philadelphia teen wrestling with adult hypocrisy while fighting systemic racism at her Catholic school during the 1973-74 school year. Earlier this year, I submitted the first act of my script to the talented members of the Virginia Screenwriters Forum, of which I am the director. I read their critiques, let them marinate, then weaved them into another draft. Then I set it aside.
You may say, “You wrote the book, don’t you know your story well enough to spit out the script?” I lived the story so I definitely know it, but screenplays and novels rock different rules and it’s not a breeze adapting your own work. For starters, every page of a script equals a minute of screen time. Most books average about 300 pages and most movie scripts are between 90 and 120 pages. That math alone required me to eliminate nearly a third of my material. You know, the words I slaved over for more years than I care to share. That meant restructuring the story. That meant killing a lot of babies. (A horrible sounding idiom but one so apt). It’s a process to write the first draft with different story beats but the same themes, characters, and emotional truth as the novel. Wish I could tell you that I wrote the first draft straight through. I did it in phases. It took time to heal from saying goodbye to all of my fabulous interior monologues and descriptive passages. I had to remind myself a script is concise and not a wordy novel. I ended up writing 128 pages. Cutting it to 110 pages felt as hard as the 102-mile bicycle ride I did with my hubby 10 years ago. The bike ride was more fun.
After revising the entire script, I sent it to beta readers. After including their feedback, I set the script aside for a few months. A few days ago, I reread it. What a difference the gift of time makes. I read it with fresher eyes and more objectivity. I clearly see where to cut, even after adding crucial scenes and polishing the writing with more evocative verbs (because a movie is about characters doing something, not thinking or talking about it).
On the cusp of 2023, my goal is to have a polished script by mid-January. My strategy includes submitting it to various contests throughout the year while finishing other screenplays in various stages of development. For all the authors working on adaptions, I hope sharing my process provides instruction and inspiration. If not, I invite you to get a closer look at the craft of screenwriting by attending a meeting of the Virginia Screenwriters Forum. I’m all for more authors writing their way into the book-into-film pipeline in 2023!
About the Author
Robin Farmer‘s debut novel, Malcolm and Me, was a 2019 winner of the She Writes Press and SparkPress Toward Equality in Publishing (STEP) contest. A national award-winning journalist, Robin specialized in narrative nonfiction projects as part of the Special Projects/Investigative team for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Her work led to a Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan. A freelance writer since 2009, her clients include corporations and universities. Robin holds a degree in journalism from Marquette University. She lives near Richmond with her husband and is working on her second novel.