Becoming a Lifelong Learner of the Craft of Writing

By author, editor, educator Shonell Bacon aka ChickLitGurrl™

Book to Screen 2: Seeing Book as a Visual Story

In part one of this series, I offered some advice on books and software to help you on this journey and gave you guys a little homework. I hope you took part in it, especially if you picked up a book made to movie and read the book then watched the movie. Doing that exercise will give you a chance to see how fully developed and alive the book is and how that same development and life (if done well) can be transported onto the screen—a lot of times with cutting, revising, and moving around of parts of the book in the movie form.

Now, in part two, I want to talk about seeing your book as a visual story—which I know most of us say we do already, as we talk about seeing our story on our “mind’s screen,” but do we all really know what that means when it’s translated onto the screen?

Do you know what two important verbs typically go into the making of a screenplay? Doing and Saying. Characters do things, and characters say things.

Like a book, like any good story, movies have plots and subplots that tie into the same question: what does the protagonist want and what keeps him/her from obtaining that want? In the quest to see how this story ends, characters do and say things.

Why am I repeating this and why is it important to know—especially in regards to seeing your book visually for the screen? Check out one of the many free scripts at Simply Scripts. One thing that you will not notice in a screenplay is heavy exposition, pages upon pages of description, of characters’ thoughts and feelings, of minute detailing that brings a story to life in a book but would weigh a screenplay down in the worst kind of way. In a screenplay, writers are quick to give just enough definition, description, or setting of the stage, but primarily, they are concerned with telling a story by speech and by action. The vast majority of a book is exposition; the vast majority of a screenplay is dialogue/action. Long passages in which a character is musing doesn’t necessarily make for great movie entertainment. Because of this, we need to rethink our printed book for the visual screen. Adapting a book into a screenplay is not just about moving from a book format to a script format. It’s about examining your book with screen eyes to discern what parts make for visually stimulating moments for the screen, which parts have strength in character action and speech, which sections do not and if vitally needed, how can they be changed in order to be visually appealing. We need to realize that 1) movies/TV are visual media and 2) you need to see how your book can become a part of that visual media.

How can we do that? Now, keep in mind, this series does not make the claim that with each of these parts you can quickly write this script. That is so not the case. In fact, just this part of the series alone entails a lot of work for you to do. What kind of work? Well, getting a copy of your book printed (or on computer if you don’t want to kill trees) and start to parse the manuscript. Read through it, making note of visually appealing scenes/moments, making note of scenes/moments that aren’t visually appealing and figuring out if they are needed for the story and how to make them visually appealing if they are needed, and going through all the exposition to discern, if needed, how to make it visually appealing and make it fit into the action and speech that are vital to good visual storytelling.

At this stage, we are not concerned with order or structure or how the book will be a screenplay. We are concerned with looking at the artifact and figuring out if it has the goods to be a screenplay. Not every book is made to be a movie, and this is a great stage to look at your book with screen eyes to see if this is a story best kept in print or if it has the chops to be developed for the screen.

Between now and the next part of the series, I’d like for you to read your book with those screen eyes. And think not just as the writer of the book but as a movie goer. Try to separate yourself from the book, which I know is hard as the literary parent, and be the typical movie goer. Is there enough action in the story? Is there enough strong dialogue that reveals characters and moves story along? Can the exposition and description be trimmed for the screen or made into visually appealing components? Start thinking like a movie goer and not just a book reader.

Last time, I gave you three links to books that have been turned into movies, and I want to do the same here. As part of the learning process, it’s always a good idea to see how others have successfully gone from book to screen. These three all won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay Adaptation, and what’s cool about one of them is the movie was developed from a short story—not a novel. If you can find the short story by Annie Proulx, that would be a great way to see how a short work can be developed into a motion picture—and win big-time awards.

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire // film written by Geoffrey S. Fletcher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precious_(film)

Brokeback Mountain, a short story by Annie Proulx // film written by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brokeback_Mountain

Sideways by Rex Pickett // film written by Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideways

Thanks for checking me out @ The Write Life for You; come back next month when we continue the Book to Screen series. Up next—thinking structurally.

Shonell

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