1. Adaptation: The Perks and Pitfalls aka, what to keep on the brain so you dont lose your mind By Valerie Kalfrin, Screenwriters of Tomorrow March 2014

2. By definition: a form or structure modified to fit a changed environment To screenwriters: [It] can be heaven or hell, and its usually a little of each. script consultant and screenplay analyst Elizabeth Stevens Whats an adaptation? 3. Where to begin? A book A short story A play A comic or graphic novel A musical A video game A news or feature story 4. Whats the attraction? The perks: Hollywood loves them. At least 5 of the top 20 grossing films of all time are adaptations, including Jurassic Park, The Hunger Games and 2002s Spider-Man. (IMDB.com) Well-known material has an existing and appreciative audience. (Script magazine) Theyre a great way for unknown writers to show what they can do. For writers, they provide a blueprint: plot, characters, setting, dialogue.... 5. So, whats the problem? The biggest pitfall? The pressure! Turning a lengthy or intricate book into a two- hour movie means cutting and lots of it. How do you focus? What if the fans dont like it? What will the writer think? Familiarity + expectations = writers block 6. What authors say I was frankly surprised that something so tepid and conventional could have been fashioned from my slightly unhinged novel.... Endless Love was meant to be a knife to the readers heart, not the writers. Scott Spencer (Endless Love) My attitude is, if you havent invited me in to contribute, then fine. Go make the movie you want to make, and Ill see it when it comes out. And I'm in no position to tell people to see this movie or not see it. If I'm asked I say: See the movie as a movie and judge it as a movie. Max Brooks (World War Z) 7. What authors say (part 2) I believe in trusting the screenwriter. Its hard enough to expect a creative person to transform another writers work without the writer breathing down his neck.... It was a fatal mistake to cut Pendergast from the final script. On the other hand ... [i]t was fast-paced and well acted. The monster was well conceived and the finale perhaps even better than in our novel. Douglas Preston (Relic) I felt that the movie they made was genuinely moving and a wonderful movie. I might have felt very differently had I not liked the movie. A decision that I admired very much in the movie was when Hiccup lost his leg at the end of the movie. ... I thought it was a fantastically powerful thing to do, and very appropriate for the character. Cressida Cowell (How to Train Your Dragon) 8. The golden rules You cannot be literally faithful to the source material. You should not be literally faithful to the source material. You must be totally faithful to the intention of the source material. Whatever feeling moved you to say, I want to try and adapt this must be translated to the script. And you must protect that to the death. Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman (The emphasis? All his.) 9. Before you start, ask: Do I love it? (Emma Thompson worked on adapting Sense and Sensibility into a screenplay over five years.) Do I have the rights to this material or can I get them? Most important: As Goldman says, Can I make it play? 10. Make it play How will this play onscreen? Is whats happening dramatic? Does it advance the plot? (No ordering food, arranging for child care, etc.) Whats the reality? Will seeing something previously only imagined be so jarring, it takes viewers out of the story (e.g., Urbana Sprawl from Carl Hiaasens Strip Tease)? Will the audience believe this? (A 78-year-old bank robber on the run?) Films are motion pictures. Can you write this for movement and sound? (A lost 10-year-old autistic boy survives alone and unscathed over four days in a Florida swamp with thunderstorms and alligators. True story.) 11. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes... Characters Shiloh adds a girl as the protagonists confidant to put the books voice-over into dialogue. AMCs The Walking Dead has fan favorites who in the graphic novel died (Carol) or did not exist (Daryl). How to Train Your Dragon swaps in a new girl viking (Astrid) and changes Toothless from a dragon the size of an iguana to one on which the hero, Hiccup, can fly. Also gives Hiccup a prosthetic leg by the films end. SyFys Battlestar Galactica and StarFist (the book series Eric is adapting) change military men (Starbuck and Hammer) into women. 12. More changes afoot... Chronology, scenes, sequences or the whole plot: The film All the Presidents Men ends in the middle of the book. The films A Simple Plan and Primal Fear focus on narrow segments of their respective books. In the book The Last of the Mohicans, Hawkeye is not interested in Cora; Cora likes his brother, Uncas; and British soldier Duncan likes Coras sister, Alice. Also, different characters survive by the films end. Lawnmower Man is so different from Stephen Kings short story that he successfully sued to have his name removed from it. 13. Why change? To compress time. Every minute counts! Move back story and motivations forward. To explain key events that occur offstage (message to Romeo in Romeo and Juliet) or in a few paragraphs (ending battle in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2) or to adjust elements that wont work on film. (The musical numbers in the film Chicago are in Roxie Harts head.) To eliminate unnecessary voice-over. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men tells a deputy and his wife, among other characters, what in the book he confides to the reader. 14. Let it be the genre, that is Following the intention of the source material also means dont turn the tale upside-down: The Stepford Wives is a horror story, not a comedy (2004s flop). Two failed films cast Endless Love as a star- crossed romance. The book is steamy, but its protagonist is an obsessed stalker. Ever After: A Cinderella Story and Snow White and the Huntsman give us strong princesses including wielding swords and wearing armor but stay in the fantasy realm. 15. 7 building blocks Who is your main character? What does he or she want (internally and externally)? Who or what keeps your character from achieving this? How does he or she achieve the goal in an unexpected or unusual way? What are you trying to say by ending the story this way? (Whats your theme? Any unifying thematic devices?) How do you want to tell your story? Who should tell it? How do your main and supporting characters change? screenwriter and instructor Richard Krevolin 16. The bare bones My advice? Dont hash out the script as you flip page by page through the source material. After your logline, create a one-paragraph summary in the colloquial way youd recap a juicy story for a friend. With the logline and summary as a guide, re-read the source. Take notes and highlight the text for characters, key attributes, back story, good quotes, scenes, motifs. Do any necessary research. Expand your summary to three detailed pages, one page per act. Whats the inciting incident? Midpoint? Climax? Start writing!