How to Adapt Anything into a Screenplay
How to Adapt Anything into a Screenplay

Author: Richard Krevolin

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2003-03-13

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0471225452

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From concept to finished draft-a nuts-and-bolts approach to adaptations Aspiring and established screenwriters everywhere, take note! This down-to-earth guide is the first to clearly articulate the craft of adaptation. Drawing on his own experience and on fourteen years of teaching, screenwriter Richard Krevolin presents his proven five-step process for adapting anything-from novels and short stories to newspaper articles and poems-into a screenplay. Used by thousands of novelists, playwrights, poets, and journalists around the country, this can't-miss process features practical advice on how to break down a story into its essential components, as well as utilizes case studies of successful adaptations. Krevolin also provides an insider's view of working and surviving within the Hollywood system-covering the legal issues, interviewing studio insiders on what they are looking for, and offering tips from established screenwriters who specialize in adaptations. * Outlines a series of stages that help you structure your story to fit the needs of a 120-page screenplay * Explains how to adapt anything for Hollywood, from a single sentence story idea all the way to a thousand-page novel * Advises on the tricky subject of just how faithful your adaptation should be * Features helpful hints from Hollywood bigwigs-award-winning television writer Larry Brody; screenwriter and script reader Henry Jones; screenwriter and author Robin Russin; screenwriter and author Simon Rose; and more

Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics
Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics

Author: Eric R. Williams

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1317364031

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Once you understand the basics of screenwriting, ideas for your next screenplay are everywhere. Whether it comes from a favorite children’s book, a summer novel you discover accidentally, a news story that catches your imagination, or a chapter from your own life — advanced screenwriting strategies should now guide you through your first adaptation. In Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics, award-winning screenwriter Eric Williams uses examples from award-winning screenplays to explain new storytelling techniques. His real-world examples illustrate a range of advanced approaches — including new ways to identify and craft tension, how to reimagine structure and character, and how to strengthen emotional depth in your characters and in the audience. Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics teaches readers new ways to engage with source material in order to make successful adaptation decisions, regardless of the source material. The book offers: Three detailed examples of award-winning adaptations by the author, including the complete short story and final scripts used in the Voices From the Heartland project; Breakout boxes highlighting modern and historical adaptations and providing examples for each concept discussed in the book; More than fifty charts providing easy-to-use visual representations of complex concepts; New screenwriting techniques developed by the author, including the Triangle of Knowledge, the Storyteller’s Parallax, and the idea of Super Genres as part of a Screenwriters Taxonomy.

Selling Your Screenplay
Selling Your Screenplay

Author: Ashley Scott Meyers

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781601451484

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Selling Your Screenplay is a step-by-step guide to getting your screenplay sold and produced. Learn how to get your script into the hands of the producers and directors who can turn your story into a movie.

Make Your Story a Movie
Make Your Story a Movie

Author: John Robert Marlow

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2012-12-11

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1250001838

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$50 Billion of Advice in One Book* Have you ever wondered why some books and stories are adapted into movies, and others aren't? Or wished you could sit down and pick the brains of the people whose stories have been adapted--or the screenwriters, producers, and directors who adapted them? Author John Robert Marlow has done it for you. He spoke to book authors, playwrights, comic book creators and publishers, as well as Hollywood screenwriters, producers and directors responsible for adapting fictional and true stories into Emmy-winning TV shows, Oscar-winning films, billion-dollar megahits and smaller independents. Then he talked to the entertainment attorneys who made the deals. He came away with a unique understanding of adaptations--an understanding he shares in this book: which stories make good source material (and why); what Hollywood wants (and doesn't); what you can (and can't) get in a movie deal; how to write and pitch your story to maximize the chances of a Hollywood adaptation--and how much (and when) you can expect to be paid. *This book contains the distilled experience of creators, storytellers and others whose works have earned over $50 billion worldwide. Whether you're looking to sell film rights, adapt your own story (alone or with help), or option and adapt someone else's property--this book is for you.

Screen Adaptation
Screen Adaptation

Author: Kenneth Portnoy

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2012-07-26

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1136049061

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Screen Adaptation : A Scriptwriting Handbook, 2nd ed. examines the challenge screenwriters face when adapting novels, plays, and short stories for the screen. Thoroughly updated to include new exercises and example from current films, this book provides practical, usable information on how to find the best plot line for a script, choose key characters, and understand the goals and formats of different genres. Topics include: determining which characters and events are most valuable on developing the main story; expanding short novellas and condensing long novels; using dialog to advance the story and reveal character; comparing the formats of plays, short stories, and novels to those of screenplays approaching the marketplace In this book, both beginning writers and professionals will find the tools necessary to evaluate a prospective source and create a successful screenplay

The Orchid Thief
The Orchid Thief

Author: Susan Orlean

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2011-07-20

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0307795292

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii—a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean—and the reader—will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion. In this new edition, coming fifteen years after its initial publication and twenty years after she first met the “orchid thief,” Orlean revisits this unforgettable world, and the route by which it was brought to the screen in the film Adaptation, in a new retrospective essay. Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. Praise for The Orchid Thief “Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy . . . The Orchid Thief shows [Orlean’s] gifts in full bloom.”—The New York Times Book Review “Fascinating . . . an engrossing journey [full] of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing.”—Los Angeles Times “Orlean’s snapshot-vivid, pitch-perfect prose . . . is fast becoming one of our national treasures.”—The Washington Post Book World “Orlean’s gifts [are] her ear for the self-skewing dialogue, her eye for the incongruous, convincing detail, and her Didion-like deftness in description.”—Boston Sunday Globe “A swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great.”—The Wall Street Journal

Adaptation for Screenwriters
Adaptation for Screenwriters

Author: Robert Edgar

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-11-14

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1350036684

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Develop the critical and creative skills to 'translate' a story from page to screen with this step-by-step guide to the process of screen adaptation you'll learn to: - interrogate a novel or short story to release its 'inner film' - convert fictional prose into visual drama - overcome the obstacles presented by different media 'languages' - approach key strategic decisions - both technical and interpretive - draft and re-draft your plot, characters and dialogue - professionally format and submit your finished script In addition to examples taken from 'literary classics', contemporary novels, genre fiction, short stories, and biographical material, Marland and Edgar embrace the wider phenomenon of re-telling and updating existing stories, such as the 'appropriation' of popular figures, inter-film adaptation (sequels and 'reboots'), and development into other visual forms including graphic fiction and video games. Whether you are producing a faithful adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace, or planning to pair up the crime-fighting duo of Sherlock Holmes and Batman, Adaptation for Screenwriters will be your guide.

Four Screenplays
Four Screenplays

Author: Syd Field

Publisher: Delta

Published: 2009-09-30

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0307569527

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Yes, you can write a great screenplay. Let Syd Field show you how. “I based Like Water for Chocolate on what I learned in Syd's books. Before, I always felt structure imprisoned me, but what I learned was structure really freed me to focus on the story.”—Laura Esquivel Technology is transforming the art and craft of screenwriting. How does the writer find new ways to tell a story with pictures, to create a truly outstanding film? Syd Field shows what works, why, and how in four extraordinary films: Thelma & Louise, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, The Silence of the Lambs, and Dances with Wolves. Learn how: Callie Khouri, in her first movie script, Thelma & Louise, rewrote the rules for good road movies and played against type to create a new American classic. James Cameron, writer/director of Terminator 2: Judgement Day, created a sequel integrating spectacular special effects and a story line that transformed the Terminator, the quintessential killing machine, into a sympathetic character. This is how an action film is written. Ted Tally adapted Thomas Harris's chilling 350-page novel, The Silence of the Lambs, into a riveting 120-page script—a lesson in the art and craft of adapting novels into film. Michael Blake, author of Dances with Wolves, achieved every writer's dream as he translated his novel into an uncompromising film. Learn how he used transformation as a spiritual dynamic in this work of mythic sweep. Informative and utterly engrossing, Four Screenplays belongs in every writer's library, next to Syn Field's highly acclaimed companion volumes, Screenplay, The Screenwriter's Workbook, and Selling a Screenplay. “If I were writing screenplays . . . I would carry Syd Field around in my back pocket wherever I went.”—Steven Bochco, writer/producer/director, L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues

Principles of Adaptation for Film and Television
Principles of Adaptation for Film and Television

Author: Ben Brady

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 0292708076

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From All Quiet on the Western Front, the Academy Award-winning "Best Picture" of 1929-1930, to Dances with Wolves, the 1991 winner, many of Hollywood's most popular and enduring movies have been screen adaptations of written work, including novels, stories, and plays. In this practical, hands-on guide, veteran TV and screenwriter Ben Brady unlocks the secrets of the adaptation process, showing aspiring writers and writing teachers how to turn any kind of narrative material into workable, salable screenplays for film and television. Step by step, Brady guides novice screenwriters to the completion of a professional screenplay. He begins with an incisive discussion of how to evaluate a written work's potential as a screenplay. Then he discusses each step of the writing process, showing how to identify the plot and premise of the play, develop character, treatment, and dialogue, and handle camera language and format. Brady illustrates each of these points by developing and writing a complete screenplay of the novel Claire Serrat within the text. With these tools, beginning screenwriters can draw on the rich resources of words in print to create exciting screenplays for film and television. Written in vivid, entertaining prose, the book will be equally useful in the classroom or at the kitchen table, wherever enterprising writers ply their craft.

The Art of Screen Adaptation
The Art of Screen Adaptation

Author: Alistair Owen

Publisher: Oldcastle Books Ltd

Published: 2020-08-27

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0857302280

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'If you decide to adapt a classic or much-loved book, your working maxim should be, 'How will it work best as a film?' However faithful it is to the original, if it's not interesting onscreen then you've failed.' - William Boyd in Story and Character: Interviews with British Screenwriters Hollywood. Netflix. Amazon. BBC. Producers and audiences are hungrier than ever for stories, and a lot of those stories begin life as a book - but how exactly do you transfer a story from the page to the screen? Do adaptations use the same creative gears as original screenplays? Does a true story give a project more weight than a fictional one? Is it helpful to have the original author's input on the script? And how much pressure is the screenwriter under, knowing they won't be able to please everyone with the finished product? Alistair Owen puts all these questions and many more to some of the top names in screenwriting, including Hossein Amini (Drive), Jeremy Brock (The Last King of Scotland), Moira Buffini (Jane Eyre), Lucinda Coxon (The Danish Girl), Andrew Davies (War & Peace), Christopher Hampton (Atonement), David Hare (The Hours), Olivia Hetreed (Girl with a Pearl Earring), Nick Hornby (An Education), Deborah Moggach (Pride & Prejudice), David Nicholls (Patrick Melrose) and Sarah Phelps (And Then There Were None). Exploring fiction and nonfiction projects, contemporary and classic books, films and TV series, The Art of Screen Adaptation reveals the challenges and pleasures of reimagining stories for cinema and television, and provides a frank and fascinating masterclass with the writers who have done it - and have the awards and acclaim to show for it. ------------------------ Praise for Alistair Owen 'A fascinating, insightful collection' - Independent on Sunday on Story and Character 'Owen's thorough research and penetrating questions are what make Story and Character... the conversation is hilarious as well as informative, and budding screenwriters should pay close attention to extraordinary nuggets' - Guardian on Story and Character