Introduce Yourself : Novelist, ex-cop, forensic artist, aspiring screenwriter by Robin Burcell

Hi Robin, welcome to Stage 32!

Thank you for the warm welcome!

Hi Robin and welcome! I'm a recently retired LEO among other capacities. We should touch bases. I'm very impressed with your website and congrats on your books, I'm editing my first one now. Check out my profile here on Stage 32 when you get a chance, it has a link to my website. Be Safe! Stephen J. Jacobs

Welcome to S32, Robin.

Welcome Robin!

Welcome, Robin! Coming from a radio news background, I know there are some great stories, and you certainly have the talent to tell them!

Thanks, everyone!

Hi Robin. Congrats on all of your success. I'd like to offer just one piece of advice, and please, dismiss it if it's too obvious ;-) I worked the opposite of you. I adapted my screenplay STRANDED to book format, and was lucky enough to win an award and ultimately have the book, not the screenplay, picked up by Vast. I wrote my last script, CarnEvil, concurrently with the novel, and the book is a semi-finalist in the Book Pipeline Competition. I'm sure that the one thing that helped my books gain the reviews that they did was that I made sure to write the books in an entirely different format than the screenplays. So, when you do the opposite and adapt from your novel to screenplay, just keep in the forefront of your mind that the two formats are entirely different in structure, format, etc. The screenplay needs to be tight, tight, tight. Pull out all that descriptive prose, even those wonderful lines that work so well in a book, have got to go! I think if you keep those differences in mind, you'll be okay!

Thanks, Frank! I appreciate the advice. I'll admit to blindly going in, thinking it would be so easy, (It isn't!) and that all I would need to do is remove the internal dialogue and descriptions, leave in all the dialogue, and voila! Instant screenplay. (All you experienced screenplay writers can now stop laughing... ;-) Big eye opener for me!!! Suddenly the spoken word takes on a whole new facet. How to get across that meaning without all the lovely things I've written around it to move the reader along. What it has done, however, is made me realize how very difficult the process is, and appreciate the fine art of screenplay writing (and thereby the amazing end result of the movie).

You're welcome of course, I hope I've provided a little bit of advice. We have a great community here and one of the best things about it are people that are willing to help each other, and take joy in other people's success. Good luck!

Thanks for signing up. Looks like you are bringing some very good credentials to the forum. Good luck with adapting your own novel to screenplay form. You might need it.

Welcome, Robin. I sent you an e-mail. I hope you don't mind.......John

Hello Robin. Always forward.

I hope the adaptation is going well, Robin. It can be done - look at 'Gone Girl'! :-)