Screenwriting : Novel to Screenplay by Simon Hartwell

A possibility but I'll have a go first, see how I feel about the results. I was looking at script society but they stopped their script writing services. Thanks for taking an interest and replying

I've adapted novels for writers as audio drama's -- and the authors sometimes have issues on why I am cutting certain things -- what works on the page of a novel doesn't always work in a script. You need to ask yourself if you are objective enough as the author to cut out elements of the book to make a tight screenplay. My suggestion (for what it's worth) would be to write your screenplay and cover the book -- then start cutting and cutting and cutting, until you have a script that works at a good pace and comes in under a 2 hour running time. It will be difficult as the book's author to remove elements, but you have to. Maybe consider a good script reading service to read your drafts and give you the "tough love" you're going to need on the re-writes. But go for it!

It may help you a lot to start by reading several scripts. That will give you a visual reference to help you determine things like: how much description do I use? And how do I introduce a character? I would recommend you read scripts similar to your own story and of course, ones that did well!

I discovered many flaws in my own story telling by trying to adapt one of my novels for screen. Great, if painful, learning experience.

Basically, you're talking novalistic terms whereas screenwriters talk more about page count rather than word count. It turns out that a really tight & well crafted screenplay works out to generally be under 20K words. Can you write that tight?

I would recommend reading "Writing In Pictures, Screenwriting Made Mostly Painless" it has an entire section that focuses on literary adaptation. You may find, after breaking the back of the book, that your content only fills one script. But hey, if you have enough for two or even more, you may want to explore turning this into a series rather than a feature.

Many thanks everyone for your comments. I am finding the process informative as a writer, and agree with many of the comments provided - I need to either learn more about the process or team up with someone with experience, both actually. Doug, to your question, I checked and laughed at myself - I have just completed ACT ONE of my script and I am at 13K words so, honest answer would be - It will be challenging I think to get under 20K for the whole thing, BUT it is only my first draft so lets see.

I appreciate confident creatives who believe mastery is easy and anyone can play in the NBA and the NFL at the same time. I believe that's naive. Don't see anyone doin' it in the big leagues, but I'm always open to enlightenment. Have a great weekend. I'm DJing for three days!

Read "Jaws" the book and the screenplay and see how hey completely differ.

I just did this with one of my novels (the screenplay turned out way better) and for me doing this transition, the most important thing to keep in mind is: You now have to tell this story VISUALLY—this was the biggest challenge for me because in a novel you’re able to describe more and use more narrative. Writing the screenplay version was a good exercise in thinking about my story from a more visual angle. So when you’re writing it, I recommend asking yourself—how can I approach this scene more visually? And also watch movies to see how they show hints visually, rather than tell you (this has been a fun exercise for me too).

Approaching this from a different angle....

Congrats on your decision to start screenwriting! It's a very, very big decision.

I think what people are hinting at above is that many people make a decision "I can write a novel so writing a 90 to 120 page screenplay should be simple." but it's more along the lines of "I can run a marathon and have run 2 so far, so now I'm going to scale Everest."

If you can, that's great but a couple of serious questions to ask yourself is are you ready to spend the next year or two years writing the screenplay adaptation of your work? Are you ready to be told you're doing it wrong, multiple times over that same time frame?

If the answer is "Yes" then congrats! You're a beginner/novice screenwriter and with lots of training, learning, practice and ego crushing work, you have the chance to be successful at becoming a screenwriter.

People are responding above because there's an infinite field of the dead made up of self published novel authors who said those fateful words "I think I'll write a screenplay adaptation of one of my self published books." and were felled by the process.

Good luck!

I did the same. I write both, but they are both totally different. So I am constantly changing my books. Some tihings work in books, but not in a screenplay. So as long as you know both mediums are different, you are fine.