From Page to Screen: Unlocking the Secrets of Adaptation with Laura Elliott

Have you ever heard these myths about writing for the page versus writing for the screen? Myth number one: All you have to do is adapt your novel into a screenplay. Myth number two: Screenwriting is easier because you don't have to worry about descriptions or internal thoughts. And myth number three: Writing for the page requires more creativity than writing for the screen. In this episode, we have the pleasure of hosting Laura Elliott, a seasoned author and screenwriter, who will debunk these myths and share the truth about the key differences between writing for the page and writing for the screen. Tune in to gain valuable insights into both forms of storytelling.

In this episode, you will: 

·       Discover the intriguing journey of transforming a book into a screenplay. 

·       Explore the unique nuances between writing for the printed page and scripting for a visual medium. 

·       Delve into the challenges and opportunities screenwriting presents, including a fresh perspective on telling your story.  

·       Understand the relationship between the author and the screenwriter, illuminating the creative process.  

The key moments in this episode are:
 00:00:00 - Introduction
 00:02:23 - The Difference Between Books and Movies 
 00:05:17 - How Laura Elliott Got into Screenwriting
 00:07:54 - Length Differences Between Books and Movies
 00:12:11 - Learning Screenwriting and the Importance of Table Reads
 00:17:20 - Starting a Book and Screenplay
 00:19:34 - Heightening Drama in Screenwriting
 00:23:45 - Synergy Between Author and Screenwriter
 00:26:28 - Finding the Right Producer
 00:28:05 - Taking the First Step
 
The resources mentioned in this episode are:

·       Check out the book Story by Robert McKee to learn more about screenwriting. 

·       Explore the possibility of adapting your book into a screenplay for the big or small screen. 

·       Read The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynn Reid Banks and watch the movie adaptation to see the differences between the two. 

·       Consider distilling your story down to its essence for a screen adaptation, focusing on the most dramatic parts. 

·       Study the three-act structure for feature films and the five-act structure for TV series. 

·       If you have a true story to tell, consider adapting it into a screenplay to bring it to a broader audience. 

Transcript

Transcription

00:00:00
Boni: 

It is possible that the author doesn't exist who does not harbor a desire to see their book, whether it's memoir or fiction or documentary or other, up on the screen, big screen, little screen doesn't matter. And we live in a time with seemingly unprecedented demand for screen content. We are streaming and downloading and binge watching our favorite shows, really like never before. But how do you get from the desire to have your book up on the screen to actually having that done? And how do you know whether your book is suited for a screen adaptation?         

00:00:41
And if it is, what does it take to get it there? That's what we're going to be talking about on this episode of Ingenium Books podcast with our special guest screenwriter Laura Elliott.         

01:31 

Laura:

Hey there, Boni. Thank you so much for having me on today. It's a subject that's near and dear to my heart. I just love screenplay writing.         

00:01:42  

I'm also a writer— a ghost writer. 

Boni:

So, you know both sides. 

Laura:

Yes. That's why it's really a wonderful thing for if people are called to do it, to begin to learn how to format for screenwriting, because adapted screenplays are really wonderful to write if you understand both sides, like you were saying. Yeah, it's really a great way to take your message to even a broader audience. And, yeah, you were touching on a few things to talk about today.         

00:02:23
             

One of the things that I just think I'll just throw out there right away.

Boni:

Jump right in. 

Laura:

The big difference between a book and a movie is that a movie is all show. So, we get the advice as writers of “show don't tell” in our books, and that's very true and it's excellent advice. But there's also the beauty of that literary art which is that we can get into the heads of the characters and we can hear their thoughts on the page and that type of thing, which is amazing.         

00:03:03          

You cannot do that in screenwriting. So really, when you're writing on the page, it's all what's happening right in front of you. So it really lends itself to a lot of action. Having said that, there are movies out there where there isn't very much action. So it's all about essentially an emotional ride.         

00:03:27
             

Books and screenplays are similar in that regard. It doesn't matter what you're writing, right? And it's all about for either the reader or the viewer. The reader or the viewer has to feel a transformation occur after the work is finished. Whether it's a book or whether it's a movie, they see things about their life a little bit differently.         

00:03:50            

Maybe they'll want to act a certain way afterwards. Maybe you're calling them to some sort of action, especially in documentary work. The films that I write are usually historical dramas. I also have written band biopics, which means it's like about a rock band, and it tells their story. I've written survival stories, war stories, and also action adventure.         

00:04:21
          

So those areas really lend themselves very well to the screen. But there's also the wonderful-we love getting into people's day to day lives. So there's also these wonderful …I write a lot of memoir, and a lot of memoir is wonderful for adaptation. You really have to get grounded in setting, even though we do that for our book. Setting plays like a character in a book, right?         

00:04:53
             

Well, it's huge for writing the screenplay. So for authors that are interested  in dabbling in this area or learning this format, it's just a different format for telling a story. It's really an excellent way to tell a story in another way. And it's a funny story of how I even got into screenwriting. Is…

Boni: 

How. Did you get into screenwriting?         

00:05:17
             

Laura:

Okay, well, even though I lived in L.A. And even though I worked at the L.A. Times, and I worked at E Entertainment, and I worked on shows on TV and interviewed celebrities and did all that stuff, it never occurred to me to get into screenwriting. It never did. I just didn't see myself as a screenwriter. I was a writer.         

00:05:38
             

I wasn't a screenwriter. It's one little word, but it made a big difference. So what happened was I got blocked. I was telling a story that was very important to me. It's a book.         

00:05:50
             

It's now finished and being shopped, but at the time, it was just really hard for me. I was writing it five different ways as a book. I was stuck. So stuck I couldn't write. And my friends were like, well, write it. Find another way to write.         

00:06:07

Why don't you try screenwriting? And the book that I was actually really turned into a screenplay required a lot of research and stuff like that. And so I contacted a wonderful screenwriting teacher and let him know I was about to go on a research trip to Asia and Indonesia and Australia. 

Boni:

And is this for a book of yours or a book you were ghostwriting for somebody else?

Laura:

This was a book for me.         

00:06:34
             

Boni

Okay.

Laura

This is a book for me. And he said, we're going to get the treatment written first, so you can go and get the treatment. Because I really wanted to write it in the settings. I felt I’d get an energy if I wrote my screenplay in these parts of the world. And we did that.         

00:06:50
             

And so that was the opening of me learning. And that was like ten years ago. And just learning the craft is really important. Getting a teacher is really important. I know there's all this AI stuff going on right now.  

Boni

Just a little bit.

Laura

Yeah, but essentially, as of now, really, there's no substitute for someone who knows how to write a screenplay and really get emotion on the page and subtleties and these kinds of things that bring the story to life that jump off the page.         

00:07:28
             

Yeah. So this is a great area for novelists to be a part of or book writers to be a part of, because they're taking what they already know. And just through reformatting it, you can get into a whole other industry that's really exciting and really a lot of fun. 

Boni

Let's talk a little bit about length differences. Well, differences including length.         

00:07:54
             

So you've talked about the show element, where it's all show. There's not really much telling. Any exposition. It would have to be any backstory has to be in flashback in a visual element or a narrator filling people in.         

00:08:14
          

Exactly. Yeah. So what are some of the other differences between the two styles of writing? 

Laura: Right. As we all know, we've all gone.         

00:08:25
             

We've all read a book and gone to a movie, and there's…

Boni

Oh, it’s not how I pictured it at all!

Laura

I know, right? I remember doing that with my kids. We read Lynne Reid Banks’ book, The Indian in the Cupboard, and we read the book and it was wonderful.         

00:08:40
             

And then we saw the movie and they were like, eh! So the richness of a book. And this is what I'm talking about. We have in a book, we have so much that we can do, exposition we can do, and beautiful literary devices we can use. And, I mean, it's just a completely different experience. And it's usually pretty long.         

00:09:02
             

Some books are pretty long. Right. A movie is 120 pages. It's a minute a page. That's kind of long actually.        

00:09:09
             

They really are looking at, like, 90 to 100 if you're new. So we think of it a minute a page. And so you have to distill a work down to its essence in a very  different format. And we're talking about drama.         

00:09:28
             

We're talking about what's moving the story on the page for film, which is very different, which is why things are different. So to give you an idea to start talking in probably, what do you call it, generalities. A particular story I did involved a man's memoir of an experience he had in Iraq as a Jewish man. And it was during World War II. And it's the Farhud, and this is a very little known part of history.         

00:10:09
             

It's like a violent disposition of Jews that happened there, just like what happened in Germany to Jews. But people don't know about this so much. So we were going through his whole family story. And this is really rich. Right?         

00:10:23
             

This is an amazing memoir. Lots to go on. He survived. Many Jews were killed, especially young people. And then it visited his whole life afterwards.         

00:10:37
             

So we had to take the story and distill it down to the parts that would be the best on film. And so that was a big choice that had to be made of the whole story. There's a story before which is rich with beautiful history. Then there's actually the escape to Iran and then on to America, Israel, America, a new life. So there's just all this.         

00:11:02
             

What is the script going to talk about? Are we going to incorporate the whole thing? Are we going to incorporate a snapshot? These are the decisions that have to be made. And like all these books, memoir is really great for this.         

00:11:17
             

You pick probably the most dramatic part of the story and you bring characters in and make sure that everybody is contributing. There could be a huge cast of characters. We might need to narrow the characters down for the film and make sure that everything is just a little bit more on a ticking clock, a timeline, that type of thing. So it's a three act structure for a feature film. I also write TV series, which is a five act structure.         

00:11:49
             

It's a little different. It was written a long time ago when shows were on TV and there were commercials right on the networks. Now things are mostly streaming, but the five X structure is still there. The three X structure is as old as time, right? It's Aristotle.         

00:12:11
             

It's that old. So if you're looking for something to learn and study, Robert McKee's book called Story is wonderful. I studied under Bill Boyer and he has the visual mindscape of the screenplay. That's an incredible book. Who Killed a Cat is a really great book.         

00:12:37
             

There's so many rich books out there on the craft. But I really recommend, if you can, to get into a group with a teacher. The format is really great, where you take your screenplay and maybe with five other people in a teacher, you read your screenplayy aloud. It's amazing. I know we recommend that a lot to people who write books.         

00:13:01
             

But in the screenplay, you kind of pass your screenplay around. Everybody takes the part, and as much as you hear it in your head and see it in your head, even people who think and write cinematically. The table read is really important because it really shows things that really need to happen that come in and come out. Transitioning, jokes, things that you're trying to get really come across in a table read of a screenplay. So, yeah, I've just recently gone to the Sun Valley Film Festival where I learned so many things.         

00:13:39
             

It's really great. Going to festivals is really great. If you can't afford to attend a festival, volunteer for one. They're looking for people to volunteer. You can meet so many people that way.         

00:13:50
             

This is an incredible way to get into the business. And I think it was Will McCormick. He's an Oscar winning writer for a short film. It was called If Anything Happens, I Love You is the name of his film that won the Oscar. And he was like he started one of the panels.         

00:14:12
             

And he was like, well, there's three rules for writing a movie, and nobody knows what they are. Right.         

00:14:21
             

Boni

Exactly.         

00:14:24
             

Which emphasizes the fact that there's no one way either to get a book onto the screen or even there's a gazillion different ways you could approach a screenplay. It's kind of the same as writing a book. Well, do you want to start there, or would you like to start at that other part? And what's your structure going to be? And how are all of those questions you brought up the festival that you were at recently, and I wanted to talk about a project that we've been collaborating on over the last little while and maybe pull that apart and go through a step by step.         

00:15:07
             

Laura

We could do that. we could definitely do that. 

Boni

We are working with Charlotte Gibbs on her book The Picture Wall. And I know that Charlotte's story is very emotional and internal, but it's also very representative of what happens in many families where children grow up and they start to become their own people, and they're not necessarily who we envisioned. And sometimes that transformation can be very jarring depending on the circumstances.         

00:15:44
             

But I remember Charlotte when we started working with you. She's like, oh, my goodness, I had no idea. So where did we start? Take us back to the beginning there. And where did we start?         

00:15:56
             

Laura

Well, I think what's interesting is every writer, like Charlotte, knows her story very well.         

00:16:10
             

And this is one of the things which I do. I love writing true stories. That's what I do. It's complicated, though, because you're fighting a traditional timeline of a timeline that somebody really knows. Right.         

00:16:28
             

And I think it was Elmore Leonard that said, good writing is everything without the boring parts. Right. So she did a very good job of leaving those out. But there's some things we won't include in a film.         

00:16:48
             

We have, like, 90 pages we got to distill it down to. It's really important. And if you're trying to do a short, it's even shorter. So you really have to distill the story down and find a way into the story. So I understand, especially for writing a book.         

00:17:05
             

Where do you start writing a book? I think that's the biggest. My clients just come to me and they're just like, I don't even know where to begin. Right. Because it just seems like they've got a huge project and where do we find a way in, right?         

00:17:20
             

And there's so much around that. So it's almost a sacred space of where they start the book. I believe Charlotte started her book when she was making a move.         

00:17:42
             

She had a terrible situation with her physical health and she's moving out to we're in the car with her, moving to a suburb from the city, and we're seeing the suburb in her eyes in a new way. We know she's in some kind of huge change in her life and that type of thing, and that's the way it starts. The treatment started differently. The treatment started sort of in medius res in the middle of the action. And you'll see that a lot like Raiders of the Lost Arc, I think probably still probably the most jaw dropping three minutes of film at the beginning is Harrison Ford getting chased by this big rock coming down, and you're immediately on his side.         

00:18:31
             

You don't know him, you don't know what's motivating him, but he's running for his life. So that's a very frequent tool to use to bring the audience into a story in a very visual way. So all along, we needed to look for these little goalposts. And it's not to say that you have to have a rock falling on you to start a movie. Charlotte's story was nothing like that, but there were big visual moments, and we went through to find those, what we call beats in writing screenplays, and a lot of people might write books that way.         

00:19:10
             

You do a scene list or something like that. So we're trying to find the beats that will come up on the stage, that will come up on the screen and hook the viewer. Not inauthentically. I think a lot of the moments in the treatment are quiet. A lot of them are very dramatic.         

00:19:34
             

You can have a very dramatic moment and have it be quiet. In The Picture Wall her child would remove her pictures in one part of it because she no longer identified with herself as that child that she grew up as. And that was like, it's a small moment on the screen. It's not like, you know, airplanes flying or, you know, things blowing up, like in a war movie.         

00:20:10
             

It's just somebody taking their picture down. And when you write that, well, that will stick with you. There's lots of movies that have that type of effect. If you ever saw Twelve Years a Slave, you're expecting to see a slave movie. And the beginning of that film is a very well dressed black man, a close up playing the violin, right?         

00:20:38
             

So you're brought into a breathtaking movie about slavery, which is going to have amazing action elements, but your curiosity is brought to the screen where you're like, wait a minute, I thought this was a slave. This is opening up with something very counterintuitive. So there's all these different ways we can bring people into a story, even a quiet story. And not to say that there aren't all quiet moments in Charlotte's book at all. There's a lot of drama in her book, but there's all kinds of ways that we can use the format of screenwriting to heighten the drama of every book.         

00:21:18
             

Boni

Yeah. Tell me if, in your experience, there are certain types of books that just aren't cut out for the screen. 

Laura

For the screen. In my experience, I've adapted screenplays, and every single one that I've had, I've had no trouble adapting. I would say that where there's a will, there's a way.         

00:21:48
             

And I got to say, I can't imagine there would be anything that couldn't be adapted. I really don't. I don't think so. Even the quietest Memoir, again, that's a character study. We love those kinds of you think it was like Howard's End or whatever?         

00:22:07
             

I think it was Eddie. Izzard made fun of the movie because it's like, oh, there's a man and a lake and a pond, but still love it. Right. Because it's not a lot happening, but enough. Or like West Wing.         

00:22:21
             

Right. That's on TV and talking heads walking in a hallway. Right. We're not going anywhere, really. But we're talking and we're talking to each other.         

00:22:30
             

So some things work and dialogue is everything in that case. Right. So there's dialogue in a book, but you might have to have your characters talking a lot more and saying things in different ways. You're going to get to know it's going to sound weird. Your character is better when you write a screenplay because in a book, you can kind of get away with some implications of things.         

00:22:54
             

But because this is all show and we might need to hook things, we might need to transition things, write scenes that weren't actually in the book to transition them from one thing to another. So that's always really interesting and exciting. And I remember being on the journey with Charlotte and her wheels were turning. I mean, she was very good at leveraging medium. Very good.         

00:23:19
             

Boni

Yeah. No, she was right in there. We are. Often asked by some of our authors, what do I look for if I'm looking for a screenwriter to work on my project? How important is a synergy between the author of a book and the screenwriter if they're not the same person?         

00:23:45
             

Sure. It's really important. The advantage with an adapted screenplay is you can give your work to a screenwriter and have he or she read it or they read it and it will resonate. Or it won't resonate. I think beyond that, though, it can resonate.         

00:24:10
             

I think we have to have a grand vision. We want to have a vision. What's your vision? That's very important to ask anybody adapting their screenplay because they see it in their head. They probably see the movie in their head.         

00:24:23
             

It's very important to respect their wishes. It's very important to say, how do you see it opening? How do you see it closing before you even bring any of yourself into it? Because ultimately it's their creation. It's an extension of the book.         

00:24:37
             

It's taking it to a whole new level. So when you've got somebody who's very respectful, that way and brings to the project an attitude of really molding what you're doing into this new medium. That's wonderful. And I think it's very important to work with people that really are very good at collaborating. Everybody is collaborative, but I think writing is maybe a bit more solo, but I think screenwriting is so collaborative.         

00:25:12
             

There's so many hats you have to wear in the process of writing it and marketing it and then optioning it and creating it that it's very good to have a very collaborative vibe about that and tossing out ideas. And I think a lot of it very similar to book writing is we don't know what we're comfortable with, right? Like, we don't know what we're comfortable with on the page until we put it on the page and then we can peel it back. And it's a lot like that in a movie. We write scenes that never appear, right?         

00:25:47
             

That's those deleted clips that you'll see, like on a DVD sort of player or something. But, yeah, so they do get written sometimes and we peel them back. And that happens a lot, too. So I think the most important thing is a spirit of play. You've created a book and the screenwriter is going to play with those ideas and put it into a different format.         

00:26:11
             

That's very wonderful for someone seeking a screenwriter.

Boni

 Is there anything else? We're at just under five minutes from my totally arbitrary, self imposed 30 minutes. Trying to stay under timeline. What did I miss?         

00:26:28
             

What did you miss? 

Laura

Things, I would say. I opened up with saying every movie is a miracle, right? But miracles happen. I think it's very important to say that.         

00:26:39
             

I think it's very important to realize that the demand for content has never been huger and producers are in search of great scripts. So the most important thing to find is the right producer for the right project. And that means getting out there. That means getting to know the world that we're in and where you want it to be. And it's a great time now to do it.         

00:27:12
             

So I think we've got that. I think I'll also say that the writer strike is going on right now. It will end. They are fighting for very good things with streaming compensation and also AI parameters. But don't be spooked by that.         

00:27:32
             

I mean, this is an industry that's going, a big industry. So just right now is a perfect time to write a script, maybe seek representation, work on some projects. I'm happy to talk to anybody who's interested. I'd be happy to work with them and point them in the right direction. 

Boni

That is very generous.         

00:27:52
             

And I'll get you to give me your contact info that you'd like to share. We don't have to do it live. We'll put it in the show notes. But I think that's fantastic. And I agree that you have to just start.         

00:28:05
             

You have to just decide and you have to just start and take the first step nothing is going to happen. 

Laura

It begins with a decision, doesn't it? 

Boni

It begins with a decision and you just keep going for it. Laura, I want to thank you very much.         

00:28:22
             

It's been a very interesting episode all about screenwriting getting your book into a screenpLauray. We just did one little step. There's a whole other series of steps. That you just started to allude to talk about that. We'll come back and talk about that another time.         

00:28:38
             

But thank you very much for being here with us on Ingenium Books podcast. 

Laura

A pleasure. Thank you. Thanks listening. If you enjoyed this episode of Ingenium Books podcast, please like share and subscribe subscribe wherever you get your podcasts but also consider subscribing to our YouTube channel where you can see these episodes in addition to hearing them.