Hello creatives,

Today we’re gonna talk about tips for writing a story with adaptation in mind. When I say this, I’m talking about the concept of writing for the screen in mind when writing your novel.

For some, this may feel like a weird concept because they’re too very different story formats, but I have found that when I write my books as though I were structuring them like a script, I actually have better plots better, character development, and just overall a more compelling story .

I started doing this after I took a script writing class in college where we analyzed scripts of major TV shows and we talked about the 3 versus 5 act story structure . I realized that the genre that I write in (science fiction) lens itself well to a five action story structure. I never really liked the three act structure. It felt to one dimensional and the seven act structure felt very daunting.

And as many of you know, I have adapted scenes from the first act of Vicious Circle into a short film, and that was a fairly simple process for me because I’d already structured Vicious Circle in such a way that would lend itself well to being adapted. So here are some of my frames of mind when I write .

Plot Out Every Character’s  Arc

When I sit down to think about my stories, not only do I use a five active story structure, but I think about the character development and the plot development within each act. Every character has agency and so I want to make sure that when they appear in a scene, there’s tension in some regard. Whether it’s the external plot triggering internal conflict in the characters or an internal conflict forcing the characters to act in a way that moves the external plot along.

This allows you to really flesh out your characters with who they are and what their goals are. It helps you really think through how each book will set it up the plot and the environment for the next installment of the series.

Be Concise with Your Writing

When thinking about writing for the screen in mind, there’s a certain style of writing that lends itself well to being adapted into a script and that’s concise writing. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have a lengthy book. Vicious Circle is about 150,000 words, but the writing style is concise and descriptive.

There’s a lot of dialogue and interaction between characters. So I set the scene in such a way that makes it easy to take almost the exact same words and put it into a script when describing what’s going on.

The characters have narration going on in their chapters, but it’s it’s a deep POV, which means you are embedded in the thoughts as a reader which also lends itself well to being adapted because rather than being passively told how the characters feel you are directly embodying how they are feeling. This in turn can be used as direction for how actors can play the character or it can be concisely conveyed in the script how the character is behaving on screen.

Have a Well Fleshed Out World

This is particularly true if you write in speculative fiction, science fiction, or fantasy , because when you go to adapt the book into a script, you’ll have to be able to translate the world of the story effectively.

When you have a fully fleshed out world, you understand the social structure, the politics, the economy, how things move and work. When you understand how things operate within the world that you’ve built, then you can easily adapt to what would otherwise be a mundane scene. In the script adaptation process, you can hint at the scenery happening in the background and when you get on set it makes it easier for you to show the world because you’ve already described it in the book.

When you’ve been able to effectively convey the world beyond the characters, that lends itself well to adapting a novel into more visual medium. This is because you have a lot of source material to work with in terms of describing what the set may look like or describe what the costumes may look like. This combination means that the viewers will be able to feel like they are immersed in the scene because you put in the work to fully flesh out what the world and characters look like in the book.

Examples of Successful Books Adaptations

There are several examples of adaptations that have been successful. The Hunger Games were a fantastic example of this specifically, Catching Fire and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. There was a lot of internal dialogue in these stories with deep POV, but because the world beyond the characters were so well fleshed out, it made it easy for Suzanne Collins to work with other filmmakers to adapt them. Prior to writing The Hunger Games, she already had experience in TV and film. She worked on childrens’ shows like Little Bear, Oswald, and Wow Wow Wubbzy as well as she was a writer for Clifford‘s Puppy Days. She understood how to adapt her work successfully.

Of course you can’t talk about book to screen adaptations without talking about Game of Thrones or the Witcher. All of these book series had well developed characters, and a richly developed world filled with economies and politics and geographies, which made it easy for them to be adapted onto a screen or into a video games. The writers honed in on their craft and honed in on their characters and the world that they wanted to build, which made it easy for people to come in and partner with them to tell the story in a different way.

The success shows because Andrzej Sapkowski is worth around $19 million, while Suzanne Collins net worth is estimated to be between $80 and $90 million. George RR Martin is estimated to be worth $120 million.

With multimedia franchises, arriving from books becoming the norm, there’s plenty of opportunity for authors who write Rich stories and characters to build a strong career for themselves.

That’s all I have for today hopefully is provide some food for thought. Let me know if you want to dabble as an author in screen writing and what works for you.

Until next time,

Rochele Rosa