Why Should Authors Adapt Their Book To A Screenplay?

What Is The Difference Between A Script And Screenplay?

Why should authors adapt their book or novel to a screenplay? Quite simply, because there's a huge boom in the industry for novels being adapted to film and book series being adapted to TV series! So authors have a fantastic opportunity to get their work optioned.

Here's everything you should know about Hollywood's new book boom ~ how changes in TV, film and book publishing, including the pandemic, have driven a boom in book adaptations. Here's a guide to the pipeline: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-02-11/hollywood-book-boom-2021-movie-and-tv-adaptations-from-novels

Also…this article talks about some fascinating industry players: https://sports.yahoo.com/meet-8-industry-players-behind-150038051.html

Authors often ask about adapting their books into screenplay format and how to write a screenplay to enter our Screenplay Award. Read on to find out how you as an author can convert and adapt your novels into screenplay format, in other words a script, to enter it into our Screenplay Award, or in fact any screenplay writing contest.

So, What Is The Difference Between A Script And Screenplay?

They both mean the same thing, just different terminology for a story in the format to the film industry.

A film script or screenplay is the blueprint for any feature film or TV series. A script or screenplay includes characters actions, dialogue and movement of the characters. This is another way to tell your story.

Most authors who are used to writing manuscripts and novels don't know how to write a script or screenplay or the basics of formatting a screenplay. There are many wonderful pieces of software out in the screenwriting world that help writers to format a screenplay. They make your job as a writer adapting a book to a screenplay so much easier.

Simply Google for free screenwriting software or for the best screenwriting software or even for paid screenwriting software. All of these searches will bring up a list of the software you can use to convert and adapt a book or novel to a screenplay in script format.

Whichever you decide to use, formatting won't be a major concern. Still, it's critical to understand what belongs where, and why. Check out this Studiobinder guide, where you'll find lots more advice and guidance on script and screenplay formatting: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/brilliant-script-screenplay-format/

One piece of advice is to make sure these guys pay attention to your work is to write a film treatment ~ it’s a better way of getting a busy film producer to read your work, sit up and take notice of your story!

What's A Treatment?

A treatment is a document that presents the story idea of your film before writing the entire script. Treatments are often written in the present tense, in narrative-like prose, and highlight the most important information about your film, including title, logline, story summary, and character descriptions.

Treatments are a way for a writer to test out an idea before investing their creative energy fully into a new screenplay. Treatments also allow for writers to summarize their story idea, so they can present the story to studio executives or producers who might want to finance the film.

Don't fret, you only need to write a minimum of ten pages, and up to twenty pages or more.