Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics

Techniques for Adapting Books, Comics and Real-Life Stories into Screenplays

Eric R. Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138948853
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317364030
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Once you understand the basics of screenwriting, ideas for your next screenplay are everywhere. Whether it comes from a favorite children's book, a summer novel you discover accidentally, a news story that catches your imagination, or a chapter from your own life — advanced screenwriting strategies should now guide you through your first adaptation. In Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics, award-winning screenwriter Eric Williams uses examples from award-winning screenplays to explain new storytelling techniques. His real-world examples illustrate a range of advanced approaches — including new ways to identify and craft tension, how to reimagine structure and character, and how to strengthen emotional depth in your characters and in the audience. Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics teaches readers new ways to engage with source material in order to make successful adaptation decisions, regardless of the source material.

The book offers:

• Three detailed examples of award-winning adaptations by the author, including the complete short story and final scripts used in the Voices From the Heartland project;
• Breakout boxes highlighting modern and historical adaptations and providing examples for each concept discussed in the book;
• More than fifty charts providing easy-to-use visual representations of complex concepts;
• New screenwriting techniques developed by the author, including the Triangle of Knowledge, the Storyteller's Parallax, and the idea of Super Genres as part of a Screenwriters Taxonomy.

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Section Two
Intermediate Practices

4

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Recognizing your Genre

You are original. I know. I get it. So am I. Everyone is.

Heaven forbid that anyone would suggest that you (or I, or anyone) should write something that was not completely original. No one wants to be derivative. And yet, how does one write a Romance without two people falling in love? Or a Crime Story without a criminal? Science Fiction without science? A War Film without some sort of combat? A Sports Movie without competition?

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you aren’t writing a Crime Story, a War epic, a Sports Movie, Science Fiction, or a Romance. You’re staying away from “Genre.” I get it. You don’t want to be derivative. So, you are also staying away from Horror and Western too. I understand: you don’t want to be limited. So … no Action Films either. No Fantasy. No Thrillers. What about Slice-of-Life or Day-in-the-Life Films? You know, films like: The Wrestler, Boyhood, As Good As it Gets, Return of the Secaucus Seven, MASH, Lost in Translation, Sideways, Magnolia, Birdman, or Winter’s Bone. “Life” Films are Genres too—identified over time by enough films having enough similarities for the general public to recognize them as a Genre. If you are avoiding all of those kinds of films, then all I can say is “Wow. You’re ‘don’t limit me’ approach is rather … um … limiting.”

But seriously, all sarcasm aside: allow me to take a moment to make an argument for Genre, and a few suggestions on how you could (or should) use it. This is part of a much larger discussion—one that I have written about at length in a different book called The Screenwriters Taxonomy. In that book, I have outlined a creative process for identifying and imagining nearly every kind of fictional narrative film possible. I will provide an overview for you at the end of this chapter, but the general idea stems from the idea of Super Genres.

I strongly believe that nearly all fictional narrative films can be divvied into one (or more) of eleven Super Genres—each with their own defining characteristics. These characteristics are not absolutes. They are not rules. They are suggestions based on what audiences over the years have come to expect. Stick with me for a moment; this is going to get a little complicated. To clarify, I’ll use a metaphor to illustrate my approach.

The Genre Roadmap Metaphor

Imagine Columbia, Missouri; a city roughly in the middle of the United States. Now imagine a road trip from Columbia, Missouri, to any other city in the Americas. That road trip is your movie script. Columbia, Missouri, to Toronto, Canada = movie script A. Columbia, Missouri, to Guadalajara, Mexico = movie script B; Columbia, Missouri, to Denver, Colorado = movie script C; Columbia, Missouri, to Indianapolis, Indiana = movie script D. And so on. There are hundreds of thousands of cities you could travel to (and scripts that you can write) and very few limiting factors on how your trip would go.

However, since we are talking about a driving trip, you will have to drive through Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma, or Tennessee on your trip. There is no way around it. You can’t leave Missouri by car without traveling through one of these eight states. Imagine those states as your Super Genres. You’re going to have to drive through one of them to tell your story. But I’m not trying to tell you how to drive, what kind of car (or truck, or motorcycle, or lawnmower) you should use, or whether or not to take the highway, byway, or dirt roads. It doesn’t matter to me. I also don’t care what direction you travel in to reach your destination (I mean … to write your script). If you want to drive to Canada by driving south out of Missouri into Arkansas—that’s great. Be original. Millions of people have driven through Arkansas. Just because you do too, does not make you derivative.

So that’s it. That’s my metaphor: if you are going to write a feature-length, fictional narrative film, then I guarantee that you are going to write in (or drive through) one of the eleven Super Genres. There are other “Genres” (which I call Macro Genres and Micro Genres), as well as movie Types, Voices, Pathways (and other categories) to choose from. But as a central consideration for screenplay adaptation, I suggest focusing in on Super Genre. If you find this approach useful, expand your understanding further into the Screenwriters Taxonomy from there.

Genre = Atmosphere + Character + Story

There’s no official Governing Board of Genre. Genres have been created using a crowd-sourced approach. They are built upon specific audience expectations that have evolved over the decades. For instance, if I say, “Let’s go see a Western,” then I recognize that you already have specific expectations for the characters you’re going to see in the film, the basic kinds of stories that might unfold, and the atmosphere within which one of those stories will be told.

Atmosphere, Character, and Story—these are the fundamentals of Genre.

Atmosphere

A film’s Atmosphere is affected by:

• Location;

• Costumes and Props;

• Visceral Expectations for the Audience.

For instance, a film in the Western Genre often takes place in the American Southwest, with a large number of scenes filmed as exteriors so we can soak in nature’s beauty. We also expect to see saloons, a sheriff’s office, and maybe a brothel or a hideout in the cliffs.

The Costumes and Props focus on the people who live in these Locations (cowboys and Native Americans). Naturally there will be guns, horses, headdresses, and cowboy hats. We can also expect to see a sheriff’s star, cattle, rope, card games, and whiskey; and maybe a spittoon or a stagecoach.

The Visceral Exp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Section One: Basic Practices
• Section Two: Intermediate Practices
• Section Three: Advanced Practices
• Index
• Bio