Adapting existing work is for the modern film and TV industry the best route to minimising risk and ensuring good distribution, maximising the safe profits that can be made more so than even great original works. Learning how to write adaptation is bread and butter to a lot of writers. Jim Uhls, Ol Parker and W. Peter Iliff joined together to talk about some of the works they’ve adapted and the challenges of those projects from getting through the writing to getting the projects of the ground and made.
Even with great source material sometimes projects take years to be realised. When Jim Uhls was given Fight Club to read by a friend before the novel hit the shelves and came with the caveat that it would probably never be made into a movie, but that he should read it anyway. After reading he agreed, still he thought it would be nice to get paid by a studio to develop the story. Nobody wanted it for the longest time but then a change of executives at Fox led to the project being picked up and fates aligned that he got to write it. Ol Parker tells us it took six years to get The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel made. He’d done a very free adaptation holding to the feeling of the book rather than a strictly faithful reworking of the story, it was a nice film but nice wasn’t always what people wanted to make. When the film did well enough for a sequel to be put into production it was lovely, he tells us, to be working on a script that he knew was going to be made.
Selecting what to take from a novel to turn it to screen and what to leave out can be a matter of experience and perspective, choosing what’s relevant from the source material and being able to add what’s missing. The writers tell us it’s about getting a real feel for the original work in order to be able to adapt it. You are called upon to speak with and/or improve on the original voice of the author to make a film that is capable of standing alone from it’s source.
For Peter Iliff, Patriot Games was a Tom Clancy novel with a dearth of research. Not wanting to wade too deeply through all of that detail, he kind of winged it taking only what he needed to craft the story he was telling. Combining characters so you can tell the tale you want to tell is a big process too and who the character is going to be acted by can influence what’s needed. Originally adapting Patriot Games for a 35 year old he had to adapt for an older actor’s physicality when 52 year old Harrison Ford was cast. For beloved characters that an audience know it’s a tricky thing to convey the right tone. Jim says he likes to get to know the characters thoroughly and one of the ways he does that is by writing an interview with them, sitting and typing both questions and answers until he knows everything about them. He then writes scenes outside the story just for himself so he can get to own the characters for himself without being directed by what the novelist wrote.
Structure doesn’t always follow the source either. Scenes not in a book are often used to help a film flow and convey information and any number of things you write may not make it into the final film. Actors for instance will use the information in a script to understand what is needed of their emotional state and facial expressions but a lot of what is intitally written evolves in the collaborative process and isn’t eventually seen on screen. A filmmaker may even give writers a differing perspective to write a certain scene from that may not honour the source material at all. Making characters feel like they’re the one from the book but still being able to tell the movie story without being bound by faithfulness is a knack to adaptation. Jim tells us that being faithful doesn’t help you. Studios want to see a project they can make and your first draft is vital as it determines whether you get to remain as the writer on their project.
Adapting can also be a case of updating. A sci-fi story written in the past may need to revised with the science we know today, and stories can be a starting point and be changed to add in other genres or some other perspective. An adaptation can take many forms.
Whether or not to outline is an old debate amongst writers and there are pros and cons perhaps, but Peter, as a big outliner is glad of the fact that the industry in Hollywood is changing to make outlines a part of the professional process. Usually nowadays payment comes in stages for outline, treatment, first draft and subsequent drafts until a project goes into production. To be a professional writer is to be able to outline and advises never to go straight into writing. His belief is that not only does outlining strengthen a writer’s own intentions for a project, but he’s a fan of how it invests the filmmakers and producers in the process, keeping them actively invested in the ongoing development of projects instead of sitting back and taking a judgement position on a finished screenplay. Jim and Ol have differing views, for Ol Parker he feels that to outline is to allow characters to belong to the producer and director before you’ve even made them your own and that isn’t constructive to his own writing process so he doesn’t ever do that. Jim too despises outlines which in his view are a clinical copy for something that ought to have emotional content and feeling that you can only find on the page. That says he often does a beat outline as the studios like to have something concise.
In any form of professional writing what’s really important is being able to deliver on deadline and understand your craft well enough to adjust when there’s an issue. Jim recommends just sitting down and writing when you are empty, when you’re at your worst, when you have no ideas and are void of inspiration. Take breaks if you need to but learn to write when you have nothing because when you’re being paid to write that’s exactly what you’ll have to do.
For adaptation it’s often useful to have your own source material and that can give you new avenues for exploring your craft. Peter wrote a screenplay called Fast Flash to Bangtime years ago that nobody wanted and so it was to all purposes a failed script but a story he still liked. He was eventually persuaded to write it as a novel, an excercise in writing a story a different way that expanded what he knew as a writer. Now the novel is being adapted back to screen and it’s possible that it will may adapted by another writer at some point. Learning how to adapt back and forth like that is a great position to have as a writer. Getting that craft under your belt gives you better career options but is also why we do it, for the understanding and effective communicaton of story and the joy of the process of writing. As adaptation goes, it seems that the most adaptable projects we can work on are our own writing skills.
Leilani is an actor, screenwriter and filmmaker and has been blogging for the London Screenwriters’ Festival since it’s inception in 2010.
