You might have often heard good books describes as ‘unfilmable’ and wondered how to write novels ready for the screen. Sometimes, films of good books are disappointing: but why is that? There are certain aspects that make some books more likely to be attractive to filmmakers and that make for more successful films, and you can keep those aspects in mind while you are writing, to make your book more film-ready:
Quality is not a measure of what makes a book into a great film. Of course, you will want to write the best book that you possibly can, but writing a good book does not necessarily mean that it will be irresistible to filmmakers. Great books may have amazing prose and moving and tension-filled passages focused mostly on characters’ states of mind, but those are difficult to transfer to screen. Producers and studio executives are bombarded with scripts and stories, so your novel needs to stand out. The elements below are all important for encouraging the transition from page to screen.
Make sure you have a high concept story
This may be the single most important element of your book if you dream of it being published and even being made into a movie one day. Films are mostly sold via something called a ‘logline’. A logline is a single sentence that describes the concept of the film. Busy executives don’t have time to wade through scripts or even synopses, so you need a strong concept that can be boiled down into a punchy sentence that grabs their attention.
For example, the logline for the hit Netflix series Orange is the New Black, which is based on a memoir, might be, ‘A well-to-do thirty-something woman who is engaged to be married finds herself in a women’s prison after being convicted for a ten-year-old drug-related crime.’ For the TV series Dexter it might be, ‘serial killer and forensics expert follows a code whereby he only kills the guilty.’ For The Hunger Games, it might be, ‘In a dystopian society, children are chosen by the government each year to fight one another to the death in a reality-style show.’
Notice how original and attention-grabbing each of these concepts is. Does your book have a similar high concept?
Make use of three-act structure
Second to a high concept is a strong sense of taut structure. Nearly every commercial film out of Hollywood conforms to the three-act structure, and your novel should as well. If it doesn’t, it should be adaptable to that structure.
In short, the three-act structure is made up of the setup, the confrontation and the resolution. There are a number of different variations on the three-act structure, and some writers have expanded on the concept a great deal. Look over your novel and see whether you can identify the points of each act and see how closely it conforms overall to the three-act structure. Also read or view books or movies that are said to use this structure. You’ll be surprised how much flexibility and variety seasoned writers can squeeze out of this classic format.
Focus on strong visual potential and external action
One of the advantages of writing a novel over a screenplay is the extent to which you can rely on internal action and describe characters’ thoughts. However, this is the opposite of what filmmakers are looking for. If your book has a lot of external action that can be easily translated into visual storytelling, there is a greater chance that filmmakers may be interested in your work. If your writing evokes strong visual images, that’s even better. Go over your novel and look for places where you could make it more visually compelling.
Some factors that make a novel more attractive to filmmakers might be more subjective or more difficult to implement, but you can keep them in mind while you are writing:
Try to find universal appeal
Books that are best sellers still reach a fraction of the number of people who will see a hit movie, and in order to be made into a film, filmmakers must be convinced that your story will have wide appeal. Overseas markets are also increasingly important to Hollywood, so if your story seems like one that can cross international borders, you will be on even stronger ground.
The next best thing to writing a story that has a broad appeal is writing one that appeals to a large demographic within the overall audience. For example, the film Eat, Pray, Love from the book of the same name had a significant female audience.
However, this is one of the trickiest aspects of writing a novel. Even publishers and studio executives who have been in the business for decades cannot always accurately predict what will capture the public’s imagination and what will not. Hence the ‘box office flop’. If you’re hoping to see your book onscreen, try to write for a large audience, but don’t get too bogged down in this element because much of audience behaviour is naturally beyond your control.
Remember to streamline your plot
If you’re hoping for a TV deal, length doesn’t matter; in fact, if you are writing a series, that could be very good for the purposes of a TV show (Showtime’s hit Dexter was based on a series penned by Jeff Lindsay). However, most films need to come in around the two-hour mark or less. The rule of thumb for screenplays is that one page equals roughly one minute of film. You should be able to envision your novel at around 130 pages or fewer of screenplay.
While a simple, streamlined plot is one way to ensure this, you may find that you still want to include subplots. One way to do this is to write subplots that can be excised if necessary from the main story. It’s common for scripts to simplify novels in this way; they may even combine characters or make other drastic changes.
Don’t forget: budget counts
If movies studios or TV executives want your story badly enough, they will spend the money to make it as demonstrated by films like the Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Game of Thrones TV show. However, if you have written a novel that is less expensive to film, you increase the chances that your book might be optioned. This means that a psychological thriller set mostly in just a few locations is going to be more attractive than a historical novel with a cast of thousands or a far-future space opera. It is unlikely that you will be able to or want to change the entire genre of your novel on the chance that you might attract a film audience. You might think in terms of individual scenes though. You shouldn’t damage the integrity of your novel in hopes of attracting film interest, but if there are ways to write scenes that would be more filmable than others from a budgetary standpoint, you might consider opting for the more filmable version.
Write screen-ready, crisp dialogue
Dialogue that works on the page doesn’t always work when spoken by actors, and your book isn’t going to get rejected if it has all the other elements except this one. However, if your dialogue is crisp and snappy, it makes the job of adapting your novel much easier and is certainly another green tick in the adaptation column.
Look at some movies and TV shows that have been successfully adapted and the original works from which they are drawn. This will help you learn how to write novels that have the most sought-after elements:
Although it’s more than twenty years old, Jurassic Park is one good example because Michael Crichton originally developed it as a screenplay before turning it into a novel. A more recent example is the television show True Blood based on the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris. This show about a telepathic waitress in a small Southern town in the United States worked on the premise that vampires have revealed themselves to the world and have split into two groups. One wants vampires to integrate into society and the other does not. This is the high concept (a concept highly similar to that of Marvel’s X-Men comics). With a large ensemble of characters, the books provide ample opportunity for the adaptation to spin off and maintain interest. The series also had sufficient niche appeal through its mix of crime, romance, fantasy and horror genres.
As is always the case with writing, rules are made to be broken, and there are works adapted for TV and film that break the rules mentioned above. The BBC adapted Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a novel that has the idea of magic being reintroduced to 19th century England as a high concept but is otherwise complex and leisurely paced. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is a classic example of a supposedly unfilmable novel (its multiple storylines stretch across different historical eras), yet while the film received mixed reactions from critics and audiences, it was also nominated for a number of awards.
Just as it can be difficult to predict why one novel becomes a best seller when another does not, predicting film interest and success can be difficult. However, there are a number of things you can do to make your novel more attractive for filmmakers or for adaptation to TV. Thinking about the novel in terms of a film and beginning with a high concept, employing visual storytelling and streamlining the plot are all excellent ways to make your novel more adaptable. Also remember to focus on crisp dialogue, the constraints of budget and the necessity of broad appeal.
Have you recently read a novel that you thought would be great for a screen adaptation, and if so, what elements of the book made you think that?
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