How do you adapt a novel, play, fact book, or what have you for film use?
Or, to put it another way, how do you translate a printed work into script form?
The big issue is of course relative complexity. A novel may run 500 pages or more. Most films must be squeezed into 90 minutes running time. Cutting—often, drastic cutting—therefore becomes essential.
Thus, consider a novel we’ll call Monster. Told in first person, it runs 13 chapters, 255 pages. Each chapter is comprised of one segment of present action, another of flashback background material. More than 20 characters are developed.
How might you approach the adaptation of Monster to film form, so far as the script is concerned? There are three major ...
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