This is my first Frenzy (although I do have a couple NaNo's under my belt now), so for my first one, I thought I'd alleviate some of the pressure by adapting one of my favourite books from when I was younger into a screenplay. I've just begun re-reading this book to prepare myself for day one and can't figure out how much I think I should feel free to tweak and alter some things from the page to translate to the screen.

So for any of you out there who may be adapting one of your favourite novels, how much are you planning to take the plot into your own hands? And what are your thoughts on that elusive 'perfect balance' (if such a thing even exists) between the alteration of and faithfulness to the storyline you originally came to love?

Oddly, I am adapting two fanfic stories written by friends of mine in to a movie. And, since they are pretty good friends, I don't plan on changing all that much from the original stories :)

The only possible exception is moving some of the events around, so that rather than being a two part movie (such as if you combined The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings in to one long film), it feels like a single story. But (of course), it will be done with advice from the original authors, since they know the stories better than I do.

I'm actually going to be adapting a story I've been working on since last month. Hopefully, I'll have enough done to work with on April 1st. I've been told, with other stories, that my writing translates to script form very well, so I probably won't have to change very much. That's especially true since it's not novel-length, so won't have to cut large pieces to make it the right length.

Death toll: 7 named, about 181 unnamed

Probably not too much. Maybe for language, update it a little bit, but only a very little bit.

I've decided to adapt short stories by HP Lovecraft. I know most won't fill the 100 page requirement alone, so I'm going to choose 2-3 main plots while interweaving scenes from other stories. Names and dialogue will remain mostly the same, probably.

I'm thinking of doing something with Midsummer Night's Dream. It's one of three plots I'm considering. But... with something that well known, is just changing the setting or time-period enough?
And.
What if I decide to keep the lines pretty much the same (think Baz Lurman's Romeo and Juliet). Is that cheating? I'm so confused, this is my first time, but I don't want to scrap the idea.
Not yet, at least.

This is my first Frenzy, and I'm adapting a short story that a friend and I have written to screenplay. I figured it was the best way to ease into this kind of thing, last NaNo was an epic failure because I tried to do too much at one time...yeah...

HOPEFULLY, it'll be 100 pages worth, if not, there's a few ideas that we didn't put into the story that I can throw in there; which is good because I kinda want to put a certain selection of scenes in the movie that weren't written in the story. But all the names, and most of the dialog will remain the same.

Not much, considering my novel that i'm adapting already reads like a screenplay.

I'm hoping to keep the events more or less the same as in the original book, but presented in a different order (through flashbacks, etc) for pacing purposes.

(However, I'm planning on adapting a book by Heinlein. For those who haven't read him: he's a sci-fi author whom I love, but he tends to go into looooooong tangents, literally pages of description or monologues about the scientific background of device X, the political/philosophical beliefs of his characters, etc. This does not exactly translate well onto film...but the points made in these monologues are part of what makes his books compelling. Hence, there will be much re-scripting.)

My personal belief is that the 'balance' is all about the theme or core that unites the original material and your adaptation. Once you have decided what element(s) of the original story are central to your adaptation, you'll know what parts need to remain intact and what can be changed for easier adaptation. Of course, this is easy to say in theory, but in reality I am struggling with it myself. ^_^

This will be my first Frenzy, first script, first anything!!!! I am reader but, gonna try to write. I would like to do an adaptation on a historical figure. It is an epic tale during that tells a story of a woman from 1758 to 1850. What genre would this be under? When a read this story about her I thought of it as a play.. and now think .. this is my opportunity. AM I on the right track here?

I'm adapting one of my favorite novels for Script Frenzy this year - as well as it being a personal project I've been wanting to work on for a while, I'm also using it as a final project for a seminar I'm currently taking on Literary History as Media History. Therefore, I'm approaching it more from the viewpoint of telling the same story but to a different audience (viewers rather than readers). I'll be paying particular attention to what has to get left out (all the fun but unnecessary narrative bits), but also to what I gain from live performance! Therefore I'm keeping as much as I can the same - especially the dialogue of course. After all, it's all of that good stuff that inspired me and made me love the story in the first place. However it becomes quickly apparent that books have a lot more room in them than a play - so most of the changes to be made will be cutting extraneous subplots and characters, consolidating scenes, and attributing bits of expository narrative to character dialogue.

I'm adapting one of my favorite novels for Script Frenzy this year - as well as it being a personal project I've been wanting to work on for a while, I'm also using it as a final project for a seminar I'm currently taking on Literary History as Media History. Therefore, I'm approaching it more from the viewpoint of telling the same story but to a different audience (viewers rather than readers). I'll be paying particular attention to what has to get left out (all the fun but unnecessary narrative bits), but also to what I gain from live performance! Therefore I'm keeping as much as I can the same - especially the dialogue of course. After all, it's all of that good stuff that inspired me and made me love the story in the first place. However it becomes quickly apparent that books have a lot more room in them than a play - so most of the changes to be made will be cutting extraneous subplots and characters, consolidating scenes, and attributing bits of expository narrative to character dialogue.

The novel I'm adapting is set in the 50s, and was written in the 70s. Whether or not I keep it set in the same era, I'll be updating the language without making it too modern. For example, in the book, the narrator's favorite expression of surprise and awe is "Golly-lolly!" While that might've been a common phrase in the 50s, I don't think today's audience would appreciate that. The language is definitely going to be thing I'll be changing the most.

I'm adapting a novel that I'm /almost/ finished with....

And it's going to be very, very different because there are so many elements that I need an actual scene to explain, versus a short paragraph of thought.

I am adapting a novel that I wrote for JanNo - "A Life More Ordinary" for Screnzy. I am planning on trying to keep the tone and humour of the novel but adding that I had wanted to in the novel that just didn't mesh well with the original when I was writing it.

I have been looking through the Dares from another site and one of them stood out for me that I think will make a good "signature". It was to include a grilled cheese sandwich into every scene.

I'm adapting my almost finished '07 NaNo novel Bad Company. Which means, of course, that I have to start seriously editing it now. (The middle of the month should be a suitable Panic Time for NaNoEdMo, since EdMo counts hours...) The graphic novel adaptation should be relatively easy, since I'm better at comics than at writing novels, and I'm calling the novel "A Novelization" anyway. But the movie version... that's going to be tougher. A lot tougher. The trick is to figure out which parts are important and must be kept, since it's a long book. Also, there's certain parts of the novel that would definitely not pass muster with the MPAA, and might not even be able to make it into the unrated version, so I'm going to have to modify those parts if I even choose to keep them. Also, the novel is narrated from the two heroines' point of view, and this gets extremely subjective at times; even in the graphic novel, there will be lots of captions for the sisters' thoughts. The camera is objective to the extreme, though, so narration will have to be kept to a minimum. Switching POV will also be tricky. Still, there are tricks, such as montage, to allow the viewers into our heroines' heads, if briefly. Like I said, the movie adaptation will be tricky. But if I can remain faithful to the novel anyway, I'll have done my job.

I'm adapting my first novel, which is actually for sale, though since it was self-published, I don't have to worry about treading on any toes with this screenplay. That was probably a run-on sentence. Anyway, I'm going to try to stick very close to the actual novel, and I want to depict what I saw when I wrote the novel. Internal monologue may have to be cut, but, otherwise, I think that it should be just about a hundred pages. That's about how long the book is in 8.5"x11" format, anyway.

I'm glad that it's permissible to write adaptations, at least... I'm hoping that'll help with the fact that SF is in April. What an awful month for SF... Only on or two other months could have been worse for me. Ah well. Sorry to complain a bit.

I'd better get back to my essays.

Have a nice day!
Moya

I'm adapting one of my favourite videogames, BioShock. It'll be shy of three hours, hugely expensive and contain only one action sequence.

Well, hopefully not.

There are a few problems. There's the near-mute protagonist, the constrained events, the Half-Life style of streaming story events through the protagonistls eyes and the twist that riffs specifically on the nature of video games, something that will probably never translate well into a movie, unless it is all seen through the eyes of the hero, negating the point of a movie if you can just do it in the video game (Longest run-on sentence yet!). Hopefully, I can circumvent all that by not bothering to adapt any of that and instead do a sort of prequel, telling the story of the city of Rapture and how it slid into chaos.

Should be a fun month.

I'm adapting 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, recycled in space. Hopefully I can remain true to the source material and yet add in some original spice of my own.

Should be fun and agonising, but mostly fun.

*waves to all the pretty people* First post, Huzzah!

I will be adapting my favorite book, The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha. Don't worry if you haven't heard of it. No one has. I think I'll play around with the romance between the titular character and his "girl" more than the author did, as well as throw in some more jokes and up the action, but other than that, I'm staying pretty true to the original story line. It's a pretty amazing book, and I'm hoping to do it some justice.

I'm doing Anne Bronte's 'Agnes Grey' (Because Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre are both movies/t.v. series already) into a movie. I loved 'Agnes Grey' so, this should be interesting. I plan on keeping it true to the book as much as possible. I'm gonna have to re-read the sucker all next week and make notes before Frenzy starts, however; this'll be fun

I'm going to be adapting a video game.
and I'm using the basic plot of it and adding in some of my own things ^_^
I wouldn't want it to be the same or it would be stupid.

I'm adapting a novel I wrote, and I'm actually compressing it a lot. There are a lot of things that can be shown visually, or delivered by the actors, which have to be explained in more detail in a novel. There are also lots of descriptions of "internal conflict" that get cut. And I tend to pare down dialogue to streamline the scenes.
I've actually found screenwriting to be easier than writing fiction. *cue sinister music* Crap. I'm becoming my parents.

I'll be adapting Johnny Got His Gun. The first draft will be based more off of the 1971 movie (which has many elements from the book), but I will be updating it to the current time since the original takes place during WWI. The premise is still relevant and I want to see how well it translates into our generation.

I'm not sure I will do a second draft, but if I do, then I will be re-reading the book (for the 3rd or 4th time) and I will be including a lot more things from the book that Trumbo thought would be good to leave out in the '71 movie.

I myself am adapting a novel by William Gibson, Neuromancer specifically. Hopefully I can do it justice. Frankly, I think it would've made for a better screenplay than The Matrix Trilogy (the last two movies in particular), so i'm gonna see if I can justify my argument.

I've had a moment of clarification and decided to stash this idea away for June or July. I'll be writing on an original idea instead for April (the JGHG update.)

I'm adapting one of my favorite novels as a kid. A movie was made but I hated it so much that I decided to redo it in my own style.

The movie they made killed off characters and switched events around. It barely stayed true to the book. I'm all about staying as close as possible to the original novel, and I even try to use some of the dialouge originally written.

Of course I can't use everything because then the movie would end up being some 4 hours long but I think adaptions are all about finding your favorite parts and dropping the unimportant ones.

I'm adapting Looking For Alaska, one of my favorite books. It will be pretty much the same, especially the dialogue. Almost all of the dialogue is essential to the plot, and the rest is just witty humour I want to keep in. Other than the dialogue, though, I'll probably edit a couple of characters giving them bigger or smaller roles.

Wow, other people doing adaptations! :) I'm all excited. LOL...

I'm doing a modern re-telling of the myth The Rape of Persephone. I'm taking the myth and basically re-creating it in modern day New York City, with modern people and modern take-offs on the names. I'm rather excited - it's coming along nicely. My only problem is this is my first Script Frenzy, and I'm not very good at script formatting. But I'll figure it out. ;)

I'm adapting the videogame Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic into a film. Given that just playing the core story of the game (not including the side quests) will take on average something of the order of 20-25 hours, fitting all that into a 100 page script takes quite some doing.

So I'm making quite a few radical alterations to the original story, purely out of necessity. And since it's not like I can ever sell the script, I don't feel duty-bound to try and keep things 100% faithful. I've dumped quite a few characters and locations to keep things manageable, and things are going surprisingly well so far. I'm hoping that the end result will still be faithful to the spirit of the game, but in terms of actual detail, it's going to quite different in lots of areas.

This is my first attempt at a film script, so it's definitely been a very educative exercise in learning what's absolutely essential to a story and then just writing that, rather than trying to put in too much fluff around the edges.

Okay, I didn't finish that '07 NaNo novel of mine last month. I was too caught up in FAWM, even after it ended. So I'll be adapting an incomplete novel, and then novelizing the adaptation. Got it? I hope so.

I'm adapting some of Shakespeare's tragedies and turning them into parodies/comedies. Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet are on my list, and I'm thinking King Lear, too, but it depends on my page count whether or not I'll do anything more. And when I say "adapting", I mean taking the scenes already in the plays, putting some together and creating some, and then inserting as much random but coherent dialogue as possible in them.

The Bard would be very mad at me, I think. ;D

NaNo07- The Journey (27,000/50,000) NaNo08- Relinquishing Command (100,000/50,000) JulNo09- The Merry War (76,000) JulNo09- The Unchosen (25,000) NaNo09- BNGoF1&2 (?/150,000)

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