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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Discussion of...    Getting to know you, getting to know all about you...  ›  The Fempiror Chronicles Novel & Adapting a Script Moderators: Administrator
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  Author    The Fempiror Chronicles Novel & Adapting a Script  (currently 834 views)
George Willson
Posted: August 10th, 2009, 12:27pm Report to Moderator
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I'm in the final revision stages of the novel version of The Fempiror Chronicles: The Initiation of David, so in a few weeks, it'll be out there on Amazon for public consumption. That's right, a physical, printed and bound book that you could carry to the lake, if you were so inclined, far away from technology. Some of you may have read the screenplay this is based on, but it's undergone a massive amount of changes in the conversion from script to novel.

Plug: You can read the Prologue here. If you're curious about what a nilrof is, it has a picture...

I found that through this, I discovered a world of issues that I probably never would have if I weren't forced to think through every single character on the page. It was a process that created a story that was even stronger than it was before, and I imagine as I work through the subsequent stories that "novelizing" them will improve them as well.

So what I can I take away from this experience to apply to screenwriting. Well, what worked here was being the "God" of the story. Instead of the thought that someone else will fix it later in production, I had to paint the world, its people, its colors, its clothes, its processes, and everything else completely on my own. So in the writing of a novel, I had to be the director, prop department, costumer, historical analyst, et cetera, and all that stuff gets to stay on the page because those thousand words are the pictures.

In screenwriting, our job is to write the story and the story only to allow those other people to provide their input and creativity into the process of bringing that story to life. After all, a collaborative effort usually yields a better result than a solo one. But the initial writing of a screenplay is a solo effort, and if you're writing a spec that you hope someone will pick up someday, it becomes all the more important for that script to read flawlessly. The reader has to be able to see the movie play out, except that they fill in their own pictures as opposed to the ones a novelist would paint out.

In The Fempiror Chronicles, the largest single change I had to enact and research was life in the late 18th century. I had to find out the clothing style for men and women and ensure that each character had his or her own style within that style. I had to know exactly how the tailor profession worked in that time period. I had to actually research how shirt dying was acccomplished since the main character does that in his first scene. The screenplay version is waaaaay off. I learned about a mantua maker, even though I'd been using the definition without knowing the term. All of this subsequent research painted a more realistic world for the characters in the book. While a screenplay wouldn't have these details, a lot of this played into the dialogue and storyline more than I thought it would. After all, I never took into account their culture before I wrote the novel. Imagine how much better the script would have been had I done this much beforehand.

For those who do know the story, I actually had to work out what a nilrof looked like specifically and how it would be carried.

What else did I figure out? I worked out a multitude of seemingly incidental things within the story that I never considered because it "worked on screen." Well, take the screen out of the equation and stare at it like a story. I had to rewrite an entire sequence because it didn't actually work. Incidental things such as room layout and character action had to be considered since I'm now controlling them all. There were many times something didn't work because it wasn't actually feasible. There were a load of open-ended issues that I never even thought about before I was forced to write it out in painstaking detail.

I'd like to go into details there, but I don't know how much anyone would be interested in this specifically, so I don't want to bore everyone. Suffice to say that when writing your spec, you need to consider the details that your readers will not read. When you write that first draft, I would recommend at this point being as detailed as possible. Write every single piece of information you have for that first draft right down to the kind of flowers sitting outside the house, if you want. The catch there is that when you have the script where you want it, you have to remove all the extra details and leave only the bare minimums. Or you can simply rewrite your own script as a book to see what it actually looks like. Obviously, you might not be looking to publish it, but what this will show you is all the details that the screenwriting craft doesn't allow you to add. You can plan out your vision for the story in as much detail as you desire without worrying about whether it's "too much." Take what you learn from that exercise and rewrite your screenplay.

After all, when people read your screenplay, they should notice that the details aren't there, but they should be able to feel like they could be.

What was the most significant detail I had to all of a sudden keep track of in my story when I read about the clothing style? I had to keep track of our hero's hat, since that was the mandatory style back then. That detail, which is not present in the current draft of the script, would have to be present in the next because it's part of the culture. That it isn't there shows I didn't know much about common 18th century life when I wrote it.


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Old Time Wesley
Posted: August 10th, 2009, 4:09pm Report to Moderator
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I would definitely be interested in buying a copy (Post a link when it is available)

How many pages compared to the script?


Practice safe lunch: Use a condiment.
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rendevous
Posted: August 10th, 2009, 4:26pm Report to Moderator
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Congrats George, I wish you well with it. Interesting points there.

I used to attend a writer's group. The vast majority of people there wrote novels.
They did say I was a bit silly to be wasting my ideas on screenplays. I asked one why. He said if you write a novel then you control all of the world - almost every single piece.
Write a novel and finish it. You're nearly at the end if a long road. The only step left is to get it published (a big step, but nevertheless just a step).
Write a screenplay and finish it. It's just the first step on a much longer and difficult road.
He had a point.


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Scar Tissue Films
Posted: August 10th, 2009, 4:46pm Report to Moderator
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One of my favourite books on screenwriting is this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Film-m.....249940605&sr=8-1


Alexander Mackendrick was a writer and director in the golden age of hollywood when the craft was really a craft.

He always maintained that writers should never develop their story in a screenplay format. That you should always start with prose, or with character monologues so that you filled out the world before you even try and condense it into such a specific medium.

I think you've seen why his advice is so useful. People assume that just because a screenplay is so sparse that it is soehow easier to write, but the opposite should really be true. It should have as much in it as a novel, just without any fat whatsoever.

It's definitely something to think about.
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Helio
Posted: August 10th, 2009, 5:08pm Report to Moderator
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Congrats George! Success and welcome to the club!
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ReaperCreeper
Posted: August 10th, 2009, 5:12pm Report to Moderator
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Wow! Are you self-publishing it? I'll get it when it comes out.

--Julio
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bert
Posted: August 10th, 2009, 6:10pm Report to Moderator
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Hey George, that's great.  Like Wes, I plan to get me a copy.  Pity I just got back from a few weeks at the beach -- it would have been perfect.

My question:  How many people did you (or could you haha) get to read this before you deemed it fit for public consumption?  How many times did you read it through yourself?

As much as I obsess over a few pages of screenplay -- and still miss things -- these are the types of questions (along with a few other things) that have always prevented me from attempting something of that scale.


Hey, it's my tiny, little IMDb!
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Andrew
Posted: August 10th, 2009, 6:41pm Report to Moderator
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Congratulations, George.

Funnily enough, I would imagine any aspirations to see this on the screen would be facilitated better by a novel than a spec script.

Hope it goes well for you.

Andrew


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stevie
Posted: August 10th, 2009, 7:34pm Report to Moderator
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Good stuff, George and top thread by the way. I haven't read Fempiror but will check it out. In a few eeks, the scone-burner and tin lids are off for 3 weeks holidays without me and I'll have time to red more stuff. And write. And sleep. And watch footy.

anyway, this is interesting cos i did the opposite. i wrote my time travel story SENT as a novella first, before i discovered script writing. Now obviously it wasn't published or anything. whwen i adapted it to a script I had to do it differently of course. I was still learning stuff then too. but it's funny when reading any novel now, i look at in a cinematic way. Same with some Tv shows - I notice the camera angles and stuff.

Um, i sort of lost the gist of what i meant to say here but i think you get the picture. cheers all



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George Willson
Posted: August 11th, 2009, 8:39am Report to Moderator
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Decadence, that's a perfect way to see screenplays: a novel without the fat. Sure, they're different mediums, but they both have to be just as complete.

And it is 330 pages. I don't see that changing.

I don't know exactly how many times I have read it, but at least a half dozen, though I would put more on that with the various half-reads over the past six months since I finished it. I would read it, take a couple weeks off, and then read it again. On my last read, I'm reading it out loud since I've found that catches more typos, and I'm still catching them. I caught typos in my Lord of the Rings books reading them out loud. I've also run it through MS Word's spelling and grammar tools more than a couple times. After I read (and revise) it again, I reset the spelling & grammar tool and tell it to check again. That has been really useful for catching things like split infinitives, passive verb usage, and prepositions hanging at the end of a sentence (which isn't always wrong, but it's occasionally lazy).

My wife was the other reader (of the novel), and really, she was the time gauge for me so I didn't rush into it. I wanted her to read it for two reasons.
1) She has NEVER read the screenplays. Ever. She only knows the story in what I've mentioned here and there, but not in its entirety, so it afforded the opportunity to see if she understood it at all.
2) She hasn't read the screenplay because she reads novels. A lot of them. She is one of those people who can name a multitude of favorite authors and read most books before she saw the movie version. She uses her library card quite religiously.

She has read it twice. She actually offered most of the advice on changing around and rewriting the scenes. It was up to me to figure out how, but when she declared on the first draft that she HATED Chapter 7, and she gave me a laundry list of reasons, I rewrote the whole thing. I told her to be critical and mean throughout reading it, and while she apologized several times, she did oblidge, and I got some very cruel but honest and insightful comments. Those are the best kind. Oh, and she liked version 2 of Chapter 7 much, much better than version 1. FYI, if you know the script, that's the scene in the "Lost Art of Jijunga." David is now a more active character in that scene instead of standing around in the background.

Honestly, how many people have read it, though? I count everyone who read the screenplay and offered advice on the storyline over the years. Everyone who left a comment on that thread contributed to this version because when someone commented, I made some changes. If it weren't for the reads I'd gotten from here, the novel wouldn't be what it is. All I had to do was add the fat on there and make more novelesque. That is why SimplyScripts has a shout-out on the dedication page. I couldn't have done it without you all.



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George Willson  -  August 11th, 2009, 8:58am
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