Novelizations - How to Adapt Scripts Into Novels: A Writing Guide for Screenwriters and Authors

by Rene Gutteridge, Cheryl McKay

A Writing Guide for Screenwriters and Authors Are you an author who wants to explore the business of adapting screenplays into novels? Are you a screenwriter who’d like to see your unproduced script written as a novel, to help get your film made? Are you a screenwriter who wants to adapt your own script into a novel? This book is for you. Novelizations used to pump business for existing movies and TV shows, but now a fast-growing trend has publishers contracting authors to pen novel adaptations based on scripts that haven’t been produced—yet. At least until the novel raises awareness about the script and gives it a life of its own. It’s a win-win for all creative writers. If you are a novelist, you can benefit from learning the craft of adapting scripts into books. You may just end up penning a novelization that will one day be a film. There is an art to this form of adaptation that may differ from starting a novel from scratch. If you’re a screenwriter who is sitting on a gem of a script, what are you waiting for? We’ll give you tips on how to team up with a novelist. Or you, too, can learn to adapt your screenplay as a novel. Just like screenwriting, there’s a craft to be honed. With the whole story and characters of that script already in place, you’re half way there. Want to learn the trade secrets of this burgeoning business? Look no further. Using specific, side-by-side examples that compare script pages to novel pages, writing team Cheryl McKay (the screenwriter) and Rene Gutteridge (the novelist) share their experiences, tips, and know-how on adapting scripts into novels. Covering everything from creative technique to collaborative contracts, How to Adapt Scripts into Novels is an invaluable tool for both screenwriters and novelists to successfully master this highly specialized art form. * * * RENE GUTTERIDGE is the one of the go-to authors for novelizations. She has written Old Fashioned, Heart of the Country, and Just 18 Summers for Tyndale. CHERYL MCKAY, screenwriter of The Ultimate Gift (which Gutteridge also novelized), has worked with Gutteridge on the novelizations for her scripts, Never the Bride for Random House and Greetings from the Flipside for B&H Publishing. They won a Carol Award (ACFW) for Best Women’s Fiction for Never the Bride. * * * Key Adapting scripts into books, what is a novelization?, challenges novelists face, script changes, word count, book length, how to paint in the setting, point of view, characters, story expansion, how to structure & plot a novel based on a script, how to handle backstory, interior monologue, characters and dialogue, and forming writing partnerships.

Genres: Writing

180 pages, Paperback

First published March 14, 2014

About the author

Rene Gutteridge is the award-winning and best-selling author of more than eighteen novels, including the beloved Boo Series and Heart of the Country, her novelization release with director John Ward and Tyndale House Publishers. Her recent suspense titles include Listen, Possession and the award-winning Seven Hours project Escapement. She's been published by Bethany House, Tyndale House, WaterBrook Press, Thomas Nelson and B&H and novelized the successful motion picture The Ultimate Gift. She is teaming again with screenwriter Cheryl McKay for the romantic comedy Greetings from the Flipside from B&H and releasing her new suspense title, Misery Loves Company from Tyndale in 2013. Her romantic comedy Never the Bride won the 2010 Carol Award for Best Women’s Fiction. Her upcoming literary projects include the novelization of the motion picture Old Fashioned with Tyndale House Publishers and filmmaker Rik Swartzwelder.

Her adaptation of her novel My Life as a Doormat is in development with Kingdom Pictures and she is also a creative consultant for Boo, a film based on her best-selling novel, in development at Sodium Entertainment with Cory Edwards attached as director and Andrea Nasfell as screenwriter. She is also co-writer in a collaborative comedy project called Last Resort with screenwriters Torry Martin and Marshal Younger. Her screenplay Skid is currently in production and scheduled to begin filming in April of 2013. Find her on Facebook and Twitter or at her website, www.renegutteridge.com

Reviews

[Cjclopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a practical book. Just it works.