Book to movie script? Andrea Clark smooths a bumpy path...

 HALLIE EPHRON: One of the best things about being a writer  is all the talented and delightful people I get to meet. High up on my list is Andrea Clark. She's had a career writing fiction and screenplays, and now she helps people who have a story idea but need a smart editor's help adapting it for the screen.

It's not a walk in the park.  

Andrea is here today to share to reflect on why.

ANDREA CLARK: When I was five-years old, I thought I could be a figure skater because I’d watched the Winter Olympics.

When I was in grammar school, I thought I could write a novel because I knew the alphabet.

When I eventually did write a novel, I decided to adapt it into a screenplay. Why not? Novels and movies both tell stories, right? Big mistake. Huge.

Writing a novel has as much in common with screenwriting as being an Olympic skater has to do with watching one on TV.

Here’s why.

Kids begin hearing stories shortly after they’re born. They have three acts: put a guy up a tree; throw rocks at him; get him down. (Dead or alive—your choice.)

No one grows up hearing bedtime stories in screenplay format. Screenwriting is as much of a foreign language to a novelist as Dolfin speak.

I should know. I worked for a film and television producer in New York in my twenties and read hundreds of scripts, but when I tried adapting my novel—epic fail. Turning a novel into a screenplay was like forcing my size-enormous thighs into a pair of Spanx.

Emma Thompson, winner of the Academy Award for adapting Sense and Sensibility—she wrote seventeen drafts—says her writing process involves a lot of weeping. People say words like “combine” and “shorten” and pretend it’s advice. Instead, let’s consider why and how Ms. Thompson adapted some scenes in Jane Austen’s novel the way she did.

First, the why. It’s up to the screenwriter to figure out how to efficiently mine the drama of a story, i.e., which scenes and characters can do that best.

In the screenplay, Ms. Thompon wrote a knock-your-socks-off, revelatory scene about how isolating it was to live in the English countryside in the late 1700s.

She chose Elinor to communicate this for several reasons. Elinor is a strict observer of social norms and doesn’t say much. She is also strong; not even the engagement of the man she loves to another woman can break her.

For the how to communicate such isolation, Ms. Thompson chose the scene where Marianne falls ill while at the Palmer’s estate at Cleveland.

The quickest way to reveal the soul of a character is to put her in crisis. So, the writer (a) made Marianne’s fever life-threatening, and (b) left Elinor completely alone with her.

Once the writer separated Eleanor and the dying Marianne in a strange house, away from the others, the script was ready for a new, heartfelt scene that dramatized one of the most difficult challenges of Austen’s world.

The scene takes place at night. As Elinor watches over Marianne, she realizes that if her younger sister dies, she will lose her only confidante and close friend; her life will be one of crushing loneliness.

Kneeling, Elinor lays her head next to her sister’s body. Eyes wide, she stares at a vision of a life she knows she could not survive.

“Beloved Marianne,” she whispers, “do not leave me alone.

Now that’s writing worth weeping over.

HALLIE EPHRON: Which is exactly what we all aspire to write. Hard enough in a novel or short story. But how to do it in a screenplay, harder still.

The good news is that Andrea is offering a developmental editing service to writers like me who are new to screenwriting. So we won't have to match Emma Thompson's 17 versions to get to "good enough," never mind weep-worthy.

 Andrea Clark can be reached at: StoryChefnyc@gmail.com

TODAY'S QUESTION:

Thinking about your favorite novels that have been turned into movies, which have been the most (or least) successful, in your opinion, and if you can please share why. Andrea will be checking in today and adding her insights.

Andrea Clark is a writer and developmental editor with over fifteen years’ experience. She’s the author of a retranslation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Nutcracker published by Alfred A. Knopf, short stories (New Bedford magazine), and contributions to several humor collections, among them: Book: The Sequel (The Perseus Book Group), and I Remember When Mom: (Andrews McMeel). After graduating from Smith College, she worked briefly at The New Yorker as a typist, one of several over-qualified young women who struggled with Pauline Kael’s handwriting. She left that job to evaluate screenplays and manuscripts for producer David Susskind at MGM in New York. Andrea got her M.F.A. from the Graduate Film and Television program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her thesis film, a comedy entitled “My Divorce,” won an Academy Award in the Student Film Category. Andrea is an alumna of the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference and the Yale Writers’ Workshop in both Screenwriting and Mystery Writing. She greatly enjoys working with screenwriters and novelists whose goal for their projects is professional consideration. Contact: storychefnyc@gmail.com