about screenplay adaptations
Several of the novels here are adaptations from screenplays, rather than the other way around.
Reasons include:
The screenplay never made it into production.
The story—typically relating to the subject or the relationship between characters—in the screenplay being adapted lent itself to a much deeper, often lengthier, telling. A prime example of this is Seladiënna, which just so happens to be my longest novel ever and was derived from a screenplay, Sword of Light, whose page limit forced me to stop the tale at the point of the characters’ first transition into a parallel world, basically leaving everything hanging.
The screenplay’s basic idea simply did not have enough depth. For example, Lightning Trail started just as a three-character screenplay about two people meeting in on a New Zealand walking track and being stalked by a demented producer-director of real life snuff flicks. Too simple and too much what’s-been-done-a-hundred-times-before.
I wanted to see how much I could preserve typical screenplay elements—the kinds dictated by the visual elements of the narrative implicit in the use of a camera, the need for economic dialogue and narrative show-and-tell parsimony, as well as the use of flashbacks of course—and still keep the tale coherent. It’s possible, as Hunting Hunter demonstrates, but it can also be confusing. In Hunting Hunter there are no chapters, just a prologue, a central section and an epilogue. It alternates between present- and past-tense sections, seen from the 3rd person POVs of the two main characters.
I still have more screenplays with stories that will never be seen unless they are novelized. Why waste a perfectly good tale?
Last but not least: Antoine’s Revenge… This is an adaptation of a screenplay called The Weaponsmaster, which twice got into the quarterfinals of the Nicholl Screenwriting Competition. Clearly the story resonated. However, the third time, despite another major rewrite and addressing the judges’ comments, it never even got that far. The Zeitgeist had left it behind I guess. So, one day I decided to spend some quality time and novelize it. And make it better, too. There was so much more I could put into it, for which the 120 screenplay page limit just was too restrictive.
My technique for adapting screenplays into novels varies and depends of what kind of tale is being told. You may notice that some of the novels in this list are in progress. Some of those are based on screenplays at which reviewers would turn up their noses. But they’re tales worth telling; sometimes because they’re just fun and occasionally let me do some world-building and escape the confines of our mundane and depressing reality. Others give me an opportunity to address conditions in said mundane reality and spend time with characters who, like most of us, have to deal with the contingencies imposed by life; but find ways to thrive anyway, and never mind the obstacles.