Writing Workshop: Turning a piece of fiction into a film with explosive results

Screenwriters get paid the big bucks to read books and adapt them to film so that we, the paying costumer, do not have to read anything beyond some credits. The exception to this is movies in foreign languages that have subtitles that make viewers read line after painful line of text. Reading, as many are aware, can lead to eye strain. A man that told me I had a pretty mouth also told me reading could lead to “being a queer.” I doubt he had any empirical evidence of that claim, but he said it with a lot of conviction.

Regardless, you want to make those big bucks screenwriters make but you don’t want to have to actually write anything. Fortunately, libraries are filled with books that are waiting to be turned into movies and I’m going to show you how to write an adaptation with style. To help you walk through this, I’m going show you the kind of decisions you will be making by using Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery as my example. I have chosen The Lottery for two reasons: one, it’s a fairly well-known short story and two, it’s used to scare inner-city teens away from gambling lifestyles.

Differentiate it from the book.
Faithful adaptations might seem like a good idea, but it’s the film industry’s job to make choices the author of the source material didn’t have the balls to make. In The Lottery, Tessie Hutchinson wins the lottery in her small town and is stoned to death. In my adaptation, Tessie Hutchinson’s lottery winning doesn’t get her stoned to death. Instead, she is entered in a drag race across a desert filled with land mines. Her car is rigged to explode regardless if she wins or loses, so in a lot of ways it’s not a whole lot different than the original text. It’s all about subtle changes.

Change an important character.
In my film version, Tessie Hutchinson is not a woman, but a man. He is a man named Tessie Hutchinson and his pansy-ass birth name fuel him with distaste for himself. He wants nothing more than to prove himself to the rest of people that inhabit the floating island where he lives. I may have forgotten to mention that he lives on a floating island. Also, I know I said the drag race took place in a desert. For clarification’s sake, part of the floating island is a desert. See? Perfect.

You want whimsical. Go for whimsical.
So floating islands are pretty whimsical, but islands aren’t the only things that can float. Zepplins are pretty whimsical. You know what’d be cool? A flying zeppelin city that travels the world looking for new places to mine sky gold.

So yeah, I think that covers adaptations of fiction.