If you’ve been shopping your book to literary agents and have had no luck courting their interest, you may have heard you should rewrite your novel or memoir as a screenplay. Guess what? Screenwriters who’ve had no luck with their scripts are being told the reverse: that they should rewrite their screenplay as a novel.
I have a foot in both worlds. I edit novels and memoirs for a living (along with other books), and I’m also a successful screenwriter with a feature-length script under production by a Hollywood producer. Coming from that background, I can tell you this: rewriting your novel as a screenplay is not the easy solution you’ve heard it is.
It’s mostly a case of the grass looking greener on the other side of the fence. Sometimes it’s a good idea, and I will talk about such instances in this article (and how I can be of help if you choose to go that route). But generally, the solution you need is something else entirely, and I will talk about that, too.
Here are the four reasons why generally it’s a bad idea to rewrite your book as a screenplay:
Reason #1: There are far fewer movie producers and directors seeking scripts than there are literary agents seeking novels and memoirs
That’s because the number of movies made every year in the U.S. is around 500 while the number of books published each year by traditional publishing houses is 500,000 (some estimate as many as a million). So your odds of finding a book agent who will sell your manuscript to a traditional publishing house are thousands of times greater than your odds of finding a movie agent or film executive who will champion your screenplay.
You’ve seen voluminous lists of literary agents looking for books they might represent. There’s no such list for movie directors and producers. There are so few movies to be made and so many unqualified screenwriters trying to solicit directors and producers that these people actually try to hide their contact information.
But what about movie agents, you ask? Yes, there are long lists of movie agents. But no movie agent will represent an unproduced screenwriter unless the screenwriter already has a deal on the table (a sale ready to go) with a producer. It’s a catch-22: you need an agent to sell a screenplay, but you need to have sold a screenplay to get an agent. So the only way to get a screenplay considered, if you’re a rookie breaking in, is by getting it in front of a director or producer.
And that’s extremely difficult, but not impossible. So how does a person do that? That brings us to my next point:
Reason #2: Unless you’re a graduate of a four-year film school, the only way to get producers to look at your screenplay is by (a) cold-calling, (b) writing a popular novel (one with great reviews and thousands of sales), (c) winning prestigious literary awards, or (d) having personal connections with a film industry insider
More information about these strategies:
- Cold calling requires a strong constitution. First you must find ways to get the hidden contact information you need, and then you must have an “elevator pitch” so eloquent that you snag the film executive’s interest in less than thirty seconds–if the person answering the phone even allows you to speak with that person. Ninety percent of the time, you get hung up on.
- Film producers find books they wish to make into movies by paying attention to what books are popular in the marketplace and to books that have won literary awards. One of my author clients, who won first place in the annual Chanticleer Book Awards, was approached by a producer at the awards ceremony who asked to option his novel.
- “Who you know” pays off. If you publish your book with a traditional publisher, your literary agent or publisher will likely have connections with some people in the film industry. I found my own producer through a client who had gone to high school with a film-industry insider who happened to be looking for screenplays. Now, with a movie of my own in the works, I, too have become an insider, as I can connect my author clients with my manager and movie producer if I feel they have written a book that would make a great film. They do not have to rewrite the novel or memoir as a screenplay for me to do this.
Reason #3: Movie producers are as likely to option a book as a screenplay
Film producers buy rights to both books and screenplays and make little distinction between them. Why rewrite your story as a screenplay when it can get equal attention in book format? It’s usually a waste of money and resources. (There’s an exception to this, which I will explain near the end of this article.) Since you already have some skill in novel or memoir writing, it’s easier and usually less expensive to get help sprucing up your current manuscript than it is to acquire the intricate skills required for successful screenplay writing. The one kind of writing does not qualify a person to write in the other genre. They are two entirely different species.
Those are the four reasons why it’s generally a waste of resources and energy to rewrite your novel or memoir as a screenplay. But what about paying a screenwriter to do the writing for you? I’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s look at the reasons authors may be drawn to rewrite their book as a screenplay (or to have someone write the adaptation for them). I’ll respond to each reason with my advice for what to do in that situation.
Which one of these is you?
A) You sent queries to literary agents and received no response
If you’ve had no response from book agents to your queries, the problem may be with your query letter, not with the book itself. Unless your query letter comes across as completely polished and professional, agents won’t read it past the first sentence or two. Not only must it be free from obvious errors like typos and incorrect formatting; it also must conform to a very strict, industry protocol for what should (and should not) appear in a query letter. And it needs to be persuasive enough to make them want to read your sample chapters or to request a copy of the full manuscript.
If you are in this boat, it would cost you a lot less money getting help crafting an effective query letter than paying someone to rewrite your book as a screenplay, or than getting the extensive training you would need to effectively rewrite the book as a screenplay yourself. (See my How It Works page for information on my query letter help.)
B) Literary agents ignored you after requesting to see your book or sample chapters
If it’s your actual book or sample chapters and not your query letter that’s being ignored, it’s because there’s something wrong with your book or sample chapters. It isn’t true that you need to “know someone” to get a literary agent, or that books are passed over for obscure reasons. Unlike movie professionals, literary agents are always hungry for great story submissions, but they have to be written well enough to meet publication standards.
Writing a story effectively is much harder than writing any other kind of prose. Not only must you be able to put sentences together well—you also have to be a master in the craft of storytelling. Certain things must happen at certain spots in the narrative. Character arcing, pacing, dialog, plotting, and many other factors all come into play.
It generally costs a lot less money to get help fixing your story writing than it does getting someone to rewrite your novel or memoir as a screenplay, or getting the training you need to write an effective screenplay yourself. (See my How It Works page for how I can help either to bring your novel or memoir up to publication standards or to rewrite it for you as a screenplay, if you choose to go the latter route in spite of what you’ve read here.)
C) You believe you have a great story that’s worthy of a movie but know that your writing is abysmal
I’m attempting to inject a little humor here, but the fact is, some people who’ve tried writing a novel or memoir do come to the conclusion that it’s harder than they thought and that they don’t want to go to the trouble of developing their writing skills. They’re convinced they have a great story, though, and believe it would make a wonderful movie. In that rare case, I do recommend possibly hiring a professional screenwriter. Make sure it is someone with a proven movie-industry track record. The screenwriter should, at the least, have optioned scripts before.
The screenwriter also should know industry people they can get your story in front of once the screenplay is written, the ins and outs of marketing it, and they should believe in your story enough to do some of the marketing for you. That’s no guarantee your story will be made into a movie, though. Five-hundred movies a year, remember. So the odds are always against it. But if you want to take the gamble and are in for the ride, then and only then would I recommend hiring a professional screenwriter. (See the How It Works page for how I can help in this situation.)
D) You’ve self-published, but your book is being ignored in the marketplace
If this is you, and if your book is up to publication standards, the problem is with your marketing. If the book is not up to publication standards, the problem is with your writing. Either way, rewriting your novel or memoir as a screenplay is probably not the solution you’d like it to be, but if you’ve read to the end of this article you realize that already. Bone up on internet marketing or get the help of a qualified editor. TheCreativePenn.com is a good place to start learning about self-marketing, and I can help if the problem is your writing.
Good luck in any case! I’m rooting for you.
Jessi Rita Hoffman … book editing by an industry professional