World Famous Comics: How to Adapt Anything into a Screenplay
How to Adapt Anything into a Screenplay
By: Richard Krevolin Publisher: Wiley Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Wiley Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 218 Publication Date: March 13, 2003
Product Description: From concept to finished draft-a nuts-and-bolts approach to adaptations
Aspiring and established screenwriters everywhere, take note! This down-to-earth guide is the first to clearly articulate the craft of adaptation. Drawing on his own experience and on fourteen years of teaching, screenwriter Richard Krevolin presents his proven five-step process for adapting anything-from novels and short stories to newspaper articles and poems-into a screenplay. Used by thousands of novelists, playwrights, poets, and journalists around the country, this can't-miss process features practical advice on how to break down a story into its essential components, as well as utilizes case studies of successful adaptations. Krevolin also provides an insider's view of working and surviving within the Hollywood system-covering the legal issues, interviewing studio insiders on what they are looking for, and offering tips from established screenwriters who specialize in adaptations. * Outlines a series of stages that help you structure your story to fit the needs of a 120-page screenplay * Explains how to adapt anything for Hollywood, from a single sentence story idea all the way to a thousand-page novel * Advises on the tricky subject of just how faithful your adaptation should be * Features helpful hints from Hollywood bigwigs-award-winning television writer Larry Brody; screenwriter and script reader Henry Jones; screenwriter and author Robin Russin; screenwriter and author Simon Rose; and more
No TV shows A book claiming to tell you how to adapt "anything" into a screenplay should have a bit more than books, short stories and plays. I mean, books and short stories are basically the same kind of thing! While it does have an example of comic book adaptation (X-Men), it doesn't have anything about adapting a serial or TV-show. Since this is a fairly common form of adaptation (e.g. The Flintstones, SWAT, Firefly) I am somewhat disappointed. Some of the legal advice was useful but also incomplete.
No Credits on IMDB? As a new screenwriter trying to soak up all the information I can about writing, I bought this book and was disappointed. I started to raise my eyebrow a bit in the beginning of it and so I went the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) to see what screenplays the author had written so that I could assure myself that this guy actually knew what he was talking about, but he had no writing credits at all! Not even "Glitter" or "Gigli" - even as bad as those are, at least that would mean that he has actually written a script that got picked up which would then give him the right to teach me a few lessons. I re-read the back of the book and it says that he is a professor of screenwriting. It was at that point that I put this book down for good and reminded myself of a famous quote, "Those who can't do, teach."
Useless This is a just a bad book. Plain and simple. Just bad. I sold it to a used book store a week after a bought it.
Excellent working writer's guide Richard Krevolin has concisely put into print a set of principles that deserves a place on your bookshelf next to Hauge and McKee, and, if followed will guide you to tell your story in the most effective and screenworthy manner. This book will fuel your passion as well as provide the guiding principles you can use to adapt pre-existing works or your own original stories. Richard Bagdazian President, San Diego Screenwriters' Association
not helpful i really didn't find this very helpful. i think it's sort of a neat idea to try and have a book about adapting "anything" but in the end it didn't help me. i'm adapting a book to the screen, one of the most common adaptations, and this book provided very little insight. it just restated what i already know. as most so-called "how-to" screenwriting books do, this follows in the tradition of giving new names to common sense terms that you already know as a writer.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
