Adaptation

This is a fast-paced writing, survey and workshop course that will empower writers to define the formal ideals of screenwriting by investigating film adaptations of novels and short stories. The course will culminate in the writing of a short pitch document. This course is at once a survey of the twentieth century American Film, a survey of the Twentieth Century American novel, and a course for writers. We will distill the craft of screenwriting by looking through the prism of adaption in order to understand which elements of the novel translate into film, and why. We will consider novels with the mercenary detachment of a screenwriter, scouring for scraps with value for a screenplay. As we compare the original text with the finished film, we will distill the essence of the screenplay form. What is plot, action, dialog, metaphor? How do we converge these goals? We will decipher, with the clinical eye of a detective, what the screenwriter took from the novel and what they left behind. And in doing this, we will reach an understanding of the formal tenets of an American film.