Essays

I spent a year researching the way adaptation is talked about, specifically focusing on film adaptations of previously written stories. I suggest new terms and framework for writers to help guide them in their efforts to adapt prose into a screenplay.

A lot of the information out there on this vast plane we call the internet, are more focused on retrospectively judging whether or not a writer was successful in their adaptation, after the film has been released. My thesis focuses on the writing process from the beginning and so if this sounds useful to you, then please feel free to read it and share it around.

I wrote three academic screenplays to supplement the arguments made in the body of the essay. They demonstrate three different approaches to adaptation from the same source material.

IT IS WORTH NOTING: I wrote this essay and the three supporting academic screenplays BEFORE Murakami’s Drive My Car was announced to have been adapted. I will be writing a short essay in response to the film and the script when I see it, to compare what I’ve written and what was accomplished in the real world.

Below are the three screenplays which will help make sense of the essay.