Novels and films

[ImperialBlether]

Does everyone writing a novel believe their novel would be a good film? Do you think it's because we've spent so long with our novel we can see it, scene by scene?

Every writer I know thinks everything they've written is filmable, yet clearly other people don't always think that. I've read work by a few friends that I think would work well as a film, but I've read others (usually ones that I think don't work as books either) that I think wouldn't, yet all of them think their work could/should be filmed.

What about you? Do you think your novel would make a good film?

[wordfactory]

Some of my work is currently being turned into a TV series.

Looking at the scripts, it's clear that a lot of work has gone into making words filmable.

[ImperialBlether]

Oh god, wordfactory, it's driving me mad not knowing who you are! I appreciate your privacy and all that but I'm going crazy here! I know I will have read something by you.

Yes, I can imagine there is a lot of work involved in writing a script from a book. I think it's just that when I'm in the middle of it I can see it acted out in front of me and assumed everyone did that, too.

You gave me some excellent advice by PM and I wanted to thank you for it. It was a huge help (I was really struggling with the middle of the book) and now the whole lot is finished. The agent who dealt with my last book (couldn't sell it) hasn't replied to my first three chapters, though she asked me to send them. Getting a bit fed up now and think I'll send it to others.

How did you sell your first book? Was it the first you'd written?

[TunipTheVegedude]

I can't see my current project as a film and that worries me a bit. I am hoping it's just because I am so very aware of the flaws (I've only just finished the draft so it needs a LOT of work).
There's a question ImperialBlether - at what point did your belief in the filmability emerge? Right from the beginning or only once it started to look ok as a book?

[ImperialBlether]

I don't mean "it's good enough to film" - please don't think I'm saying that. It's just that if you're writing scene by scene then you can "see" how it looks, sounds, smells etc, so it's easy to see it as if it were a film. OK it might be a crap one, but still!

I think the opening scene was a bit like a film - I knew how I wanted it to look.

I was just wondering whether others do or not, not bigging up my own novel. Sorry if it came across that way.

Wordfactory, with the series that's coming from your books, did you see it as a possibility? Did you make a conscious decision to write something that would be good on tv?

[wordfactory]

When I wrote my first book I didn't have any aspiration that it would be published let alone turned into telly. It was my agent who immediately suggested a series of books and my publisher asked for three right off the bat.

If I had known it was going to be a series I would have been much more careful about the first one! I locked myself into too many cul-de-sacs that I'm now stuck with!!!!

With reagrds to filmability, I must say that I don't see my books as films. I can see each scene, but the narrative structure is always a bit too complex. The tely writers have carved that away .

I once tried to adapt one of my books for radio and boy was it hard!

[GrendelsMum]

Yes, I thought I guessed who Wordfactory was and then either she is very cunning on her posts on here or she is someone quite different.

Anyway, back to the point of the thread. Yes, I can see my current novel really clearly as a film - I can see each scene, and sometimes I think 'oh, that would look brilliant'

[TunipTheVegedude]

Coming back to this thread....

Now I'm doing my second draft, my novel is suddenly starting to feel filmier, and the reason is quite clear - in my first draft I was working out what characters were thinking and why, and there was a lot of internal monologue. All this is being cut and replaced with more showing-not-telling. It's as if there's a camera moving around, focusing on people's fidgeting hands, the movement of leaves in the wind, etc, rather than being told 'He was restless' 'It was a windy day'. So I was kind of right to worry about it not feeling this way at first, but kind of not as from what I hear this is a normal progression from first to second draft for some writers.

One of the creative writing books I read over Xmas argued that novels have changed in the last 100 years because thanks to the dominance of visual media, readers expect a more visual experience; they don't expect things to be spelled out for them, and they expect the pace and style to be more like those of tv and film than those of nineteenth century fiction.
Of course that doesn't equate to them being actually filmable as they are, but the idea that there is interaction between media types is interesting.