Novelizations: How to Adapt a Screenplay Into a Novel
What you'll learn
- Learn how to adapt your screenplays into novels
- Understand the differences between screenplay writing vs. writing novel prose
- Understand why a screenwriter may want to get into this business to bring awareness to their stories, while they wait for their scripts to be produced
- Learn what special tools novelists have that screenwriters never use, and how you can take advantage of those when writing the novelization
- Learn how a novelist / screenwriter partnership may be a good option vs. writing the novelization yourself
Requirements
- For screenwriters, it would help if they have already written a screenplay to make best use of this class
Description
Are you a screenwriter who has wondered what it would be like to write your script as a novel? Are you tired of not seeing your work produced? Releasing your story as a novel is a great way to get it out there and see if you can find an audience. This could help Hollywood take notice. Novelizing your script is also a way to share your story with the world and not wait anymore. Especially in the age when self-publishing is available to all of us. I got tired of waiting for "Hollywood" to decide my stories were worth telling and started getting into the novelizations process after my film, The Ultimate Gift, was produced. I've done six of these now. One novelization on my own, and five with my writing partner, Rene Gutteridge, who has been a published novelist over thirty times. She's also a produced screenwriter. This class will walk you through what has to change from screenwriting to novel writing. Rene Gutteridge joins me for quite a few of the video lectures so you have an expert in screenwriting and an expert in novel writing teaching this class. Each section has PDF downloads. Together these include all segments of our published book Novelizations: How to Adapt Scripts Into Novels. You'll see real live samples from many of our published works so you can get a complete understanding for how a screenplay translates into the very different writing form of a novel.
PLEASE NOTE: Udemy estimates this class has 4.5 hours of lecture content. This includes both video lectures and written PDF documents. The run time on video content is approx. 100 minutes.
Who this course is for:
- This course is made for screenwriters who would like to see their stories published in novel form, either out of an interest for writing books or to bring awareness to their stories. It may help a screenplay get produced if an audience can be built.
- Novelists may enjoy this class to learn the intricacies of what it takes to adapt a screenplay into a novel and consider adding this to the services they offer as novelists.
Featured review
Instructor
- 4.3 Instructor Rating
- 32 Reviews
- 120 Students
- 1 Course
Cheryl McKay is originally from Boston, Massachusetts, but spent a lot of her young life in North Carolina. For the past fifteen years she’s lived in Los Angeles working as a screenwriter, novelist, and a writing teacher and mentor. However, she and her husband recently moved from Big Hollywood, CA to Atlanta, Georgia, also known as Little Hollywood.
Cheryl began writing stories and plays at five years old based on pictures on her lunchboxes. She’s been writing since. Her most notable film to date is The Ultimate Gift (starring James Garner, Abigail Breslin). She co-wrote Extraordinary, The David Horton Story, to be produced in 2016. Cheryl’s favorite genres are faith-based films, family dramas and romantic comedies. One of Cheryl’s favorite writing alliances is with Rene Gutteridge. The two partner on novelizations of Cheryl’s screenplays. (Never the Bride for Random House, Greetings from the Flipside for B&H, Love’s a Stage and O Little Town of Bethany for Redbud Press / Serenade Books.) Cheryl is an avid scrapbooker, day-tripper, and a chocolate addict.
She teaches for Regent University's Master's Screenwriting Program, and has also taught at Azusa Pacific University, Act One: Writing for Hollywood, and has been a guest speaker at many screenwriting and film conferences.