Reader Question: Should I try to adapt my own book?

A book represents intellectual property and Hollywood is obsessed with IP, so what’s the best thing an author can do?

Question via Twitter from @ElizabethDeath:

Hi-wrote 1st book-124k words-b good series/movie-maybe :) should I try adapt myself or just publish book & see what happens?

Kudos, Elizabeth, on finishing your first book. Getting right to your question, there are several variables at play here.

• “b good series/movie-maybe”. If it were me pondering my own book, I’d want to be in the It-DEFINITELY-Would-Be-A-Good-TV-Series-Movie. Even if it turned out not to be the case, I’d want to be working on something I thought was an absolute no-brainer. And that means analyzing why I thought it was a sure-fire hit: target audience, genre, concept, characters, current state of the entertainment marketplace, and so on.
• I’d advise you do some additional thinking about if your book lends itself more to a TV series or a movie. There is a substantial difference in how you would approach an original TV pilot or a feature length screenplay, so spend time with your story and assess it, one or the other, TV or movie.
• Have you ever written a screenplay? Have you ever written a TV pilot? If not, unless you have an innate understanding of screenwriting or TV writing, then you will need to spend time, probably years, learning either of those aspects of the writing craft. Screenwriting and TV writing is similar, but considerably different than writing a novel. If you have not spent time learning how to write a screenplay or TV script, it is unreasonable to assume you can just switch to adapting your book and expect professional results in the short-term.

Per this last point, if screenwriting or TV writing is not in your current writing repertoire, consider finding a writer who does. Maybe you can work with them as a co-writer or come to some arrangement whereby they adapt your book.

• As far as “just publish book” goes, I will infer you mean self-publish, and I’m thinking this is probably your best first step, if only to get some feedback from the public as to the marketability of the story you have written. Unless you have a fan base via a blog or active Twitter feed, your book may not attract a lot of eyeballs. Then again, perhaps the subject matter and central concept is such that it would garner a lot of attention. In either case, any feedback from readers ought to help you get a sense of the viability of your story. If the response is solid, then maybe it does make sense to adapt it.

Finally to this last point, adapting a book into a screenplay is one of screenwriting’s biggest challenges. Literally thousands of choices about what content to keep, what to cut, how to compress the narrative, combine characters, alter the plot, and so on. So before you commit to an adaptation, I would encourage you — again — to spend a lot of time with your story to determine how commercially marketable the story is. If you are convinced you have a hit on your hands, that’s one thing. If, on the other hand, you are unsure about it, maybe the soundest advice is to write another story. While finishing a first book is a wonderful achievement, it’s quite rare for writers to nail a story their inaugural time out.

Readers, what advice do YOU have for Elizabeth? In particular those of you who have self-published novels or nonfiction, what sort of expectations should Elizabeth have about her book circulating widely enough to get a thorough response as to the story’s quality and commercial viability? Please head to comments with your thoughts.

Good luck, Elizabeth!

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