Introduce Yourself : Charles Rule by Charles Rule

Hi Charles, I've managed to do it once with some success. And I only say that based on placing well in a handful of screenplay competitions. I've adapted a novel by Jack London, Martin Eden. It is harder than you think, adapting a 500 page book into a 120 page screenplay. The good thing is that the source material provides the story structure. It was a lot of work, but at the same time a lot of fun.

Jim, Thanks for the encouragement! Hope this is not an odd question; How did you establish the percentage of income between original author and your screenplay? Thanks.

No Problem. The author, Jack London - same writer who penned Call of the Wild, White Fang and The Sea Wolf died in 1916. His work is in public domain. This means the copyrights expired and was not renewed. From my understanding, any written material in public domain can be adapted freely, without securing the rights. I originally set out to write a script based on Jack London's life. I contacted the London estate and surviving nephew, Milo Sheperd, who has since died. I was told, no. Martin Eden is a semi-autobiographical account of London's own life and times. It is a great story about a struggling writer, so I decided to adapt it.

Again, Thanks for the input.

Most important to have options in place if you're going to adapt someone else's work. You can't just adapt, you need permission first BEFORE writing a single word. I have adapted books to the screen and paid the options for years while it's being developed. Usually the basic split is 2% of Production Budget for author and 3% for screenwriter although other stuff can be negotiated. As I've said before, your national Performance Writer's Association can tell you all this.

I started with writing stories, then took a diploma course in screenwriting. I have transformed a screenplay into a book, and a book into a screenplay, as an exercise and to try my luck in different places. (Austria is a hard place for creative people) You should think transforming one to the other is easy, as a good book creates pictures in your head, and movies are all about pictures, but I think actually it's a lot of work. You have the basic structure, the plot, the characters. A story that works. But films and books use a different language, and you can only make it work if you speak that language, no if you speak both languages, and good writing in any medium means to use that medium to its best extent. There is no way to mix, or go half way. In films you have a "don't tell me, show me" policy. Books can use long passages of telling, about the authors or characters feelings, about the beauty or the hideousness of a place, or a mind. Films need to show us something that can create that effect. Pictures in films need to not only tell action, they are used as symbols of feelings, of character, of foreboding. Pictures in films can make dialog more interesting by creating a subtext, working against what is heard to tell a deeper, maybe even opposing story. Books can cover years, while films are more restricted in their timelines (even more so plays!), films allow you to tell (sometimes different) stories on several perceptional channels at once, books have to use only the language/reading channel to emulate multidimensional content which requires a true master of writing. As a director you are in a very good position to translate a book into film-language as you are certainly fluent in it, and probably perceive things from a very visual angle out of experience. I think it is very interesting task too. with greetings, Andrea

Nice work.