From All Quiet on the Western Front, the Academy Award-winning "Best Picture" of 1929-1930, to Dances with Wolves, the 1991 winner, many of Hollywood's most popular and enduring movies have been screen adaptations of written work, including novels, stories, and plays. In this practical, hands-on guide, veteran TV and screenwriter Ben Brady unlocks the secrets of the adaptation process, showing aspiring writers and writing teachers how to turn any kind of narrative material into workable, salable screenplays for film and television.

Step by step, Brady guides novice screenwriters to the completion of a professional screenplay. He begins with an incisive discussion of how to evaluate a written work's potential as a screenplay. Then he discusses each step of the writing process, showing how to identify the plot and premise of the play, develop character, treatment, and dialogue, and handle camera language and format. Brady illustrates each of these points by developing and writing a complete screenplay of the novel Claire Serrat within the text.

With these tools, beginning screenwriters can draw on the rich resources of words in print to create exciting screenplays for film and television. Written in vivid, entertaining prose, the book will be equally useful in the classroom or at the kitchen table, wherever enterprising writers ply their craft.

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1. Principles of Adaptation for Film and Television
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. The Transition
  • 3. Plot
  • 4. The Premise
  • 5. Character
  • 6. The Nature of a Treatment
  • 7. The Treatment
  • 8. Dialogue
  • 9. Camera Language and Screenplay Format
• Part 2. The Screenplay Claire Serrat
• Part 3. Questioning Your Adaptation
• Glossary of Film Terms
• Index