For the past three years, I have been working on converting my published novels into screenplays. I made the decision to pivot away from novels for the time being to screenplays in an attempt to reach a wider audience. Books are where my heart lies, but I also love movies, and there’s something about seeing ‘Based on the book by’ in the opening credits that I think goes a long way towards creating a new audience for a book.
The decision to go this route was motivated and inspired by all of you. There were so many readers who told me when they were reading Dig Down and Lock the Doors that it was so well paced and that they could see it as a movie that I decided to explore adapting the stories to this new medium.
During the pandemic, I was taking several classes through Udemy. I had been laid up on my couch for months years prior, and although that eventually led to me finally writing and submitting Dig Down to an editor to see if I really had the writing chops I always believed I had, I also how miserable I was feeling that I had wasted so much time, and not wanting to repeat that experience, I was always looking for things to keep myself active and engaged during a time of heavy isolation.
One of those classes was a course on how to write screenplays. There were several great resources provided, including where to find copies of existing screenplays, as well as screenwriting software that was recommended. This was how I found the program Fade In, which I’ve been using draft my scripts.
As I said, I’ve been working on these screenplays for the past three years. This is in large part to the bumps and hiccups along the way. I had first worked on the screenplay for Dig Down, typing it up on a new laptop I had bought, only for the entire computer to crash just a few months later. Sadly, I had not backed up the file outside of the laptop I had written it on.
While I was slightly deterred from starting from scratch, I shifted my focus to drafting and revising the script for Lock the Doors (and sending myself a file through my email) before eventually returning to Dig Down late last year.
I now have two drafts, and a good sense of where they stand in terms of marketability. But I didn’t always have the latter. Despite my confidence in writing novels, I consider myself a novice when it comes to screenwriting, and was looking to change that last year as quickly as possible.
My solution to that was screenplay competitions.
More on that, next time.