After some time had passed after my second script consultation for my screenplay of Dig Down, I felt I had two options in front of me for what to do next. Despite all the critiques in this Zoom call, I felt the clear lion’s share of them were constructive and would enhance my screenplay, but that in doing so, I’d have to make more than just some superficial changes to the story.
I understood that this was a different medium, and as such, changes would need to be made if it was going to thrive in this adaptation. But a lot of changes that were suggested were going to have huge impacts on the story, changing key components that readers had said had really resonated with them. The major one that comes to mind was the suggestion of showing off Rob’s genius or his master plan of getting out of his predicaments. A note like that tells me the character wasn’t understood. And it was unlikely revisions would help that along, as there was also the note to shorted it by about 20 pages to 90 total.
But another option came to mind.
And it was actually in line with what the first judge from the Page Turner screenplay competition had said.
The similar advice both had said was to have people come to me with the offer to make the story a movie, rather than me pitching it to them.
Now, the way they posed it was different. The Page Turner judge was talking about it in the context of my books when I had said I was looking at getting a screenplay turned into a movie to drive sales for the book. I was essentially saying my driving goal for the script was to promote the book. He said that if I could get the book sales, I would have people coming to me make the move. He was essentially saying the book sales could promote the move.
The Santa Barbara judge was demonstrating ways in which the script could be pared down. They gave some good examples where the objective of the scene had been reached, but that it kept going, because that was how the scene/chapter had gone in the book. While they were insistent that this was the way to craft the screenplay – and at the time, and even more so with time to think on it, I can see they were right – they also said I could write it my way if the studio was coming to me for a script, or an actor, essentially anybody with some pull, because then it was my story that was in demand instead of being pitched.
This felt like the option for me. I could understand the need to make changes to the script I had worked on for Dig Down. The advice given in the second script consultation with the judge from Santa Barbara was excellent, and not in any of the books on screenwriting I had read, but making all of those changes I felt would lead to a story so vastly different from my vision for it. And if I’m being honest, too different.
Somebody could make an adaptation of Dig Down under these parameters, but I wouldn’t be the best one to make them. If I was going to be involved in the screenplay adaptation of Dig Down, it would need revisions like the Santa Barbara judge had suggested, but not to the scale he was recommending. It would need to be a scenario where the sales for the book were at a point where people were coming to me with the goal of adapting the story to the screen, and that would allow me to keep the story as closely aligned with my vision for it as possible.
I’ll explain where that left me, next time.