screenwriting workshop: adaptation voice to voice …...gwn screenwriting workshop, 2014 6!!...

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247 West 37 Street, Suite 1800, New York, NY 10018212 336 9330 • www.girlswritenow.org

SCREENWRITING WORKSHOP: ADAPTATION Voice to Voice

December 13, 2014

Co-Leaders: Kate Petty

Chana Porter J M Stifle

Craft Talk Author: Laura Maria Censabella

2:00 – 2:15 PM Sign-in & Welcome

2:15 – 2:30 PM Opening Lines: The Source

2:30 – 3:15 PM Craft Talk: Laura Maria Censabella

3:15 – 3:40 PM Share & Discovery: Through Another Lens

3:40 – 3:45 PM Community Announcements, Part I

3:45 – 4:00 PM Break

4:00 – 4:10 PM Community Announcements, Part II

4:10 – 4:45 PM Freewrite: Set the Scene

4:45 – 5:05 PM Group Reimagining: Table Read

5:05 – 5:30 PM Closing Lines: That’s a Wrap!

GWN Screenwriting Workshop, 2014

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OPENING LINES: The Source

Today, you’ll adapt something you’ve written in a different genre into a screenplay. One of the most important parts of screenwriting is thinking visually about the story you’re telling. Choose a piece you’ve been working on and think about the key scenes in it. Imagine that each of the boxes on the beat sheet below is a scene. Write a short description of each scene on the lines next to the box. If you finish early, you can create a storyboard by drawing the scenes in the boxes.

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CRAFT TALK: Laura Maria Censabella Laura Maria Censabella is one of three finalists for this year’s ADAA’s William Saroyan Human Rights/Social Justice Prize for her play Carla Cooks The War. Her most recent play Paradise is an Alfred P. Sloan/Ensemble Studio Theatre Commission and was read in EST’s First Light Festival this fall. She has been a three-time participant in the O’Neill Theater’s Playwrights Conference for her plays Carla Cooks The War (a/k/a Three Italian Women), Abandoned in Queens, and Jazz Wives Jazz Lives. Her other plays and musicals have been developed or produced at the Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays, the Women’s Project and Productions, The New Harmony Project, The Working Theatre, Urban Stages, the Athena Project, m2productions, Interact Theatre in Los Angeles, the Belmont Italian American Playhouse, the Pacific Resident Theatre, and the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College, among others. She has won three grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts for her plays Carla Cooks The War and Abandoned in Queens; as well as her screenplay Truly Mary, which won the Geri Ashur Prize in Screenwriting. She is also the winner of two daytime television Emmy Awards. Her independent short film Last Call, available on Netflix, was an official selection in festivals throughout the world (and won Best Short Drama Prize at Breckenridge), and her plays have been published in The Best Short Plays of 2012-2013 (Applause Books), Connotation Press, IndependentPlaywrights.com, Poems and Plays and The St. Petersburg Review. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild of America, East, and the League of Professional Theatre Women, and she directs the Ensemble Studio Theatre Playwrights Unit. She graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Philosophy and is part-time Assistant Professor in Playwriting at the New School for Drama. Write a question for the author here:


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SHARE & DISCOVERY: Through Another Lens Before we start adapting our own pieces, let’s practice with the classic story “Cinderella.” First, have a discussion in your groups about what the fairy tale is about. What is the central conflict and who are the characters in the story? What is the theme? Then, using your wildcard scenario, write an adaptation of a scene in “Cinderella.” You can choose one of the scenes from the below beat sheet to adapt.

Her stepmother and stepsisters leave for the

ball while Cinderella stays at home.

Cinderella’s godmother appears and changes her rags into a gown and a pumpkin into her carriage.

Cinderella is at the ball and meets the prince.

The clock strikes midnight and Cinderella has to leave the ball suddenly. She drops her shoe. !

The prince searches for the owner of the shoe. He finds Cinderella and they live happily ever after.


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Formatting Example: INT./EXT. LOCATION – TIME OF DAY Action…

CHARACTER 1 (parenthetical)

Dialogue… Action…


Dialogue…

Write your adapted scene below:


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FREEWRITE: Set the Scene It’s time to start adapting your scene into a screenplay. Choose one of the scenes from your Opening Lines beat sheet or from your Cinderella adaptation that you want to expand. Write it as a screenplay. Don’t worry about getting the formatting perfect for now. Formatting Example: INT./EXT. LOCATION – TIME OF DAY Action…


Dialogue… Action…


Dialogue…

Write your scene below:


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GROUP REIMAGINING: Table Read In your small groups, share all or part of your Freewrite. If there’s additional time, use the questions below to discuss your writing process. Discussion Questions:

1. If you were adapting something you had written in another genre, how did it feel to write the piece as a screenplay? Did you learn anything new about your characters?

2. Did writing in this genre make you want to change the plot at all? 3. Did you have any challenges when writing your scene? How did you overcome those

challenges? 4. What does the rest of your screenplay look like? What do you think will happen next?


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CLOSING LINES: That’s a Wrap! It’s time for your first reading! Choose a group member’s scene to perform. Some pieces might take longer, so choose one that you can reasonably work with in the time you have left. Cast the parts and prepare it for performance! Remember to choose a narrator to read the screen directions. Practice your performance and then share out with another group in the workshop.


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APPENDIX: Exercises and Resources Exercises for Pair Sessions

1. You and your mentor both bring an original story to your pair session. Adapt each other's stories and see what the result is. Did your mentor adapt it differently then you would have? What details did she focus on?

2. Bring your favorite novel to your pair session. Turn to a random page and discuss with your mentor how you would adapt that scene of the book. What dialogue is present? Does the setting of this scene in the book present location challenges? Which parts of the scene would you keep in the adaptation and which would you get rid of?

3. In screenplay format, write a dramatic scene between two people, using no dialogue.

Online Resources Blake Snyder’s very helpful beat sheet breakdown and plot structure template http://timstout.wordpress.com/story-structure/blake-snyders-beat-sheet/ A database of films directed by women https://mubi.com/lists/films-directed-by-women The difference between Film and TV Screenwriting from John August http://johnaugust.com/2003/film-vs-tv-writers Screenwriting Prompts http://tjbcw.wordpress.com/screenwriting/this-week-in-screenwriting/ Screenwriting Tips http://www.creative-writing-now.com/write-a-movie-script.html !!Recommended Viewing: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), adapted by Wes Anderson The film is about a fox who steals food each night from three mean and wealthy farmers. They are fed up with Mr. Fox's theft and try to kill him, so they dig their way into the foxes' home, but the animals are able to outwit the farmers and live underground. Novel by Roald Dahl. Wuthering Heights (2001), adapted by Andrea Arnold and Olivia Hetreed A poor boy of unknown origins is rescued from poverty and taken in by the Earnshaw family where he develops an intense relationship with his young foster sister, Cathy. Novel by Emily Bronte. The Hunger Games (2012), adapted by Suzanne Collins


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The Hunger Games universe is a dystopia set in "Panem," a country consisting of the wealthy Capitol and twelve districts in varying states of poverty. Every year, children are chosen to participate in a compulsory annual televised death match called The Hunger Games. Novel by Suzanne Collins. If I Stay (2014), adapted by Shauna Cross After a car accident kills her family and leaves Mia in a coma, she must decide to wake up or to let go. Novel by Gayle Forman. Whip It (2009), adapted by Shauna Cross In Bodeen, Texas, an indie-rock loving misfit finds a way of dealing with her small-town misery after she discovers a roller derby league in nearby Austin. Novel by Shauna Cross. Julie & Julia (2009), adapted by Nora Ephron The film contrasts the life of chef Julia Child in the early years of her culinary career with the life of young New Yorker Julie Powell, who aspires to cook all 524 recipes in Child's cookbook in 365 days, a challenge she described on her popular blog that made her a published author. Memoir by Julie Powell. Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), adapted by Helen Fielding A British woman is determined to improve herself while she looks for love in a year in which she keeps a personal diary. Novel by Helen Fielding. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), adapted by Horton Foote Scout Finch watches her father Atticus Finch, an attorney who hopelessly strives to prove the innocence of a black man unjustly accused of rape. Novel by Harper Lee. The Fault in our Stars (2014), adapted by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber The story is narrated by a sixteen-year-old cancer patient named Hazel Grace Lancaster, who is forced by her parents to attend a support group where she subsequently meets and falls in love with seventeen-year-old Augustus Waters, an ex-basketball player and amputee. Novel by John Green. Persepolis (2007), adapted by Marjane Satrapi Satrapi depicts her childhood up to her early adult years in Iran during and after the Iranian revolution. Autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. The Namesake (2006), adapted by Sooni Taraporevala The story begins as Ashoke and Ashima leave Calcutta, India and settle in Central Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Through a series of errors, their son's nickname, Gogol, becomes his official birth name, an event that will shape many aspects of his life in years to come. Novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. Sense and Sensibility (1995), adapted by Emma Thompson Though they are members of a wealthy English family of landed gentry, the Dashwood sisters experience sudden destitution, forcing them to seek financial security through marriage. Novel by Jane Austen.


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APPENDIX: Screenwriting Terms Beat: Many scripts will use the parenthetical (beat) to interrupt a line of dialogue. A "beat" suggests the actor should pause a moment, in silence, before continuing the scene. "Beats" are often interchangeable with ellipses "...". Beat Sheet: A beat sheet is an outline used to briefly detail each scene of a screenplay. CLOSE ON: A shot description that suggests a close-up on some object, action, or person. CONTINUOUS: Sometimes, instead of DAY or NIGHT at the end of a SLUG LINE/Location Description, you'll see CONTINUOUS. Basically, continuous refers to action that moves from one location to another without any interruptions in time. For example, in an action movie, the hero may run from the airport terminal into a parking garage. The sequence may include cuts, but the audience would perceive the action as a continuous sequence of events. Crossfade: This is like a "Fade to black then Fade to next scene." In other words, as one scene fades out, a moment of black interrupts before the next scene fades in. CUT TO: A transition involving a change of scene over the course of one frame. DISSOLVE TO: A transition where one scene fades out and the next scene fades into place. This type of transition is generally used to convey some passage of time. ESTABLISHING SHOT: A shot, usually from a distance, that suggests location. For example, if our story takes place in New York, we might use a shot of the Manhattan skyline as an establishing shot. EXT.: Used to denote a scene that takes place outdoors. INT.: Used to denote a scene that takes place indoors. O.S.: Stands for Off-Screen. To indicate that a character is saying a line without appearing on the screen, put it in parentheses next to the character’s name (above their dialogue). Screen Direction: This is where you write the action of your screenplay. There should be no prose, acting direction, or character’s internal thoughts written in your screen direction. Synopsis: A two to three page double-spaced description of a screenplay. Treatment: A scene-by-scene description of a screenplay, minus all or most of the dialogue. V.O.: Stands for voice over, denoting that an unseen speaker is narrating the action onscreen. To indicate this in a script, put it in parentheses next to the character’s name (above their dialogue).

screenwriting workshop: adaptation voice to voice …...gwn screenwriting workshop, 2014 6!!...

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