Your book is finished. People love it. Someone said the words out loud: “This should be a film.”
So you look it up, and the internet tells you to send your novel to Netflix.
Do not do that. Here is what actually happens, step by step.
First, the hard truth
A book and a film are not the same story told twice. They are different machines.
A novel can live inside somebody’s head. Three hundred pages of what a character thinks, remembers and fears. A camera cannot film a thought.
Everything inside your character’s head has to come out. Into action. Into a look. Into something somebody does.
That is the job. And it is why a straight transcription of your book always, always fails.
Step 1 — Prove you own it
This sounds boring. It is the step that kills most projects.
It is called chain of title. It means a clean paper trail proving you, and only you, control the film rights.
Check three things:
- Your publishing contract. Some publishers take a slice of film rights. Read the clause. If you cannot find it, ask them in writing.
- Co-writers and ghostwriters. Anyone who touched the manuscript may have a claim.
- Real people in the book. If your story names living people, you may need life rights. More on that below.
No producer will spend a cent until this is clean. Sort it first.
Step 2 — Find the spine
Your book probably has four or five storylines. A film has one, with maybe two supporting it.
So you choose. One character. One want. One thing standing in the way.
This is where authors suffer, because choosing means cutting. Subplots you love. Characters readers write to you about. Whole chapters.
Cut them anyway. A film that tries to keep everything keeps nothing.
Step 3 — Write the logline before anything else
One sentence. Who wants what, and what is in the way.
If you cannot write that sentence, the adaptation is not ready. Not because you are a bad writer, but because the spine is not clear yet.
Keep rewriting the sentence until it lands. It will save you four months.
Step 4 — Build the structure on paper
Before a single scene. A beat sheet or treatment that maps the whole film.
Opening hook. Set-up. The thing that changes everything. The midpoint that flips it. The low point. The ending.
Twenty pages of structure will save you a hundred pages of wasted script. Every time.
Step 5 — Now write the screenplay
Ninety to one hundred and twenty pages. Roughly a page a minute on screen.
Your three-hundred-page book becomes about a hundred pages, and most of those pages are white space. That is not a loss. That is the form.
Write what we see and what we hear. Nothing else.
Step 6 — Build the package, not just the script
A script on its own is hard to sell. A package gets read.
You want a logline, a one-page synopsis, a short pitch document, and comparable titles — two or three recent films that prove there is an audience and a budget range.
Producers do not buy stories. They buy evidence that a story will find an audience.
Step 7 — Go out carefully
You get one first read per producer. Spend them slowly.
Make a short list of people who actually make films like yours. Not everybody. Ten names who have made something in your genre, at your budget level, in the last five years.
A targeted ten beats a blind hundred.
About true stories and real people
If your book is about real, living people, you may need their written permission. This is called life rights.
It is not always legally required, but it protects you from a defamation claim, and almost every financier and insurer will ask for it before they commit.
Get it early. Getting it late costs money and sometimes kills the film.
Questions authors ask me
Should I write the screenplay myself?
You can. But know that it is a different craft, not a harder version of the one you have. Many brilliant novelists write poor first screenplays, because the instincts that make prose sing are the instincts a script must lose.
Do I send my book or a screenplay to producers?
A screenplay, with a package around it. A producer reading a novel has to imagine the film. A producer reading a script can see it. Make it easy for them.
How long should this take?
Structure, three to four weeks. Draft, eight to twelve. Notes and polish, three to four. So about four months, done properly.
What if my book is self-published and has not sold much?
It matters less than you think. Producers buy the story, not the sales figures. A strong, clear, filmable spine beats a bestseller with no shape.
Where to start
Most adaptations fail at step two. Not at the writing — at the choosing.
If you have a book and you do not yet know what the film version is, that is the thing to solve first. Everything else follows from it.
I do that in a Story Architecture Assessment — I read what you have and tell you what the film inside it actually is.
Or just book a free discovery session and talk it through with me first.