From Page to Screen: Hollywood Options and Opportunities for Writers of Kidlit: David Bowles

Have you dreamed of your book on the big screen? David Bowles shares his experience and opportunities for writers of KidLit.

Ever wonder why book adaptations remove some of the scenes from the book? Movies and TV need scenes to keep moving forward. Therefore, not every scene makes it to the bring screen. 

If you desire your book, to become a movie, it must be a good book. Book sales can be indicative of making it to Hollywood. Producers act as investors for the film, so they are looking for a return on their investment. 

 

Authors and writers should learn the screenplay format. Final Draft is the most commonly used software throughout Hollywood. Practice the software to ensure, you can fulfill the requirements of Hollywood. You can also adapt your book into a screenplay.

 Are you sure the book would make a great movie? David offers some books should remain books.

 

They Call Her Fregona

David Bowles is the award-winning author and translator of more than two dozen books for children and teens, among them They Call Me Güero, My Two Border Towns, and The Sea-Ringed World. His work has been published in multiple anthologies, plus venues such as the New York Times, School Library Journal, Translation Review, and the Journal of Children’s Literature. In 2019, David co-founded the activist movement Dignidad Literaria to fight for the literary and cultural dignity of Latinx people in US publishing and education. He presently serves as the vice president of the Texas Institute of Letters.

Missed this workshop? Check out the video archives here. https://www.scbwi.org/event-summer-conference-2022/video-archive/

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Patti Ann Harris: Playing with Page Turns

Patti encourages both authors and illustrators to think of their picture books in terms of music and cinema, there should be flow and rhythm to the book, and you can play with easing the readers along with repetition and then surprising them with something wholly different.

Patti shares Me... Jane which has a very steady rhythm of illustration on one side of a page spread and text on the other, so when we get to a climactic moment in the book, we also see something different on the page—an actual photograph of Jane Goodall out in the wild.

When Patti works on a book, she understands the author/illustrator is focused on the tiny details of every page, but she tries very hard to see things globally and offer guidance there. She encourages the audience to take a step back and get allll of your pages on one page so you can see how everything is working together. She likes CALDECOTT MEDAL WINNER Dan Santat's practice of storyboarding out something successfully cinematic like a Hitchcock movie to understand storyboarding better.

Jay Asher & Stephen Chbosky: Mystery and Grit: Writing Realistic Page Turners

Jay Asher's debut teen novel, THIRTEEN REASONS WHY, spent over two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list (and began as a SCBWI Work-In-Progress Grant Winner!). His second book, THE FUTURE OF US, was coauthored with Carolyn Mackler.

Stephen Chbosky wrote and directed the feature film adaptation of his novel, THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER.

The mutual respect and admiration each has for the other already makes this session a great one.

When Jay thought up the idea for THIRTEEN REASONS WHY, he was afraid. It was not the type of book he thought he would want to read. That's when he decided to focus on making it a page turner.

Stephen has learned more about the page turn by watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer because it's all about what happened or what happens next.

Jay notes that his books are more plot driven suspense and Stephen's more character driven suspense.

Jay was thinking about the reader the whole time he wrote THIRTEEN REASONS WHY, thinking about what he wanted to say and what he wanted the reader to be thinking about. He wanted the reader to always be guessing what's going to happen next. If they're right, they'll be happy that they were, or if they weren't, hopefully they will be surprised by what happened in a good way.

Jay needs an ending in mind to shoot for, not that it means the ending might not change. He still needs to leave some room for the story to surprise even him as he writes it. He loves those moments. Let your characters sometimes surprise you.

Stephen echoes the same thoughts: If I know everything in the beginning then there's no room to make it better.

Jay wanted THIRTEEN REASONS WHY to read clean so that it would read quickly, building suspense and not allowing the reader to come out of the story.

Stephen on confusion: It's confusion if the reader is lost and doesn't know what's going on but
it's great suspense if the reader is guessing what the confusion is.

Jay Asher: Your book has one main thing that has to be solved that the reader knows will be solved at the end, so along the way the reader is going to need some micro-mysteries along the way to keep them reading forward to the end.