Adaptation: Novel to Screenplay

Ready to dive into the exciting world of adaptation? This six-week course is all about taking stories from the page to the screen. Whether it’s a novel, short story, or play, you’ll learn how to turn rich literary material into compelling screenplays. We’ll explore the big differences between literary storytelling and cinematic storytelling and break it all down with tools like story maps and sequence maps to help you plan your adaptation. Plus, we’ll look at real examples of adapting everything from short stories to full-length novels (and even comics) into feature films.

You’ll also learn how to bring internal thoughts and voices from literature to life visually for the screen. With plenty of examples and exercises, you’ll practice keeping the heart of the story intact while making it engaging and visual for a film audience. We’ll also dig into the basics of screenwriting—from conflict to structure—and connect them to classic storytelling techniques like Aristotle’s principles. You’ll leave with practical templates and tools to kick-start your adaptation.

By the end of the course, you’ll be ready to take your favorite story, your own stories or novels and start adapting them into a screenplay.

Please note this is a 6-week class beginning on Sundays from February 16 – and ending March 23 from 2:00 – 4:00 PM EST.

C.C. Webster wrote the feature films Blue Ball, PA; Show & Tell; Little Buffalo, selected for the Writers Lab, a program sponsored by Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman; and her feature script Missing won the American Scandinavian Society’s Cultural Grant. She wrote and directed the short films “Tracks,”  and “Civil War,” which played at more than fifty film festivals worldwide. She was the founder and artistic director of the Drive-In Film Festival which ran from 2007-2017. She has taught at Sundance Collab, Sarah Lawrence College, and Gotham Writers Workshop. She holds an MFA in Directing and Screenwriting from Columbia University.