Fiction Writer’s Toolshed · Practical Tools for Authors
I co-wrote a musical with Jacob Lowry, and we staged it. Now I’m trying to turn it into a novel. I keep running into questions the stage didn’t make us answer.
What happens to a song when nobody is there to sing it? What does a narrator do when they’re no longer talking directly to an audience? What belongs on the page when costumes, props, and performers used to supply it?
Mathew Tekulsky returns to help me think through that problem. He has written novels and screenplays, but neither of us has completed this exact kind of adaptation. We’re building a current best approach: something to try, learn from, and change.
My starting point is a stage musical, rather than a screenplay. Some questions overlap, and some belong to the form itself. We use Mathew’s fiction and screenplay examples to explore what prose might need.
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Fiction Writer’s Toolshed
How to Turn a Screenplay Into a Novel: A Working Approach (with Mathew Tekulsky) | ep 030
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What this episode covers
- What a novel may need to supply when performance and design are no longer doing that work.
- How selective description can leave room for the reader’s imagination.
- What interior thought can add to an existing dramatic scene.
- A scene-by-scene approach to beginning an adaptation, then rereading for threads worth developing.
What does the reader need that the audience could see?
A script gives a production team something to work from. Sets, costumes, props, and performances help turn it into an experience for the audience. In a novel, the words have to give the reader what they need to imagine the scene.
That difference is tangible in my musical. It’s a portal fantasy, with part of the story in the real world and part in a fantastical one. On stage, we could hand an object to the prop team and let the audience see it. In prose, I have to decide what the reader needs to know about it.
That doesn’t mean describing every surface or explaining everything the audience once saw. It means making choices about what helps this scene work for a reader.
Add description with a purpose
Mathew prefers selective description in his fiction. He talks about gingham curtains and a wooden table as details that can leave an impression of a room without listing everything in it.
He also describes a choice in The Chestnut Tree. When chestnuts are on the ground, he could explain their color, husks, and shapes. Instead, he decides to leave them as chestnuts and let the reader fill in the rest.
I connect that with something I took from Stephen King’s On Writing: enough detail can help me imagine a place, while too much can replace the version I was already building in my head.
That’s a preference we discuss, rather than a limit on how much description a novel is allowed to have. For this adaptation, I want to notice where a detail helps the reader and where I’m adding words without helping the scene.
Give the action an interior experience
Mathew uses a scene from his screenplay Duke to imagine what prose could add. Roger is a young character who was afraid to climb a fire tower. Later, Duke falls on a snowy cliff and needs help. Roger’s boots, which another character had mocked, become useful: Duke asks him to cut steps.
The action gives us something to watch. A narrator could also tell us what it feels like to watch Roger attempt the rescue: surprise at his bravery, fear that he’ll fall, and the tension of each step.
Mathew calls this taking a show and turning it into a tell. In this example, he’s imagining the interior monologue that prose could bring to a dramatic event. He isn’t presenting a completed novel version of the screenplay.
The useful question is whose experience I’m writing. The event may already be there in the script. What does it become when a reader experiences it through someone’s thoughts and feelings?
Try the adaptation one scene at a time
Mathew suggests taking each scene separately and trying to turn it into prose. I don’t have to expand the whole work at once. I can begin with the structure I already have, then return to add connections or other material where it’s needed.
That gives me a manageable starting point. I plan to reread my musical, write a scene in prose, and make notes about things I discover or remember along the way.
Rereading matters here, too. Mathew talks about returning to earlier material and noticing a character thread he might otherwise have forgotten. Roger’s earlier fear, for example, gives his later action something to build on.
I think about lines or ideas I left in the musical that could have a stronger payoff. Reading it again may help me see those possibilities before I move ahead.
Mathew also says he sometimes works by instinct rather than rereading everything. I take the suggestion as a tool to test, not a daily obligation.
A song asks another question
Some of the musical’s big moments are songs. They carry things I now need to find another way to express in prose.
My question is how to take the essence of one of those moments and make it work as a scene. The same applies to a narrator built to speak in front of an audience: I have to consider what that role becomes on the page.
We don’t settle those questions with a complete conversion method. They’re part of the work I’m bringing to this conversation, and part of what I’ll have to test as I write.
A novel and a film also ask different things of the writer
Later, Mathew talks about the difference between finishing a novel and getting a film made. A writer can bring a prose manuscript to completion through their own work. A film depends on a production team, resources, and other people’s decisions.
That collaboration can also bring useful creative input. Mathew describes expanding a screenplay role after an actor asked for more to work with. The request led him to research the character’s background and develop another scene.
We talk about the value of suggestions that come from the right place and make the story better. A script may keep changing through that collaboration. For my novel, I’m making choices about the experience the words themselves will give the reader.
Try one scene in prose
If you have a script, play, or musical you want to adapt, reread a scene and try writing it in prose. Notice what performance or design was supplying. What does the reader need now? Whose thoughts and feelings might help them experience the moment?
Add the description that helps, and note any thread you want to return to. You don’t have to solve the entire adaptation before you have something to revise.
That’s my next step, too. This is a current best approach, not a finished answer. Make one scene exist -- and see what the new form asks of it.
About Mathew Tekulsky
Mathew Tekulsky is a novelist, screenwriter, and nonfiction author. His fiction includes The Chestnut Tree and Saving Annie, and he has adapted his own fiction into screenplays.
Explore Mathew’s books and work (opens in new tab).
A book mentioned in the conversation
I refer to Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft while we discuss description and the reader’s imagination. Read about On Writing on Stephen King’s website (opens in new tab).
The adaptation conversation in the other direction
In our first conversation, Mathew explains how he adapts his own fiction for the screen. We discuss selecting scenes, cutting a character he cares about, creating dramatic action, and leaving room for performance.
Listen to and read How to Adapt a Novel into a Screenplay.
Fiction Writer’s Toolshed: Practical Tools for Authors is a Make Exist podcast hosted by Tim Kearney. It offers hands-on training for fiction writers to diagnose writing problems, build their skills, and finish more work.