ADAPT - The Art of Screen Adaptation

This week, I delivered my first ever lecture: the opening webinar of New Writing North’s ADAPT series on screen adaptation. For the talk, I drew on twenty-five years of in-depth interviews with almost two dozen top screenwriters - including William Boyd and Christopher Hampton - my own experience of writing original and adapted screenplays over three decades, and the countless film and TV adaptations I’ve watched and admired during that time.

Addressing an invisible audience is slightly disconcerting (although maybe not seeing their reactions is a good thing!), but one attendee kindly got in touch to say she learned a lot from the session - and as Norman says in Ronald Harwood’s play The Dresser: ‘I don’t care if there are only three people out front, or if the audience laugh when they shouldn’t or don’t when they should. One person is certain to know and understand, and I act for him.’

Here, then, for anyone out there who might be interested, is the text of ADAPT - The Art of Screen Adaptation.