Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics

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Adapting Jim Day’s “Karelia”

 

 

 

In 2009, I was awarded the Ohio Arts Council Award of Individual Excellence in Screenwriting for a series of adapted screenplays. My production company, Blue Arm Productions, held a national creative writing competition a few years prior. The thirteen winners of the contest were published in Voices from the Heartland—An Anthology of American Teenage Stories. Blue Arm purchased the rights to these stories with the intention of using them as the Underlying Work for a thirteen-episode TV series.

I’m sharing three of the thirteen stories (and scripts) with you to demonstrate how the ideas in this book can be used in the creative decision-making process. As you are hopefully figuring ...