Book-to-Scream: Writing the Book and Adapting It for the Screen

News that (insert any book that’s not yours) is adapted for a television series is as welcome as hearing your ship has come in, but you’re at the airport. “Congratulations!” is the subtext for “Where’s my book-to-screen adaptation deal?” You want to go on that ride with your book? Buckle up.

(How to Adapt a Novel Into a Screenplay.)

I enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps when I was 18. Illegally, because being gay in the military was against the law. A time in our history when out was not in. After my enlistment in the Marine Corps ended, I moved to Hollywood with a story I knew was compelling, but I didn’t yet know how to tell. I wanted to write; I had no idea how. I studied the television medium with the drive instilled in me by the USMC.

After a few years, I found some success writing television. But that one story remained in my luggage, taunting me to unpack it. Was it a movie, a television series, or a book? I thought long and hard about that. Since I’d only written screenplays and had no idea how to write a book, I decided to write a book. Marines are predictable, we run toward danger while eating crayons.

One question—how does one write a book? I’d only written screenplays and was self-taught. The idea of writing a whole book made me think of a plate at Thanksgiving. How could I eat all that? However, if I take small bites, soon the plate is clean. I started a blog. Small bites. Short stories of my adventures in the kitchen, traveling with my Canadian boyfriend, and my time in the Marine Corps. I parlayed the blog content into a spot at Huffington Post and got attention from Food Network. I hosted some cooking shows. I was building my author’s platform while honing my long-form narrative muscles. A book outline formed. Grabbing little bits of time to write morphed into locking myself in my office for a year. When I typed “the end” I cried.

I didn’t know what to do with my manuscript, but I knew how to Google. Soon I was on a Skype session with Jane Friedman. Her advice was invaluable. She illuminated aspects of the publishing world, eventually guiding me toward my editor, Nicole Klungle. At first, the editing process was frustrating, the darlings killed were from my real life and therefore personal. But soon we hit a rhythm. My memoir was ready to sell.

The Pink Marine sold to a traditional publisher. Time with them resulted in my having a heart attack. On book tour. Not to blow the ending, but I survived. The first thing I did was to stop eating red meat and then cancel my book contract. In true, storm the hill Marine Corps fashion, I formed my own publishing company. I also asked for and received a lot of support. I leaned on my rep at Ingram whom I’d befriended over a love of food. A brilliant friend figured out the publishing formatting. My boyfriend created my imprint’s logo in a day and designed my book’s website and cover. Within days, I was back on tour with my book, now re-released under my own imprint. This is a plot point to which I’ll circle back.

During all that drama, a Hollywood producer optioned The Pink Marine for development into a dramedy. It’s hard to write a book, hard to sell a book, and even harder to have that book sold for the screen. The way I saw it was that if I can earn the title of Marine against all odds plus more odds and then extra odds—why not my book’s title earning a sale? I’d like to tell you that my book-to-screen adaptation was smooth sailing. I’d also like to tell you that I still wolf down In-N-Out, but no book-to-screen adaptation is easy, and none are identical.

What is common to all authors is our vital fight for agency in both the business and creative aspects of the adaptation. The studio will offer you the author’s standard 2.5% of modified gross receipts; ask for more. They’ll offer you a fee for each episode; ask for more. Honey, if they offer you a bagel with everything, ask for more. Once the business deal was locked down, the studio hired a showrunner, the person who adapts your book into what the studio wants. I had to trust him to not only honor my story but also create a captivating series. Trust him to honor the most precious parts of my story. FYI, darlings can get killed twice.

Check out Greg Cope White’s The Pink Marine here:

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Once we crafted a show, we pitched the streamers, resulting in a bidding war between Apple and Netflix. Netflix was victorious. We hired the writing staff. Since I’m a screenwriter, I write on the series. As far as what the adapting process looked like, my time in the writer’s room vacillated between longshots of me throwing myself over my book to protect its precious body, and closeups of me gleefully lighting the fuse on the bomb beneath it, blowing up a story point for the good of the show. Our scripts are written, our cast is stellar, and we are in production. I love both the book and its television adaptation. I invite you to watch the series when it is released and in the same breath will always urge viewers to read my memoir on which it’s based. There are details, humor, and dramatic points that might not fit into a one-hour episode. Plus, there’s one mixed metaphor that survived my editor’s sword.

Before you think this all happened overnight, please know that I was 32 when I landed my first TV writing job, 55 when I published my memoir, 57 when I sold my first movie, 58 when I sold the next two, 60 when I sold my memoir to a studio and then to Netflix as a series, 61 when I walked into that writer’s room. I’m 63, currently on set producing.

That circle back I promised: Remember when I lived long enough to publish my book under my own imprint? The Pink Marine is a self-published book. I split the profits with (insert no one’s name).

My book-to-screen trip has been wonderful and awful and gut-punching and mind-blowing and any frustration or disappointment about the process is extinguished by the bucket of gratitude I throw at every single moment.

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