Hi Stephenterry,
A good one to check out is the
Dexter series of books - especially the
first,
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay. The reason
I suggest this is because, if you compare it to the first TV
series, not only the plot, the characters and the action - but also
the dialogue, hardy varies from the first half of the novel. Which
means it was very well written for screen adaptation.
As scripts rely almost entirely on action and dialogue - stick to
those. As JtF says - show, don't tell. You might want to ask this
question on the
Celtx forum which is a community specifically
dedicated to amateur and pro film writing.
It depends, of course, how long you're going for. The
Pride and
Prejudice adaptation for a 300 minute TV series (1995) was
vastly different to the 127 minute feature film adaptation (2005).
Especially in how many siblings Mr. Bingley had. The first thing to
go when adapting to film is often extended family. You're looking
for one, solid plot line. Everything after that can be trimmed like
bacon fat.
But, at the same time, the most important thing is to write a story
that excites the script writer. Don't make it so lean that they
have nothing to work with. It's your job to write the lit. and
theirs to write the script. So focus on giving them whatever you
wrote in your concept - because that's what they were interested
in.
