My favorite question to be asked is, “So who’s going to play Thornton in the movie?” and I like it for two reasons: (1) it assumes that my book will be made into a movie, and (2), because Josh Hartnett is a great guy and would probably be really receptive to being in a project that would eclipse Lucky Number Slevin in terms of sheer running time.

But recently due to the events of COVID-19, I have had an abundance of time on my hands because of the quarantine. While I’m busy with the launch of book two, I also have more downtime than I’m used to. That’s why I decided to start adapting Gift of the Shaper into a screenplay.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned.

Format is everything

I started out by using “Pages” (the free software that comes with a Mac) to type everything out, but I quickly learned that it was next to impossible to continue that way. For one, you need to format certain things certain ways — most notably dialogue.

See how it’s indented all the way under the character’s name? One thing that I’ve learned in all my googling is that scripts are extremely formatted — and that’s intentional. They used to be typed up on typewriters, and they actually retain some of that today in the specific font called “Courier.” And, due to that fact, anyone who is familiar with how scripts are written is going to take one look at a document built in “Pages” and throw it out, because they’re dealing with an amateur. So what’s the solution?

My best friend, Josh Galbincea, lives and works in Hollywood. I texted him and said, “Hey, I know you’re a big shot Hollywood super cool guy … do you have any recommendations for screenwriting software?” It turns out, he did.

software is crucial

His exact words were “Final Draft is industry standard.”

I do indeed like industry standard, so I went ahead and checked it out. It looks amazing — but at $199 for something that I wasn’t quite sure I would use forever, I balked.

He then followed that up with “Fade In is good, too. I use Fade In.”

guess what I bought

It was $75, so I made the easy choice and picked it up.

I’ve been at it for a day, and I’ve got 6 pages of the screenplay typed up — it’s not much, but it also translates to page 21 in the book, which is about 5% of the way through. I don’t have to tell you that movies and books compress differently.

So what have I learned so far from my adventures into screenwriting? A few things, and all of them are encouraging.

1. I have great friends who are amazingly supportive of me. I got about fifteen messages across my social media accounts with people saying “I told you this should have been a movie!” and generally wishing me success.
2. I have friends with screenwriting experience who offered me help. This was extremely useful because I had literally no idea what I was doing.
3. I need to watch more movies.

Ok so maybe #3 isn’t exactly true, but it does help to know what you’re getting into. Visual mediums and written ones are vastly different in how they convey information and so far this has been the biggest hurdle for me.

But, I am lucky enough to know a few people in Hollywood.

And if you haven’t already, make sure to check out Josh’s reel below. It’s amazing.

-D.L.