Screenplay vs. Novel (by Kristin Levine)

I've never done a book trailer for my novels, however, my first book, The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had, actually started life as a screenplay.  Here's an excerpt:

There is something about telling a story in different formats that seems to capture children's imaginations.  When I do school visits, I often have students read this one page aloud, acting out the different parts.  It's always fun and silly and gets us thinking about how stories change when we tell them different ways.

Another question I often get is, are you going to turn your books into a movie?  My answer is always, Yes, I'd love to!  Do you know anyone in Hollywood?  And then we start talking about how when The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had  was a screenplay, I kept hearing the same criticisms over and over again.  It's a great story, but we don't want to do a movie with kids as the main characters.  Kid actors are too hard to work with.  Or You've got great characters, but it's a period piece.  Unless you're Steven Spielberg or Oprah, period pieces don't make money.

Looking back, the producers that told me these things were on to something.  I think The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had really was better suited to be a book than a movie, and it was when I finally changed that story into a novel that my writing career finally got started.  So I'm grateful to those criticisms for making me consider something I hadn't before.

But the truth is, I'd still love to see one of my books as a movie!  One of these days.  I've got my fingers crossed.