SCREENWRITER TO NOVELIST
CHRISTINE CONRADT
W
hen I started writing , I wrote prose . My first recognition as an author came in elementary school when I won the Young Authors Award and I ’ ve been writing ever since . At thirteen , I fell in love with movies after seeing ‘ Stand By Me .’ I watched the film more than 30 times , until the VHS tape started making a strange whirring sound when you pressed play , and immediately bought Stephen King ’ s Four Seasons so I could read the short story it had been adapted from . I knew every line of that movie and was shocked to discover the short story was even better . It led me to buy every Stephen King novel I could get my hands on .
At seventeen , I applied to the University of Southern California ’ s Cinematic Arts program and was thrilled to be accepted to the undergraduate screenwriting program . The day I graduated from high school in May , I packed my bags for college and lived out of my suitcases until classes started in August . That ’ s how excited I was . I wanted to write for a living — movies , books , magazine articles , anything . I loved telling stories and turning that into a career was all I wanted to do .
For decades after graduating from USC , I focused on screenwriting and managed to carve out a pretty decent career . With more than 60 writing credits , my movies have aired on Lifetime , LMN ,
Showtime , Fox , USA , UPtv , and Hallmark . I was the primary writer behind some of Lifetime ’ s most successful franchises including my favorite , the ‘ at 17 ’ series of thrillers .
Because of their success , I pitched the idea to the films ’ producers of turning them into books for the YA market . They were encouraging of the endeavor and promised to contribute $ 2K toward the self-publishing costs if I couldn ’ t get a publisher interested . And so I set off to do something I ’ d never done before , turn an existing screenplay into a novel .
Now , I ’ d done the reverse . The Secret Sex Life of a Single Mom , which I wrote for Lifetime , was the adaptation of a memoir , and I ’ d enjoyed scouring the pages , finding the pivotal scenes from the book to include in the movie . I pared the book down from 296 pages to 110 in screenplay format , combining characters and streamlining conversations .
But this was much different . Much harder . After years of writing as efficiently as possible ,’ taking my screenplay ‘ Missing at 17 ’ and expanding it into a novel felt like an impossible task . In a screenplay , you can ’ t simply slip into the characters ’ heads and explore what they ’ re thinking . What they ’ re thinking is conveyed through actions and dialog alone . Show , don ’ t tell !
The process forced me to get back to my roots and rediscover what it was like
SUMMER 2018
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WRITERS ’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE