Adapting novels

Eric Roth, who has reworked everything from novels (Forrest Gump) to nonfiction (Munich) to magazine articles (The Insider) outlines what he feels to be the basic process. “I do what most screenwriters probably do,” he says. “I start breaking down the book to the scenes that I think are dramatic, that I think are characterized in an interesting way and then try to utilize them in some coherent form that represents what you can do in a movie and not in a book.

Denis Faye, for the Writers Guild of America, west, talks to screenwriters about their approach to adapting novels.