What Makes a Book a Good Movie
For years I worked for Warner Bros., where one of my jobs was to find books to turn into movies, also known as book-to-film adaptation. This is no small endeavor. An impressive 51% of the films that have won Academy Awards for best picture have been based on a book, a short story or a novella. 14% have been based on plays, while a few others were adaptations of previous films. Only 34% of Oscar-winning films have come from original screenplays. It is obvious that books are fertile ground for films. Read the full essay.
For Academic Writers Only: Secrets of Writing for a General Audience
Most writers are aware of the 5 W’s – the “who, what, when, where and why” checklist for journalists. For scholars and scientists, allow me to propose a truncated version of same – why, who and what.
Why
If you are an expert in your field, be it medicine, cosmology, neuroscience, history, psychology, anthropology or any other specialized body of knowledge, and you have decided to write a book for a popular audience about your subject, you should first ask yourself why: Why do you want to do this? . Read the full essay.