Marielle Heller: Screenwriters’ Lecture

Marielle Heller, the American director and screenwriter behind Diary of a Teenage Girl, and most recently Nightbitch, has shared insights into her writing process and how she brings texts to life on screen.

“I love adapting novels, I feel like it is a really fulfilling creative process, but I think people tend to think of adaptation as something like translation… and it really isn’t that”, Heller explained as she spoke as part of BAFTA’s latest Screenwriters’ Lecture Series.

“Adapting novels is a process that I think people don’t totally understand, or it’s a little bit misunderstood” – Marielle Heller

Adaptations of books to film can get a bad reputation but as Heller explored in her lecture, and follow-up Q&A: “I think it can be done. But I think it’s more of an art form than people recognise.”

Drawing on the experiences she had bringing three books; Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me? and Nightbitch, to the big screen Heller described adaptation as thinking about how something is “told through a different lens.”

“It’s going to have a different perspective put on it. I’m going to bring in my own life and my own experiences and so much of my own story into the version of these books that I’m going to adapt into a screenplay. But hopefully what made me fall in love with the original source material is still there or is maintained in this final piece that we end up with,” she said.

For example, whilst reflecting on Diary of a Teenage Girl, Heller likened adapting text to screen to “taking a painting and turning it into a sculpture”.

“It’s taking something in one form and turning it into a totally different art form, a totally different medium”, she said.

Acknowledging “the structure of movies is so different to the structure of novels” Heller shared how screenwriters should understand there are different arcs that are needed when switching the medium of a story. But, while adapting a written text to screen may mean diving into the work at different points or in different ways, the importance of openings and endings remains.

So, what does this mean in practice?

For Heller opening a film involves having “to have the audience fall in love with that character even if they’re a very flawed character”. And ending one means giving the viewer a “satisfying” experience. She said: “I want movies to end satisfyingly, not necessarily happy endings or sad endings, but I just want to feel like I went on this journey for a reason, and it’s satisfying.”

Delving into how important it is for her to start with source material that she loves, the screenwriter also shared how having “a lot of reverence” for what she’s adapting helps her; “I get to know that material so deeply that it’s almost like I could have written that book myself”, something that then in turn enables her to be able to “almost throw it away and start from scratch.”

Heller said: “It’s always about starting from total scratch and really thinking about what I can use from that source material as inspiration and letting it become something very new and unique in a cinematic form. Because the visual form of movies is totally different than the experience of reading a book.”

When working on Nightbitch for example, Heller took something that was very “internal” and “written like a monologue” and helped give the character’s voice a new way to be seen.

“I really believe in this idea that the film tells you what it wants to be and you have to listen. You have to let it grow and morph. But, hopefully there’s an emotional truth that you’re sticking to. Something from the original work that touched you or meant something to you, and hopefully that stays true”, she said.

• Look for an “emotional connection” with the work and get to “really understand the characters from a deep place”. Use this to give them a voice.
• Ask, what was my experience as a reader? What was special about that experience? And how do I translate that into a film?
• Think “how do I give an audience of this movie as special of an experience that I had when reading the book”
• Remember when working on adaptation that it will “shift and grow into something different”. This includes during the process itself where you can expect it to be something “in a script form” and “then again, something different in a final film form.”

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