Nick Hornby: Screenwriters' Lecture

Nick Hornby, screenwriter of twice BAFTA-nominated An Education, has given an entertaining and insightful look at his work on paper and on screen.

In the first of our 2015 Screenwriters’ Lecture Series, Nick Hornby was in conversation with Francine Stock discussing all things film. The screenwriter talked about adapting other people’s novels, the relationship between a writer and a director, and the creative and logistic differences between writing novels and writing for the screen.

Describing screenwriting as a refreshing challenge, he said: “Once you get to a certain point in your novelistic career, unless you screw up very badly the book is going to come out. With a screenplay there are all these hurdles that seem to have some kind of objectivity to them. The screenplay has to work and I love that.”

He pointed to screenplays as a collaborative process, as works that feel much like books when complete but that are subject to input and change from directors and actors. This change can make the relationship between writer and director complex: “It kind of drives you mad that you can spend four years writing the rest of it and half an hour writing one scene that stays in tact.”

Adapting books to screen

Hornby hasn’t abandoned his literary pursuits in his screenwriting, and has adapted several written works for the screen. On An Education and Wild, both adapted from memoirs written by women, he remarked that it’s “so much easier take stuff out of other people’s books” than his own.

An Education, for which he was both BAFTA- and Oscar-nominated, seemed a good place to begin his screenwriting career because it combined the best thing about writing novels while providing a clear world to work in. He used Lyn Barber’s original work as collaborative material integral to his screenplay rather than something to layer on top of his finished product.

On adapting Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild, for which he also received both BAFTA and Oscar nominations, he worked closely with the original material but “boiled everything down” to find the drama. He said that Strayed’s memoir is “such a packed book,” adding that when he first went through the book and made notes he realised he could make a two-hour film without mentioning walking at all.

A focus on female characters

When a member of the audience remarked on Hornby’s penchant for working on scripts that centre female characters, he acknowledged these narratives as a minority in the industry. “Women have to deal with rules that are not of their own making,” and therefore are subject to drama when these rules are bent or broken.

“It doesn’t seem like many people are writing about women. We have phenomenal acting talent who aren’t being given enough to do.”

Rounding off the discussion, Hornby got to the crux of what makes for successful storytelling on screen and touched again on the importance of interaction and collaboration in the storytelling process. He said: “You have to find drama. Always. You can have the odd solo moment but it’s always about finding the situation where you’re putting your character in a room with another person and hoping what happens reveals what you want to say about the character.”