Have you ever written a screenplay?

Jeffrey's answer

Two. Paths of Glory, and False Impression. Both written for specific producer interest; neither, in the end, produced as I had hoped. The lesson of those two attempts is the reason I have not written more.

A screenplay is a fundamentally different craft from a novel. The novel happens in the reader’s head — the prose creates the scene, the inner life, the time of day, the smell of the room. The screenplay is a blueprint. It exists only to be made — by a director, a cinematographer, a production designer, actors. Everything you write is a set of instructions for other people to interpret. The novelist has the final word on the page; the screenwriter has barely a voice once the camera starts rolling.

Paths of Glory was the screenplay adaptation of my own novel, which is itself based on George Mallory’s 1924 attempt on Everest. I wrote it because I cared about the story and wanted some control over how it would reach the screen. False Impression I wrote for a similar reason — a producer was interested in adapting the novel, and I wanted to write the screenplay myself rather than hand it over. In both cases the screenplay was completed; in both cases the project did not move into production for reasons that had nothing to do with the script itself — financing, scheduling, the way Hollywood works, the way Hollywood does not work.

What I learned: a novelist writing a screenplay is, at best, an apprentice in a different trade. The dialogue, I could manage. The structure, I could manage. The discipline of cutting a four-hundred-page novel into a hundred-and-ten-page screenplay was instructive. But the things a real screenwriter knows — how a scene plays in front of a camera, what an actor will do with a line that reads flat on the page, how to build a sequence visually rather than verbally — these are skills I do not have, and I would have to learn them from scratch. At my age, I do not propose to.

So my approach now, through The Jeffrey Archer Company, is to license the books to producers who bring their own screenwriters. The screenwriter is a craftsman in their own right; let them do their work. I consult, where invited, on the spirit of the story and on the specific moments that matter. I do not try to write the screenplay.

If you are a young writer with an interest in both novels and screenplays: do not assume that being good at one means you will be good at the other. They are different trades. Pick one, master it, and only then consider whether to try the other.

A few practical notes

• Screenplays JA has written. Two: Paths of Glory (adaptation of his own novel about Mallory) and False Impression. Both completed; neither produced in the form Jeffrey wrote.
• The Jeffrey Archer Company approach. Adaptations are now handled by licensing books to producers who bring their own screenwriters. JA consults but does not write the screenplay.
• For aspiring screenwriters. BBC Writersroom accepts unsolicited screenplays from new UK writers. Coverfly and The Black List provide industry-grade script coverage and visibility in the US market.
• For novelists wanting to learn screenwriting. Robert McKee’s Story and Syd Field’s Screenplay are the standard texts. Save the Cat by Blake Snyder is the structural workbook most working screenwriters carry.
• The skills overlap is real but not complete. Novel skills that transfer: dialogue, character voice, plot architecture, beat-by-beat suspense. Skills that don’t transfer: visual storytelling, scene play under camera, how to write for an actor’s instrument.
• One screenwriter’s saying. “A novel is what you wrote. A screenplay is what someone else will make.” JA’s preference is to stay in the first sentence.
• For producers. All adaptation enquiries via The Jeffrey Archer Company.