Adaptive Behavior Adapt a classic work by a brilliant author and you can't help but improve your own writing abilities. A fellow screenwriter was concerned about the possible effects of turning in his rewrite 'late' to the studio. This screenwriter was worried about what would happen if he missed his writing deadline.
Screenplays are pretty defenseless items.
If somebody tags a screenplay as 'too complex' in a story meeting, heads around the table wag up and down, and all of a sudden the screenplay sitting there on the table has indeed become too complex. If someone comments that the script 'doesn't have enough levels,' the poor script undergoes an instant transformation and, alas, becomes simplistic and shallow. There's a wall of resistance any script must overcome to gain acceptance and be considered 'good,' and if you turn it in late, you do build that wall a little higher. If they love the script, nobody will even remember there was a completion deadline, or whether or not you met it. Now, this column is actually about writing adaptations, and you'll notice I haven't said a single word yet about writing adaptations.