Workshop Title: Screenplay or Novel – How Each Can Benefit from the Other
Could your story become stronger by rewriting it in a different form? Whether you’ve written a screenplay or a novel, exploring the same narrative in the opposite medium can offer a fresh perspective and reveal new possibilities.
This session examines how adapting a screenplay into a novel—or a novel into a screenplay—can improve your work while also creating another way to promote your narrative. By viewing the story through the enforced economy of film or the expanded, more demanding exposition of a novel, writers can reintroduce themselves to their work, gain greater objectivity, and see their story with fresh eyes.
Attendees will explore how weak or bland characters in a screenplay can be reborn and gain new dimensions through the greater demands of a novel, while tiresome exposition in a novel can become more focused, more powerfully condensed, or even eliminated when adapted for the screen. The session highlights the many benefits that can come from working within the limitations and strengths of another storytelling medium.
Todd’s Bio:
Todd Ramsay worked as a film editor for more than forty years and cut over 30 feature films. His editing credits can be found on IMDb. During his career, he worked with and learned from some of the best in the business.
Upon retiring, he began writing screenplays and optioned several. He had always wanted to write novels before he got into film, and when he wrote a novel from his screenplay, he became hooked on the benefits. He has done this with three neo-westerns (from before the term even existed) and is getting ready to publish the first from a screenplay that has won several awards, called Iron Animals, and which was on WeScreenplay’s Red List at one point.
Website: https://toddramsayauthor.com
Meeting on Saturday, September 19, 2026
Breakfast begins at 8:30 am
The general meeting begins at 9:15 am
Hodel’s at 5917 Knudsen Dr, Bakersfield
