The benefits of writing the screenplay

Over the past year, I’ve had the good fortune of having a Hollywood group (a producer, a writer, a director, and an executive producer who brought them all together) believe Peyton Cote, my US Border Patrol agent and single mom, would make a good TV show.

It’s nice –– in a wave-from-the-shore kind of way.

They worked up a pitch, which I had nothing to do with, and now they’re making the rounds. No bites so far. My role has consisted of answering a couple questions. This is, I’m told, typical.

It’s also a little frustrating: Peyton Cote isn’t a PI or a cop. She’s a very thoroughly-researched (if I do say so myself) character from a division of the department of justice that operates under the radar (some say covertly), meaning learning the ins and outs of the profession takes years. You can’t do ride-alongs (anymore).

I played hockey with a handful of agents and parlayed that into hours spent with those men riding dirt roads along the Maine-Canada border in order to write the series. So it’s odd to sit on the sideline and hear a pitch was created. And then to hear that the pitch was made.

I’m grateful. Let me be very clear about that. After all, if Peyton Cote ever sees a TV screen, it could be a shot in the arm to book sales. But it’s also odd to have no voice in any of it.

While all of this has been going on, I wrote what I hope will be the first novel in a new series featuring a husband and wife team. A large departure from Peyton Cote, this is a novel set at a New England boarding school. With the first book finished, I’m trying to write the accompanying screenplay. The experience is fascinating. I’m reading screenplays, and reshaping a first-person novel into a cinematic story. Characters that had relatively minor roles now have leads. And the first-person voice, so important to the novel, is replaced by action scenes.

Stating the obvious: I have zero experience in this genre. So maybe this is nothing more than a 120-page writing exercise. But if it is, it’s a useful one. One that forces me to re-evaluate the original work, cut out anything not necessary, rethink how the story is best told on the screen, and write it with all of that in mind.