Ghostwriting for Screen: How to Turn a Script Into a Novel (and Vice Versa)

By Nick Pollack,

The Paperback Writer Bureau

Screenwriting and novel writing share a heartbeat - but they speak different dialects.

One deals in action and dialogue. The other breathes in thought and texture. If screenwriting is architecture, novel writing is atmosphere. And ghostwriting across both means learning how to translate between the two - between blueprint and breath.

After more than twenty years in film and television, I’ve learned that every story that works on screen has bones strong enough to live on the page. The trick is knowing how to shift between the two worlds without losing what makes it alive.

1. From script to novel - adding the soul.

A screenplay is built for motion. It’s designed to be seen, not read. Everything is external - dialogue, direction, what the camera captures.

When I adapt a screenplay into a novel, the first step is to slow down time. We move from what the audience watches to what the character feels.

That means:

• Translating stage direction into inner life.

• Turning subtext into psychology.

• Expanding glances, gestures, and silence into full emotional chapters.

A two-line script moment like:

“She turns away. He watches her leave.”…becomes three pages of tension, memory, and longing.

In prose, you can explore why she turned away.

In film, you just see that she did.

That’s the magic of adaptation - finding the invisible layer between movement and meaning.

2. From novel to script - distilling the essence

When moving the other way - from novel to screenplay - the process reverses. Now it’s about compression, not expansion.

A novel might run 90,000 words.A screenplay? Around 20,000.

You can’t fit everything in. So you learn to boil the blood, not the bones.

What stays are the moments that define character and consequence - the emotional beats that drive the story forward.Internal monologue becomes behaviour. Exposition becomes dialogue.Reflection becomes visual action.

I often say that novel-to-script adaptation is an act of controlled subtraction - removing everything except what must be seen or heard. It’s ruthless work, but when done well, it creates the cinematic heartbeat a story was always meant to have.

3. The ghostwriter’s advantage

Most writers are fluent in one form.Ghostwriters, by necessity, are multilingual.

We learn to hear story in multiple languages - prose, screenplay, dialogue, rhythm.We can look at a client’s existing manuscript and know instinctively how it would play on screen, or how a screenplay could breathe as a novel.

That’s why producers, directors, and authors come to The Paperback Writer Bureau: because they need someone who can see both sides of the lens.

I’ve spent years on sets, in edit suites, and inside writers’ rooms.I know how dialogue sounds when it’s spoken, how pacing feels when it’s cut, and how those instincts can be reverse-engineered back into prose.

That cross-media literacy isn’t a luxury. It’s the difference between a story that works and one that lives.

4. How the process works

Every screen-to-novel or novel-to-screen project begins the same way: with a Discovery Call to identify what we’re preserving, what we’re reimagining, and what the emotional core of the story truly is.

From there:

• Structural Mapping: We dissect the existing script or manuscript, scene by scene.

• Voice Calibration: For novels, we build interiority and tone; for scripts, we distil essence and rhythm.

• Drafting & Development: We rewrite or adapt in collaboration, ensuring each medium’s strengths shine.

• Final Polish: Line edits for prose, dialogue tightening for scripts, pacing for both.

Every version - book or screenplay - should feel like the same story told in a different language.

5. Why it matters now

We live in an era where stories cross platforms - books become films, scripts become novels, podcasts become series. Readers are viewers, and viewers are readers.

Understanding how to translate between those worlds isn’t just a creative advantage. It’s a survival skill for storytellers.

At The Paperback Writer Bureau, we build those bridges - helping authors think cinematically, and filmmakers write narratively. Because story is story.The medium just changes the lens.

The Paperback Writer Bureau

From first draft to final release, ghostwriting that speaks in your voice - on page and on screen.

📩 hello@paperbackwriterbureau.com