Jacqueline Faber is an author and freelance writer. She has taught at NYU and Emory University, where she earned her PhD in comparative literature. Her debut novel, The Department, is a dark academic thriller about a college girl who disappears, a professor who goes looking for her, and the secrets that won’t stay buried.

Faber is currently in conversation with a director about the film rights to her novel prior to its February 2025 release date. She sat down to share some questions that are going through her mind as she goes through this process that other authors could consider if in the same position.

Who is the right person to adapt my novel?

This question may seem obvious, but it’s not. On the one hand, I am the writer closest to the work, so intuitively, it feels like I should adapt my own novel. On the other, novel writing and screenwriting have different rules, different structures, and different mechanisms for storytelling. Long-form narrative feels very instinctual to me. I’ve been working at it so long, I have a clear sense of my own aesthetic and can often tell when something isn’t “working,” even if I’m not yet clear on how to fix it. With screenwriting, those instincts aren’t as finely honed, so I must rely on convention. How has this been done before? The upshot is that I don’t always know how to push the limits or take the work to a truly original place like I might with the novel.

Would this project work better for TV or film?

Typically, when you option your book, film and TV rights go together. But if you are considering adapting your own work, this is a decision you will have to make. Are you writing a full feature-length script or are you writing a pilot? Do you imagine the story unfolding episodically, teasing out longer character arcs and creating space for multiple plotlines? Or is it best to consume it all in one go? I’m addressing this in my own work by mapping out every single thing that actually happens in my novel, all the plot points and potential side stories. What scenes do I have to work with and how might they play out on screen?

How can I use formal constraints to shape this story?

Besides the obvious formatting differences between a script and a novel, the simple fact that your finished script must be somewhere between 90-120 pages (for a feature) or 45-60 pages (for a pilot) puts certain limitations on the adaptation process. I don’t have six chapters to finely tease out a quiet aspect of my protagonist’s character. How can I capture it in a handful of gestures, dialogue, a representative action that immediately conveys everything I need the viewer to know? Every aspect of a script is carrying a heavy load, so hard decisions must be made. For guidance, I’m turning to books like Into the Woods by John Yorke, Story by Robert McKee, and Save the Cat by Blake Snyder to aid in this process.

How do I embrace a more collaborative mindset?

Novel writing is a solitary affair. There’s no intermediary between me and the reader. The decisions that I make (along with my editors) directly impact the object in the reader’s hand. I can’t be so proprietary when it comes to a script. A screenplay is a living document that is an invitation to collaborate, rather than a fully-encapsulated product. This mental shift is actually quite significant. It affects the way I write everything from sluglines and action lines to dialogue and transitions. Each word I put down will ultimately be interpreted by another creative mind who will make further decisions. The finished product will be the result of a cumulative process.

How do I handle a tricky plot twist?

This pertains specifically to my book, but I know I’m not the only one. Sometimes plot twists work well in written form that are harder to pull off visually. There’s a major twist in my book that will have to be addressed differently in an adaptation because it relies on characters’ unfamiliarity with certain aspects of the world. If those aspects are revealed to the audience too early, the element of surprise will be lost. So, I need to find other ways to play with, and ultimately subvert, viewer expectations.

The Department

The Department by Jacqueline Faber

Neil Weber is a struggling philosophy professor whose wife has left him and whose career has plateaued with the opportunity for tenure feeling more unlikely than ever. His uninspiring life gets a shake up though, when Lucia, a student at his university, goes missing. He becomes obsessed with solving the case and as he does, dives into not only Lucia’s secrets, but the underground lives of his colleagues in this dark academia thriller.

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