As a former literary agent, Jandy Nelson was attracted to “voice-driven work.” A poet and YA reader, she saw a path for herself in the subgenre of verse novels. “That’s when I wrote The Sky is Everywhere and fell in love with fiction.”

In The Sky is Everywhere, the story follows a shy, teenage musician who tries to keep things together after the death of her older, outgoing sister. Nelson has a solo writing credit for the screenplay. “At first, we tried to make it a movie ten years ago, but ultimately, I realized I wanted to adapt it myself.”

To understand this new craft, Nelson read all of 101 books on screenwriting and everything else she could get her hands on. “I found it to be a combination of novels and poetry because it has a strict structure and every word counts.”

Despite preconceived limitations, she also found that “you can instill so much voice in it [and] it needs to be alive.” For YA specifically, it’s also written with heightened emotions. “Everything is a first – first love, first grief, first everything – so everything is new, exciting, and horrible,” she joked.  

Jandy Nelson

“Your young adult audience can see things more black and white. In the book, there are complicated relationships, but as authors, you write what you write and it teaches ambiguity and nuance. Life is complicated.”

Adapting the Book

“I didn’t go back to outlines. I read the book and listened to the book to get back into the world. My first draft was probably 200 pages, so there was a lot of cutting, but the most challenging part was that the novel is mostly about her interiority.”

Lennie, played by Grace Kaufman, is like many novel characters in this way. “All of her emotional turmoil is interior. Much of the humor is interior. So that was the challenge… how to manifest it visually.”

Nelson did this in the novel with poetry and she did it in the screenplay with flashbacks. “I needed to bring out this inner world, so I created this thing called Lennie-scapes that were forays into her imagination. They could reveal her inner life.”

Nelson had to rely on Director Josephine Decker (Shirley, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely) to bring these aspects to life. “A lot of them were drawn from the book. She had this incredibly visual inner life. [Decker] and I love magical realism.”

“I encourage writers to adapt their own work because you don’t have to worry about pissing off the novelist, you can do what you want. I wrote that so long ago. I had some plot problems. The mother narrative didn’t work for me, so I got to change it.”

In addition, as a poet, Nelson thinks about the screenplay as a literary piece. “In some ways, I like the screenplay more than the novel.”

An Entertaining Read

In order to make the screenplay an energetic read on its own, she worked to “instill voice into every line.” She continued, “Every line counts. It should be alive in itself. You have one line to bring a character to life, so it needs to pack a punch.”

At the same time, she had to limit herself on character direction on the page. “Getting a line of direction to say what you want and sometimes be funny or scary, you have to work to put emotion in the screenplay.”

Lennie Walker (Grace Kaufman) & Joe Fontaine (Jacques Cloison_

Nelson would highly encourage other screenwriters to read other poets and also any bit of voice-driven work. “Some screenplays don’t really have a voice. The ones I was attracted to were instilled with voice. It adds to the story. Think about voice when you read a screenplay.”

She mentioned screenplays like the pilot to Breaking Bad and Little Miss Sunshine which are both inspirations to voice-driven work. “You want to create a lively experience for the reader, like any literary experience.”

In the edit phase, she had to focus on the idea of “less is more.” It was too expensive to shoot an excess of Lennie-scapes, plus limiting these made the remainders more effective. “You can’t have six endings. You have to have one ending.”

The Screenwriter’s Mindset

There’s a natural shift between writing novels and screenplays. The writer finds it more difficult to write novels because it’s harder to transition what’s in her mind to what should be on the page.

“It takes years and years [to write books]. It’s hard to write screenplays as well, but you’re at least transferring something visual in your mind to a visual medium, so there’s something about it I found more natural or more direct in a way.”

“I feel like I’m in a different head when I write poetry, prose, or screenplays. I write novels in a dark room but with a screenplay, I can just work in a room of light,” she joked. “Every book feels harder and more complicated than the last. The story makes certain demands on you that changes as you write it. You’re using different parts of yourself, whether it’s your heart or your mind.”

For The Sky is Everything, she wrote the book quickly, but it was very emotional for her. “I was sobbing the whole time. The first draft was a very emotional experience and it took me years to edit it. With I’ll Give You the Sun, it was even slower.”

Logistically, these days, whenever she hits a block she will do something physical like go for a walk or spend time in her garden. “I also just sort of stick to it. A lot of people don’t, but you have to put in the time, even when it’s not flowing. Work through it and pray for a good day the next day.”

As for other bits of advice, she said a revelation was realizing her voice was unique. “You’re the only one who can tell this story the way you want to tell it. What makes you unique is your inner iconography. What you love, what you hate, is what makes your voice so special. Get that personality on the page.”

This interview has been condensed. Listen to the full audio version here.