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Rachael Blackwood - Adapting Your Fiction for the Screen

Local Word Writers Festival

This is a half-day workshop for writers curious about adaptation, whether you want to turn your book into a movie, TV, or better understand how stories move from page to screen.

The Ruthless 15K: Adapting Your Fiction for the Screen

You wrote the story. Now what? This is a half-day workshop for writers curious about adaptation, whether you want to turn your book into a film or TV series, or better understand how stories move from page to screen. Led by Rachael Blackwood, a Top Three Finalist in the Final Draft Big Break, a graduate of UCLA's Professional Programs in Screenwriting and Television Writing, and with credits in novel adaptation coverage, studio marketing, and screenplay judging for the Austin Film Festival. Bring your work in progress. Leave with a one-page treatment and the vision for your story on screen.

Participants will leave the workshop able to:
• Identify what changes between page and screen, and why
• Make an informed choice about which form their story wants next: feature film, limited series, or ongoing series
• Recognise the structural DNA of a screenplay and map their novel against it
• Translate interiority into dialogue and action
• Develop a one-page treatment for the adaptation of one of their novels (or one in progress)

This workshop is available for up to 20 people aged 18+. No prior publication required, but participants should bring a novel, story, idea, or other material they are interested in adapting to the screen (minimum 500 words, can be digital). Length: 3.5 hours with a short break. Please bring water/tea/coffee and snacks as required.

Tickets: $40 or $20 for concession holders.

Rachael Blackwood has lived two writing lives.

The first was in Los Angeles, where she completed UCLA's Professional Programs in Screenwriting and Television Writing, earned a Top Three placement at Final Draft Big Break, multiple PAGE Awards semi-finals and Austin Film Festival second rounds, novel adaptation coverage for Ideate Media, ran the social media for Warner Bros (including WINCHESTER with Helen Mirren), and was selected by Margaret Atwood as a Practical Utopias Fellow.

The second life is quieter, closer to the ocean, and more her own. A masters-educated trauma psychotherapist by training, Rachael now writes fiction about queer women with histories, and the slow moments in which they come back to themselves. Her debut novel The Sound She Makes is forthcoming in 2026, the first in the Hushtide series, published under her independent imprint Salt Witch Media.

She writes on Wadawurrung country, supervised by her two cats, Arrow and Reilly.

https://rachaelblackwood.com
https://www.instagram.com/rach_blackwood/

To discover more of our fabulous local writers, visit our Local Authors Fair from 12pm-3pm on Saturday 29 August at Geelong Library & Heritage Centre - free entry and refreshments provided

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