Writing the Courageous novel

In adapting a screenplay into a novel, what’s the author’s major challenge?

The challenge is to be 100 percent true to the movie and yet still develop a compelling part of a larger storyline that’s not in the movie.

Part 2 of my interview with Time Magazine about the Courageous Movie and Novel

Every novelist knows that movies don’t just have plots, they have themes. And in the exploration of those themes there is inevitably a message, whether or not it is carefully crafted. The message may be that life is random, pointless, hopeless, chaotic, cruel, or that it is full of both good and bad, and that even in the bad there can be ultimate purpose and meaning.

The Courageous Movie and Novel (Part 1 of an unused interview with Time Magazine)

Some months ago I was contacted by Time magazine reporter Tim Newcomb, who asked me a number of questions about the Courageous movie and the novel. Tim’s final article was just published on Time’s online magazine.