Can a story with a 10K word count be movie material?

[Silver7]

If I wrote a story that just consisted of 10K words, would a story like that need more length to be made into a good movie or is 10K words enough to create a world that's interesting to the point where it can be adapted as a movie?

[cherrystark]

Honestly, it depends on the story and if it has the potential to be adapted and expanded. The original books for Shrek and Polar Express were under 10k words and were made into amazing movies.

[EncryptedWriting]

I think it might be difficult. A short story can be absolutely awesome, but movies like to go in depth. Maybe a short film?

[Silver7]

The original book for Shrek and Polar Express, do you know if they were published by a company or published online?

[cherrystark]

They were traditionally published prior to the internet boom. While I totally encourage you to have a dream of having a book turned into a movie - but you need to think realistically. The books I referenced were children's picture books. When they were adapted to screen, they underwent MAJOR changes from the original story. And the majority of online books that have actually been adapted to screen recently have all been viral romances.

[moontokkym]

I'd say why aim for a feature length movie when with 10K words you can write a killer 5-10min short film script by really condensing it down, working on your use of subtext and setting and making every interaction count. Short films are by no means easy to make but they are way easier to finance and can be just as moving.

If what you want is a film adaptation, and you have a good 10k story, it's always way better to work to condense than to bloat and short films are great.

[ThunderChicken]

The Grinch and Cat in the Hat were both well under 10k words and they made successful movies out of them. Quality is debatable, but they were certainly successful.

It's the story itself that makes the difference, not the word count.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Maybe I'm just stupid, but I've never understood the obsession with word count among amateur webnovel writers-- i.e. people who have total and complete freedom to make a story as long or as short as they want. o_O Like seriously, I'm no closer to understanding this than I was when I first got to this forum. To me, word count as a concept stopped mattering when I got out of high school...

Anyway, to actually answer the title question: any adaptation of any written work is gonna have changes made to it so it can fit the new medium, whether that means adding things or subtracting things. Shorter works (or works that have been chopped up to make a series, as in the 'trilogy' trend) will simply have more things added-- this is totally normal and expected, and it happens all the time. I mean, just think about all the movies that have been made out of fairy tales, which can often be retold with just a handful of sentences. '_'

So there's really nothing to worry about...any sufficiently skilled and motivated writing+directing team will be able to make a decent movie out of any story, even if it's only 10 pages long, let alone 10 thousand words.

[moontokkym]

Word count will matter to those who intend to go into traditional publishing with their webnovel. To call something a "novel" it needs to have above a certain word count to be taken seriously and the ballpark changed depending on your genre. It makes you look really unprofessionnal/amateur/out of touch if you come to a publisher or agent pitching a novel when what you actually have is a 20k word fantasy novella and because there's so much competition that alone can get you autorejected if you're going for popular agents because they don't have time to read every submission.

So yeah that's why the wordcount thing will be such a big deal to some people in the webnovel community, and the people who see that other people are really into their wordcount might not understand why but just copy them because "wordcount seems important to them and they're good so it must be important".

[NetherSlayer]

You can write a movie from a single page, or even just a paragraph. It all depends on the content itself.

• Is there any dialogue at all?
• Have you depicted what the characters are like or what they wear; is that even relevant or can it be omitted and up to the director/producer's discretion?
• Have you written out each and every action a specific character takes, or do you let it loosely be defined so as to leave room for interpretation, and sparing yourself the excessive word count that would entail?

There are just too many what-if's and questions for any written piece to be made into a movie, a blanket 'yes or no' answer wouldn't suffice.

[NickRowler]

The poem Mulan was based off of had 360 words. Mind you Disney did take a lot of creative liberties.

If you are talking about a movie script... usually one page = one minute. Scripts usually have about 180-200 words per page. So 10k words would only be 50 - 55 minutes long, which is about the length of a short film or TV movie.

[Mallory]

The movie Arrival was based on a short story "Story of your Life" by Ted Chiang.

Here's the thing though: Ted Chiang is a PHENOMENAL short story writer. He has won all kinds of awards for his short stories, novelettes and anthologies and he really know how to pack a punch and a high concept into his beautifully-written stories. Also, the movie is significantly different from the story, because, obviously, they had to take something that was 20-30 pages long and make it into a 2-hour feature film. It's not really that common for a short story to be adapted into a feature film, it has to be like... absolutely exceptional on every level (like "Story of your Life"). But theoretically, the answer to your question is "yes".

[Lensing]

You can make a movie out of a 10 word story

[daeygurart]

It depends. No director is just going to pick up a random internet novel and turn it into a movie. Most of them go through agents. Literary agents, movie agents, publishers. Even then it could take years, decades for the movie to come out. Plus, budget, set design, and finding actors. They mostly go through those who traditionally publish, and even then that's iffy. It has to make money to make more money.

Edit: can I fricking spell Movie?!?!