WWC2026 - Masterclass - Adaptation: Turning your Novel into a Script - and Vice Versa
Friday, August 14, 2026 | 3pm-5:45pm
Hyatt Regency Calgary - Bannerman
with Robert J. Sawyer
NOTE: Have you registered for Festival Pass? You MUST have a pass to enter a masterclass. If you haven't yet, choose the appropriate ticket combo below to purchase a pass with your masterclass.
Learn how to transfer your core ideas from one medium to the other—not just expanding and contracting but completely reimagining a work to best use its strengths in a new form. Robert J. Sawyer is a member of the scriptwriting unions Writers Guild of Canada and Writers Guild of America. The ABC TV series FlashForward was based on his Aurora Award-winning novel of the same name, and he was one of the scriptwriters for that series; Rob has also written commissioned feature-film scripts, adapting both his own work and that of others. On the flip side, his novel The Downloaded started life as a commissioned TV pilot script.
Robert J. Sawyer — called “the dean of Canadian Science Fiction” by both the Ottawa Citizen and the CBC — has won the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards for Best Novel of the Year; a record-setting 17 Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“Auroras“); the top science-fiction awards in China, Japan, France, and Spain; and an Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada. Rob’s 26 novels include Quantum Night (longlisted for Canada Reads), The Downloaded (starred review in Publishers Weekly), and FlashForward (basis for the ABC TV series of the same name). His books have appeared on the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s bestsellers lists and have hit #1 on the Calgary Herald, Winnipeg Free Press, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Palm Beach Daily News, and Locus bestsellers lists. A past president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers America, he was one of the initial nine inductees into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Rob has taught creative writing at the Banff Centre, the University of Toronto, the Humber School for Writers, and Ryerson University. He is a member of both the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario.
