Tony Gilroy’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne is a remarkable example of how to transform source material into a compelling cinematic experience. This article delves into the lessons writers can learn from this underappreciated film.
The Forgotten Tony Gilroy Adaptation Every Writer Should Study
Writer/director Tony Gilroy’s take on Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne is an underappreciated achievement in King adaptations and screenwriting.
The 1995 film, directed by Taylor Hackford and starring Kathy Bates (who won a Best Actress Oscar for Misery a few years prior), is a serious, adult drama rendered in cool hues perfect for the onset of fall. I decided to watch it today.
Bates portrays the titular Dolores, suspected of a murder we witness in the opening scene, as well as the murder of her husband decades earlier. When her daughter Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh) returns to the family home, past and present blend together, sometimes in the same moment, as Dolores confronts encroaching memories.
The fact that it became one of King’s favorite adaptations suggests Gilroy found something essential in the material.
Here are a few takeaways for writers from the film.
Transform Structure, Not Story
Gilroy’s first major lesson is recognizing when source material demands radical restructuring. King’s novel was essentially a monologue—one woman giving a confession, with Dolores questioned about her employer’s death. It wasn’t very cinematic.
Referring to the novel, Gilroy told Salon, “It had some really fascinating angles, but the whole narrative was one long slog of a monologue from Dolores, which made it feel one-dimensional, and to be honest, raw and unrevised.”
It seemed like an impossible challenge. But his version transformed that work into a complex, non-linear narrative that captures the essence of the source material while completely restructuring its telling.
Gilroy created a dual-timeline structure, weaving a present-day murder investigation with flashbacks that reveal the truth about Dolores’ past.
This approach enabled him to maintain the story’s emotional core while giving it the necessary visual and dramatic momentum.
Invent, Even for an Adaptation
One of Gilroy’s most audacious moves was inventing major characters and plotlines that barely existed in King’s novel.
Everything with Selena as an adult is original material, as is the prominent Detective John Mackey character (played by Christopher Plummer).
A successful adaptation often requires invention, not just translation. By giving Dolores a daughter who returns home as a successful but troubled journalist, he created a mirror character who could experience her own journey of discovery alongside the audience.
The detective character provided external pressure and suspicion that the monologue format couldn’t accommodate.
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Write What You Can “Report” On
Gilroy brought Dolores up in his 2013 BAFTA lecture.
“You need to be reporting on something, you need to become a journalist for the movie that’s in your head,” he said. “And if you’re not really on the scene and you’re not really in it, you can’t report on it.”
This process varies by genre. Sometimes, he said, it could be torture, but it wasn’t on this film.
“If you’re plotting Dolores Claiborne, it’s a different exercise,” he said. “Somehow, there’s a lower temperature to that. It’s still the same process, but it’s an easier temperature for that. A human drama somehow plays out easier to plot.”
For Gilroy, character-driven drama can come more naturally than high-concept thriller plotting. Dolores Claiborne succeeds because Gilroy was genuinely invested in the human story at its center.
Learn from Production
Perhaps Gilroy’s most practical lesson comes from his experience watching dailies during the Dolores Claiborne shoot.
“I sat for four months in Nova Scotia and just had to be subjected to my own dialogue, over and over and over again, take after take after take, and that’ll beat it out of you,” he told Script Magazine.
This rough and raw education taught him that much of what seems necessary on the page becomes redundant when actors and cameras are involved.
“That’s the first experience hearing your stuff and realizing you can see how little you have to say, or what really works. Staying in production keeps you stronger and makes you learn more. It’s hard for young writers if you’re not in production … I wish I’d been writing plays, or even if I wasn’t writing plays, I wish I was hearing scenes, because there’s nothing like hearing your flabby dialogue and realizing you could have done it in half the time. And realizing that the camera is going to take care of things. And a great actor is going to take care of it.”
Writers who can’t be present on a production should find other ways to hear their work—read it aloud, record themselves, anything that moves the words off the page and into the air.
Have you seen Dolores Claiborne? If so, what did you learn from it?
