Giving Up and Letting Go: Erin Cressida Wilson on Adapting The Girl on the Train

When screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Chloe) signed on to adapt Paula Hawkins’ wildly popular novel The Girl on the Train, the book hadn’t even been published yet, let alone become the bestseller that it turned out to be. In fact, without her knowing it, Erin handed in the script the week the novel hit shelves.

Erin Cressida Wilson

This meant that she could write without the pressure which normally comes with adapting a popular work that already has high public expectations. And once popularity of the novel soared, the project picked up speed to get her script to the big screen.

The Girl on the Train tells the story of Rachel (played by Emily Blunt), a troubled, divorced woman who rides the train into New York City every day, and obsessively watches the passionate life of a young couple through her window, yearning for what they seem to have. But when her involvement with them crosses the boundary into real-life, she suddenly finds herself in the middle of a missing persons investigation, and unable to account for some of her own actions.

From there, the audience is taken on a dark and twisted journey, as Rachel has to discern between fantasy and reality, and learn some very unexpected truths about herself and her past.

Creative Screenwriting spoke with Wilson about how this particular project changed her approach to adaptation, and what she took from her career as a university professor into her life as a screenwriter.

Rebecca Ferguson as Anna Watson and Justin Theroux as Tom Watson in The Girl on the Train © Universal Studios

Given that the book hadn’t been published at the time, how did you first become involved with this project?

In the most old-fashioned way possible. My agent submitted me for the job, so I went in and I pitched it! It was very simple.

I have an amazing agent. She did something that not everybody does – she recommended just me. I always find that if you commit and believe, instead of waffling around a bunch of people, things get done in a more efficient manner.

I handed in the script the same week that the book came out. I didn’t actually know that! I wasn’t tracking it, but it just so happened that way. And then, of course, the book shot up the bestseller lists like crazy, and stayed there. So Dreamworks and the producers wanted to move the project along very quickly.

Did that allow you to approach the screenplay free of outside expectations?

Yes, there was a freedom that I now know was due to the fact that it had not yet become a success. The pressure was much lower for me.

Having said that, and coincidentally, I made the decision when I adapted the book to not reinvent it. I gave myself the task of really doing the book, really getting inside her voice and not dismissing text and dialogue as quickly as I have in the past.

So has working on this project caused you to alter your adaptation process?

Yes. After The Girl on the Train, what I’ve started to do is put the book into Final Draft format, so that I’m coming directly off of the book. It almost becomes this sort of game, a puzzle, because I’m starting from all the original text. And then it just becomes this incredible, seemingly endless, process of editing and rearranging – and sometimes, of course, adding and changing. But there’s a lot of rearranging of the puzzle until it falls into place in terms of a cinematic language.

I used to cherry-pick from a book, but that really isn’t the way I’d like to do it anymore.

Emily Blunt as Rachel Watson in The Girl on the Train © Universal Studios

The story has very strong female characters. Tell me about adapting them for the screen.

I loved it. They resonated as familiar to me, which is why I was originally attracted to the project. I understand that Rachel is thought of as an unreliable narrator, but I think that’s the best kind of narrator. And I really loved the reversal aspect – to attempt to write characters who had pretty big reversals towards the end of their arc or storyline.

I thought they were real people. I don’t find them exactly flawed so much as real. Real and messy and with some sort of frustrated desire – all of them. It’s something I see a lot of in real life.

Tell me about some of the bigger changes you made, in terms of character and setting. For example, Scott is more violent in the book than in the film.

Well Scott’s character was really violent in the script – it got cut during shooting, actually. I had some pretty scary stuff with Scott, involving getting stuck in a train tunnel and things like that! I can’t remember why it got cut, it was just a production thing.

But in terms of the location? When I received the book, it hadn’t yet become so popular. So it was never on the table that it was going to be set in England – we just assumed it would be American.

We loved the book, but didn’t know everybody else would. So I just immediately transferred it to a place that I was very familiar with, the Hudson Line. I also thought it was a very romantic location – and it’s sometimes in those most romantic locations that you can feel the most lonely, because you’re alone. I thought it would work well for Rachel.

I found it fun to work with the misery of Poughkeepsie at the one end of the line, and New York City, the mysterious, exciting, dark city at the other.

I think it translates well, because I don’t think that the location of the film is anywhere but really on a train and inside her imagination. It could be anywhere in the world.

Luke Evans as Scott Hipwell in The Girl on the Train © Universal Studios

You have spent many years teaching, and even taught screenwriting before writing a script. What did your experience as a teacher do for your career as a screenwriter?

I think teaching probably staged my love of writing. I remember when I started to teach at Duke University, which was in 1995, and I basically turned my back on a career in writing. I turned away from New York and I turned away from chasing a career.

Instead, I turned to students; I turned to teaching and to what so much of teaching is, which is giving. And not only giving, but engaging in a dialogue with young, hungry minds.

I thought I was coming to teach the students but found that they really woke me up and inspired me. I found that articulating to them my process, or what their process could become, really inspired me and I immediately started to work more, to write more.

I’ve always found that every time I give up, really give up and really turn away and stop trying so hard, I end up coming through some side door into a place that’s even more exciting than the one that I had been going after. I found that when I went to Duke, and I certainly found it when I wrote The Girl on the Train.

When I decided to really just adapt the book, it was a form of giving up and letting go, saying “Let me let the book guide me; let me stop trying to drive this all the time”. And it really helped.

Students are spectacular. They’re required.

Do you have any advice you could offer our readers?

Embarrass yourself. When you sit down to write, embarrass yourself. That could mean expose yourself, it could mean to write in a way that you think is below you, it could mean to write in a way that you think is not good enough. Or write in a way that you think is too good for you. Whatever it is, embarrass yourself and stop judging what you do.

Another thing I always say is don’t underestimate the power of hard work. Words create words.

Redefine writer’s block as a time of gestation. Trust that when you’re “blocked”, you’re not actually blocked. It’s just that the ideas are forming. It’s a very frustrating time and it always happens. You have to tell yourself, every single time: “Stop feeling guilty and embrace how awful this feels”. It’s that moment that you have to have until you finally sit down and begin.

I always find that if I have a day of really good writing, I read it the next day and it’s awful. And if I have a day of really bad writing, I sit down the next day and it’s pretty good. I think we don’t know while we’re writing if it’s any good. I don’t. I know the next day. And I’ve become really good at forgetting everything I did the day before, so I can look at it with fresh eyes the next day. I think that that’s a skill to work on so you can be a really great editor of your own work. Editing is probably the number one most important thing to do.

But I would also say to stop editing while you’re writing. Just write and edit later. Keep your pen moving. Don’t worry about the outcome – worry about it tomorrow.

The Girl on the Train is available now on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital HD.

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