Alma Har’el is a director, producer, and writer celebrated for directing works like Shia LaBeouf's semi-autobiographical Honey Boy and the highly stylized Bombay Beach.

Most recently, she took on the Apple TV+ miniseries Lady in the Lake, which stars Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram. The series, based on a book by Laura Lippman, tells the story of two women whose lives become tragically intertwined after a young girl vanishes in Baltimore on Thanksgiving 1966. Portman plays Maddie Schwartz, an aspiring journalist. Ingram is Cleo Johnson, a mother who yearns for a better life.

Har’el wrote, directed, and produced the series. Like her previous work, the show demonstrates her ability to create interesting characters in stories of ambition and identity, with a signature tinge of her imagination.

ScreenCraft spoke with Alma Har’el to discuss her process on the series, what we can learn from her, and the challenges of adapting a work for television. She discusses when and how to take creative liberties, ways to collaborate with your team, what it’s like working with Portman and Ingram, and her best advice to aspiring TV writers.

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How Alma Har'el Injects Drama and Conflict (Even in an Adaptation)

We’ve learned from other writers and showrunners like Brian Donovan and Soo Hugh that adapting an existing property comes with unique challenges, but also opportunities.

One of the first things that Har’el and Portman (who executive produced) wanted to address was ensuring the show was a two-hander or had dual protagonists in the two women. Cleo’s character, she said, wasn’t initially as developed in the book.

“So that became, I think, probably the biggest challenge we had when we adapted it,” she said.

Traditional two-hander scripts feature a couple of dissimilar characters from different backgrounds or belief systems, thrown together in a situation that will create some potentially rich conflict.

Two-handers are a great way to have natural drama spring from the page since these characters will almost always be at odds with each other. They can move the plot forward and push each other’s character arcs to completion through this tandem opposition.

'Lady in the Lake' (2024)

We’ve said it before, but you’re also not married to your source material.

“Laura Lippman was very generous and allowed me to do a lot with the book and showed a lot of support [for] the direction we took,” Har’el said. “I think that the challenge was to, as it is always, to just trust your instincts and to find ways to work with this massive plot that was part of this murder mystery and things that I haven’t done before.”

Har’el said their changes included “bringing Cleo’s world to life and writing characters that weren’t in the book in order to give it more dimension.”

If a novel has a rich cast already and you want to include them all, go for it! You can also omit characters, combine two or more into one person, or add a new character entirely.

In this show, they added a husband for Cleo. This was, Har’el said, to include a character “who could be a comic and give a different perspective on Blackness at the time that isn’t necessarily the one we are familiar with. All of those decisions were challenging to make.”

Read More: How ‘The Outrun’ Writer/Director Adapted the Unadaptable

'Lady in the Lake' (2024)

Collaborate With Your Creative Partners

Don’t forget that you can use your perspective to bring ideas to your work, even if it’s a world you haven’t directly inhabited (like 1960s Baltimore). Har’el and her writers’ room pulled from diverse backgrounds to develop the period world and characters of their show.

The experiences of the creative team weren’t limited to the writers’ room. Actors were also welcome to draw from their backgrounds to collaborate with Har’el.

She said Portman, in fact, had a grandmother who immigrated to Baltimore, and she used that in her portrayal of Maddie, which Har’el was happy to embrace. The same went for Ingram.

“We were very lucky when Moses Ingram came in because she was a Black woman from Baltimore, from the neighborhood, or close by, to the character,” she said. “Allowing for her perspective to thrive, and make room for what she felt instinctively was right. Or have those discussions openly and without fear and say, ‘Hey, this is dramatically what would work really good, but is it really what you think would feel right for the character?’”

Har’el discussed one example, a scene in which Cleo gives testimony to a television station and ends the scene in anger, flipping a chair. Har’el took a moment on set to stop and discuss the scene with the cast. While a burst of emotion can be a great button for a scene, she wanted to avoid stereotypes or cliches. After discussion, Ingram advocated for the emotional beat, saying it felt right for the character.

This moment of collaboration is a good reminder to writers that just because something is on the page doesn’t mean it’s set in stone, and the requests of an actor or director might necessitate some quick discussion or even a rewrite. Flexibility can serve you well.

'Lady in the Lake' (2024)

Alma Har'el Always Makes Things Simple

We wanted to know about Har’el’s advice specifically for working on a mystery thriller adaptation as complicated and involved as Lady in the Lake.

“I say simplify it,” Har’el said with a laugh. “If you can. That’s what I would recommend.”

That is, she said, what she and her team actually did with this series in terms of plotlines and points of view. Although they did add a few characters to the series, they omitted plotlines that overcomplicated the series’ larger story.

“The book had probably 20 more perspectives and characters,” she said. “So it was really challenging. I would just say streamline it and figure out who [are] your heroes.”

If you’re interested in streamlining an IP, thorough and careful outlining will probably be your best bet. There are also ways to streamline your writing process from conception to execution.

Read More: How To Create a Screenwriting Process That’s Right for You

Check out our Preparation Notes so you start your story off on the right track!