Some books seem destined for the big screen, but then there are others that translate the big screen straight onto the page. For cinephiles and audiophiles who also love to read, here is a list of ten novels across genres that directly incorporate productions into the story. In each book, the blending of regular prose with surprise performance elements–like screenplays, scripts, or transcripts–creates a highly unique reading experience.

When I Think of You by Myah Ariel

This second-chance, slow-burn romance has a juicy premise. In film school, Danny and Kaliya were brilliant together, romantically and professionally, but the romance was cut short. Many years after their difficult breakup, the two reconnect in Los Angeles. Danny is a renowned director who hires a struggling Kaliya on the spot for his new, extremely personal film project What Love Made. Twice in this story, Myah Ariel weaves in exquisitely short excerpts from the screenplay of What Love Made. These moments appear in Chapter 9 and Chapter 18 and pack a dramatic punch.

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August Lane by Regina Black

August Lane by Regina Black is a country-music love story set in a small Arkansas town. It stars August, an aspiring singer/songwriter obscured by her famous mother’s shadow, and Luke, a one-hit-wonder who returns to Arkansas for the performance opportunity of a lifetime. Before they can fall in love and resurrect their music careers, August and Luke need to face a major betrayal in their past. What’s so unique about August Lane is that an entire episode of This is Our Country, a fictional podcast, runs through the narrative in 11 interludes. The interspersed podcast segments slowly deliver a backstory that deeply affects the main characters in the present day. 

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Dominion by Addie E. Citchens

Seven of the ten chapters in this literary fiction novel open with formally typed up sermon notes. These documents that guide Reverend Sabre J. Winfrey’s words on Sundays also thematically guide each chapter they introduce. Often, the sermon notes are intricately and ironically linked to what occurs in the chapter. Of course, the on-the-nose-nature of the sermons is only revealed in retrospect, once the reader finishes the chapter and knows exactly what is going on in this small-town drama with a full cast of characters.

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You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria

The first book in the Primas of Power series, a romance trilogy by Alexis Daria, stars Jasmine and Ashton, costars on the new TV show Carmen in Charge. They fall in love as they film the first season of the show, a total of 8 episodes. Excerpts from the episode scripts are seamlessly entwined with the main narrative of the novel. Alexis Daria often aligns the dramatic arc of the individual Carmen in Charge episodes to the real-life trials and tribulations that Jasmine and Ashton experience on an off set.

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Erasure by Percival Everett

In 2023, Cord Jefferson famously adapted Erasure by Percival Everett as the movie American Fiction, starring Jeffrey Wright as Thelonius “Monk” Ellison. What’s not depicted on screen, but is prominent in the book, is Monk’s penchant for imagining conversations between famous dead authors and writing those down in his writer’s notebook. He painstakingly records the dreamed up conversations in a meticulous transcript format. 

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The 7th Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The 7th Veil of Salome is a historical fiction novel set in the Golden Age of Hollywood. It is full of drama and intrigue, which Silvia Moreno-Garcia gorgeously depicts with two intertwining narratives. The first narrative is from a documentarian’s perspective, which investigates the foul play and harassment that derailed a big-budget film about the legendary heroine Salome. The second narrative is the script from the fictional movie itself. Twisted together intricately, these two storylines slowly reveal the truth of what really happened.

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The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

A partial transcript appears in The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin as a surprise addendum, but describing it further gets into spoiler territory. The important thing to know is that this genre-bending historical fiction novel is set in New Orleans and tells the story of an underground resistance network led by Black women, both enslaved and emancipated, at the dawn of the Civil War. The transcript is an innovative element of the book that redefines the story in an awe-inspiring way.

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Reel by Kennedy Ryan

Reel is the first book in the Hollywood Renaissance series by Kennedy Ryan. This dual-POV contemporary romance novel is set in modern-day Hollywood. It tells the love story of Canon and Neevha who fall for each other during the filming of Dessi Blue, a high-budget fictional biopic that Canon directs and Neevah stars in. The novel contains nine chapters that are purely excerpts from the screenplay of Dessi Blue. These chapters are deftly interspersed into the story, giving readers a wonderful glimpse of the movie that’s being painstakingly made as the characters fall in love. 

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The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

This Pulitzer-prize winning satirical novel voiced by an unnamed, unreliable narrator examines Vietnam War era politics, culture, and events in the United States and in Vietnam. The novel plays with form and perspective and includes one small section of a movie script in Chapter 11. A lengthier script-like section occurs in Chapter 22 when the narrator has an out-of-body experience at a reeducation camp in Vietnam. 

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Interior Chinatown by Charlers Yu

This National Book Awarding-winning Hollywood satire fully commits to telling a story in the screenplay format. The entire novel is written in a screenplay style and in seven acts, a perfectly on-the-nose format for depicting the obstacles the aspiring bit actor Willis Wu encounters as he vies for a breakout role in Hollywood.

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SARA EVERETT is a book content creator who specializes in annotation tips and analysis through close reading. You can find her annotating guides and step-by-step deep dives at www.annotatewithsara.com or on Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and Threads where she is known as @annotatewithsara.