Adaptation

My adaptation project is due in on the 7th April. That's less than three weeks. I started it this weekend. More time would probably have been useful but I had script stuff to work on and, before that, my anthology submission. I shouldn't really have spent so much time on the anthology piece, since there's no marks in it, but it was important to me.

Anyway. My adaptation has now been started. I'm taking a short story from Christopher Coakes excellent We're In Trouble and turning it into a screenplay. I read the story again last night. It's amazing what a difference intent makes. Since beginning the MA, I've become more aware of how things need to be represented on script and on the screen. As I read there's another layer of thought on top of the one that's just reading. It's more active. It sits there examining each sentence, scene and event and imagines how they could be shown on screen (or perhaps re-ordered). So on the one hand you have my worry that I can't possibly do such a great story justice, but at the same time there's this great sense of fun and playfulness. I think it comes from the story and characters already having been written...