Friday Forays In Fiction: Script Frenzy Week 2

Early this week I reached a count of 25 script pages. And then stalled out. I had run out of the easy stuff to adapt from my short story--the dialog and the straightforward action. That accounts for about one third of the word count of the short story and probably less than that of the relevant content of the story. At least another third of the story was related as interior monologue and memories of one of the characters. Adapting these parts to script is going to be harder and take more thought. Keeping that most essential aspect of play writing in mind: only what can be seen and heard can be scripted. In a few cases I might be able to take a line or two of Faye's interior monologue and incorporate it into regular dialog. In a few other places I can use the voice-over technique. And there is also the backflash. But I'm sure it is a tricky balance to use those techniques without making the story and/or the characters seem clunky and forced and just plain not credible.

One thing I know for sure is that it would be completely out of character for Faye to say aloud much, if any, of the thoughts I originally put into her interior monologues. And yet there is so much of the essentials of story incorporated in them--background, motivation.

Thinking about my story this way is giving me insights into the story and into the characters. And it is also making me second-guess myself in regards to a long ago finished story Because when I find a way that seems to work at translating what is on the page of the short story into what might work on a screen I start to wonder if I shouldn't just change the short story version to reflect what works for the script. I have to keep reminding myself that I am adapting an existing story into a different format not rewriting it.

Note: I'm adapting the first of my FOS story world stories, Of Cats and Claws and Curiosities. I'm thinking of moving on to the second short story featuring Faye, her twin sister Julia and sister-in-law Wilma, Making Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes. That story is more than twice as long and I should be able to garner another fifty sript pages just by focusing on the sections with dialogue and straight forward action sequences. And maybe by then I'll have also garnered more insight into this process so as to have a better idea how to approach the issues now flummoxing me.