I finally finished reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell tonight. What an amazing book, I loved it – beautifully written, well crafted characters, superb plotting. Out of interest I found out a few weeks ago that New Line had the rights to the book, but as I was reading the book the same thought kept coming into my head – ‘this is unadaptable.’ There’s so much story, and it’s all quality stuff.
I mean, the book is a thousand pages long, you don’t meet one of the main characters until around page 150, and even then he doesn’t do a huge amount until a lot more story has been set up. OK, a lot of the early stuff could be cut down, but even so…
I don’t think you could pull a Lord of the Rings and do it in three parts… You could perhaps cut out some of the Wellington stuff mid story (but then that’s quality character development territory)… My mind’s hurting just thinking about it. I bet poor old Christopher Hampton is going to have a permanent headache for the next few months. Still I’m very jealous, I’d love to have a go at adapting it.
I’m not sure whether I’m looking forward to seeing the film when it comes out or not. It’ll be intriguing to see how they deal with it. It could be amazing, but it could very easily be a complete mess.
Meanwhile, my own screenplay is plodding along. It’s such a joy having got such a complete and detailed plot to work to though. I’m really getting my head round the idea this is not an art, it’s a craft. With the plot sketched out, I can see how every word I write has a knock on effect through the rest of the screenplay – it really forces you to think hard and write lean.
I’m up to page 22 now (and I’m running about two pages over already, but hey, gotta save something for the rewrites!), which is less than I’d hoped for by this stage, but Greetings is really taking up a lot of time.
Ken came round the other day with Denis the DP. We went through the latest cut of Greetings and made a few changes. It’s kinda there now, just got to sort out the sound FX and foley. I’m heading round to Darren’s tomorrow to check up on how he’s getting on with the music…
2 comments
Mike Rinaldi says:
June 3, 2007 at 8:29 am (UTC 1 )
I take that to mean you write chronologically? I’m new to screenwriting. I began on page 1 and proceeded, although I have pretty much all of it outlined. Yet, I think I will do better to skip around and write first all of those scenes that are fully developed. Then work out the rest. That seems more normal to me and I find it very interesting when I come across someone who does write their first draft chronologically.
Andy Coughlan says:
June 4, 2007 at 12:38 pm (UTC 1 )
Normally I skip around too, write some key scenes and then try to link them together, but this time I’ve done such a comprehensive effort of plotting I’m much more comfortable with writing it linearly. I know what’s got to happen and how and why, so it’s more an excercise in fleshing out the outline and making it as interesting as possible.
Having said that I’m already heading back and rewriting and changing the story as I go. The beauty is that with the plot in place it’s easy to see what knock on effect any changes I make will have.
I’m also weeding out inconsistencies and character flaws. I feel like I’m actually crafting something here, rather than just writing, which I what I think screenwriting is more about.