On Sunday I went to a panel/conversation with theater directors. There was a discussion over calling a play “text” or a “script”, and which is more accurate. One of the directors referred to a play as a poem open for interpretation. Which is, after all, the job of the director. To interpret the work of the playwright. Some playwrights exert more control over the process than others–Edward Albee approves casting of his work. And the Beckett estate has strict rules for the productions of his work, though he has been dead for decades. In the theater, the playwright is the center of the process. Everyone else works on the interpretation of the work, guided by the director. But another director, another time, another theater company, the play can be revisited or rethought. Which is what makes theater a living art form.
The other day I was driving and listening to an interview with Sue Grafton on NPR. She was talking about her Kinsey Millhone books, and how she has refused to let them be made into a movie. Her reason was three fold. First, producers buy the rights to characters, not stories, so the movie wouldn’t be faithful to the novels. Second, her readers had their image of Kinsey, and any casting would upset someone. Let her live in people’s heads. And third, she had adapted work for Hollywood, and knew what that process was. So she decided to keep her novels novels.
A friend of mine, a wonderful poet, takes some of her long form poetry and redacts it. She literally blacks out large portions of the text, honing it down to a chosen few words. Some of these redactions completely change the meaning of the original work. Others bring out a heartbreaking truth that had been layered over by words.
I am a consumer of words. Plays. Books. Poems. Screenplays. Short stories. Lately I have been thinking a lot about how important it is to respect the form. Musicals made into movies, books made into plays, plays made into TV shows. . .this cross fertilization has been happening forever. But with a critical eye, does it always work? Does the second incarnation play homage to the original, or does it usurp it? Is Shakespeare ever as good on a screen as it is on stage? (I can argue either side on that.) Am I glad that Kinsey Millhone won’t be a movie character? When I think of Stephanie Plum, I say yes. But when I think of James Bond, I wonder. And speaking of Bond–who saw Skyfall? I am still pondering, but it may be my favorite Bond movie. And I wonder if it is because it is a new story that also plays homage to the source material.
I recently saw a play that had been adapted from a novel. In my opinion, it didn’t work. The adaptation was too faithful to the novel. It needed to be cut, and adapted into the new form, that of a play.
Sometimes, often, I have an idea for one form, and then when I start working, the form doesn’t fit. A short story wants to be a novel, or a novella. Or an idea for a novel works as an outline, but when I am working on it, it barely hangs together as a synopsis. I am not a poet, but of late I feel compelled to try. So what to do–fight the work and keep trying to fit it to the form? Or admit defeat and adapt?
Do some of your ideas feel like they would fit better in a different form?
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J.A. Hennrikus is the 2013 President of Sisters in Crime New England and the ED of StageSource. Her short story, “The Pendulum Swings, Until It Doesn’t” was published in Level Best Books Blood Moon last fall.
You answered this question perfectly for me. It’s a case-by-case basis for anything I’m creating. I believe there are points where the work becomes possessed with a life of its own and grows bigger than the artist (or director, or actor); often it “barley hangs together” no matter how hard I work at development and interpretation and try to force it into a particular form.
I’ve experimented with forcing and fighting and adapting and felt a tremendous amount of defeat and frustration. Lately, I’ve been approaching my writing with an attitude of acceptance BEFORE I start to write anything down. Without expectation. This takes the pressure off and seems to be helping me flow better. Let ideas dictate their own form. In the end, it’s more helpful when it comes time for revisions as well, because I’m not shoving the work into a box that’s too big or small for it.
So much truth in this post.
I love the idea of acceptance from the outset, and will try it as I am wrestling with a short story deadline. Invariably, my short stories want to be novellas. I just need to let that happen.
Thanks for your comment!
Or, you could take Deborah’s approach when she recently wrote that post about getting rid of everything and starting over! Oh, the pain we go through in every form! LOL
Or, you can try writing in a new form. Often, my plays start as poems. It’s hard for me to sit down and Write A Play, so I start in another form. And when I can’t take dialogue anymore, it’s a releif to find my way back to prose (although I’m sure I couldn’t sit down and write a story (or a poem)) if I told myself that was the assignment at hand). Switching forms is a litmas test for me, my way of knowing if I’m pushing to hard at the form instead of focusing on the kernal of image, story, or emotion at the heart of what i’m writing. . .and many times I start by writing a letter to. That way, no matter how the day’s work go, I know that my writing has touched someone I love.
I like this approach Naomi. Never thought about trying it that way. Will have to give it a go!
Thanks for this post. I love the letter prompt. And I need to back into a poem, but on occasion, that is where I end up.
I am new at screenwriting but I have a book – it’s finished but just doesn’t work. The idea is great and complicated but I see it in images. So I’m re-writing it as a screenplay and suddenly, it just clicked. The book has come alive and my characters are running through the story. The question is whether I can write it back into a book from the screenplay.
Or if I even need to.
It will be interesting to see where the form takes you–if the screenplay is what it wants to be, or if it helps work out the plotting. I find screenplays next to impossible (I am such a prose person) but love this journey.
I love this conversation! And it goes even deeper, within the form/genre of a piece as well. Which form of poem, play, story. Are we talking sonnets here? Narration? Historical hopscotch? The more I read–and the more I read the work that pushes the boundaries (prose poems, poem-plays, lyrical fiction, and that big lump currently labeled “creative non-fiction”), the more I realize it’s the heart of the work that needs to be honest/compelling/alive.
As writers, we need to pay attention, yes, but also trust that each piece we write will find its form. I find my writing (mostly poetry) necessarily needs time for fermentation, which includes that tricky shape-shifting phase. Like those under-paintings restorers find when they x-ray great works of art, I like to think the shadows of earlier form informs the end result, or at least ferries it to another exciting place.
And I love the letter writing idea! Yes, yes, yes!
I agree–you can drill down so far on what this is. I have changed POVs in a piece, and changed the whole thing. Thanks for the comment!
Mmm. I always think of script as dialogue with background scenery and actions explained as it happens and written for either play, or movie. But then, how would you explain the dialogue part for a pantomime? Text is more generalized.
I find screenplays to be very challenging–keeping the narrative moving without offering back story. That said, some work is very dialogue heavy, and pretty close to the whole thing. Thanks for commenting!
I agree.
Seems to me everything depends on the particular story. I’d like to see my novels as a TV series, even though I know a series couldn’t be completely faithful to my books.
I cast all of my stories as well. Helps me picture my characters. And also helpful for dramatic structure sometimes. Thanks for commenting!