Tempus Fugit ...

Whaddayamenitsnovember? Where did October go? It's been a busy month, A Baltic Affair is making progress, the editor, publisher and I are getting there. There's some more to do on it, but we're over the hump.

More challenging is creating a movie script. That has been a learning curve possibly equivalent to climbing a rock face with borrowed equipment. The first thing I've had to learn is to limit the number of characters included in the story. I'll be honest, its something I'd never actually considered. In a book you can have a whole population, in a screen play you want in order - 

  • the hero
  • the baddie
  • supporters for the hero and the baddie
  • something attention grabbing which shows off the hero's strengths and weaknesses, and
  • something climactic which suggests the baddie gets what's coming to him ...

It's a challenge, as it means trying to take the character out of your story, cherry-picking scenes from the book and cutting out almost every character, while playing up the baddies. As was pointed out to me, if it's a SciFi movie, it basically has to have a hero (flawed) an anti-hero type as a foil for the hero, a really bad baddie, lots of aliens, some cute robots and lots of fighting. If you can include some love interest and rivalry between the hero, the anti-hero and the baddie while you're at it ... Winner.

I'm now on Version 2 Draft 4 of the script. I think the description will end up being 'based on the book' rather than 'of the book.' The 'hero,' is still Harry Heron, but he's having to become an older, brasher and less thoughful version of himself. Some of the minor characters are assuming a larger role and some of those I originally gave more space to in the books have almost vanished. Then I've had to introduce a couple of alien species and some robots. Plus a few 'bunnies' to serve as cannon fodder for the baddies.

As I said, it has been a learning curve, but I think I'm getting close to that final sprint to the top ...

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