I should be starting work next week. Doing lawn maintenance, this should keep me in shape, keep me sane and having money is always a good thing when you don’t have it. I am going to save as much money as I possibly can. When I tell people I want to move away from Minneapolis, they don’t seem to understand, and then I mention the weather situation, and that the weather – -literally, the weather, is what is keeping me from staying. I need to be some place warm. The weather really affects me in a chaotic way.
I ran five miles on Monday, which surprised me because only two days before I was boozing it up, smoking and drinking. My comic book is near to completion, the final page count should be close to forty seven pages. I still have much more paper in the sketch book to elaborate on some of the stories, but as they stand now it’s very direct, terse, economized in its use of the page.
Trying to adapt a book into a screenplay. This new venture is exciting. I’m taking someone else’s story and interpreting it. I am becoming the new author. I have accumulated two other books by the author, Charles Willeford, in order to gain more insight into the man’s voice, the cadence of his words & language.
At the moment I am creating a synopsis for each chapter. When I have all of the chapters completed, I will look at the story in its entirety. From there, I will compress the story in some places where needed, cut and condense certain character’s appearances, tool with the notion of dialogue, and ultimately replace the film noir narration with visuals. I thought I would start off with a simple story, one which, while it has its complexities in its characters’ lives, is graceful in its plot. There really isn’t a plot, which is why I liked the book. The book isn’t like most crime fiction, where the story is propelled by action or situations (stick-up, bank heist, murder, mysteries, etc.), the story is propelled through character. I can definitely relate to the characters in this story also, which is another reason – most likely the best – I have chosen this one to rewrite.
The original story takes place in the 1950’s, but, after reading my synopsises I will look for the differences in jobs, location, economy, language, etc., and update it to be current. This is the new script I’m working on. The last four feature scripts I’ve written have all been original, of course taking bits and pieces of my influences and sliding them in, so this will be a first. A good exercise for future writing, an excellent opportunity for the time being.
