Any fiction writer knows how painstaking and painful a full-length novel can be in the writing process. By nature, I’m a plotter with the heart of a pantser. When approaching a story, I block out the course of events, a beat sheet of sorts, from beginning to end, typically in the form of chapters. Before embarking on the writing, I decide how many chapters each book will include. Two books out of five in “The Miriam Chronicles” series are currently published. This year, the first novel, “Unearthing Christmas,” got some attention from literary agents who deemed it quite suitable for a screen version. Yet, I’d already visualized a movie script since I started the story years ago as a screenplay and abandoned it to write the novel.
But the idea of a screenplay remained behind the curtains until I moved it back to center stage for several reasons. I had completed a screenplay version in 2020 during year one of the pandemic. It was a means to balance out the tremendous task of completing revisions to “The Years In Between” as Book 2 in “The Miriam Chronicles” series. But I knew the “Unearthing Christmas” screenplay was a first draft in every respect and needed reworking.
Adapting a book into a script, especially when the author is the writer of both mediums, presents several challenges. How faithful should the story be to its source material? What aspects of the book may detract from the movie? And, finally, should the author also be the screenwriter? Of course, the first two questions need to be considered through the lens of the audience member. Some books have such a huge following that they dictate how the movie will be told and who will embody the main characters. One such book, once considered the Great American Novel, and remains so in some circles, is Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize winner “Gone with the Wind.” The deceitful, conniving, self-willed yet courageous heroine, Scarlett O’Hara, prompted an exhaustive search for her incarnation that led to the inarguably perfect manifestation in Vivian Leigh. Rhett Butler, Scarlett’s roguish match, was played by Clark Gable already a well-known heart throb for moviegoers. Reader expectations, with over a million copies sold in its first year, obviously dictated how the film was developed. And no one can argue that Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable were as close to the book’s main characters as humanly possible.
But when an obscure book is adapted the stakes aren’t as high, right? There’s more room for interpretation which ultimately ends up with the film being loosely adapted or not as faithful to the original story. I think most if not all authors have clear notions of their characters physical, mental and emotional makeup. If they don’t, they should! My characters in the first two novels lived with me for several years. I knew how they would react to a situation. And I could tell you what actors would best capture them physically, at least the main characters. For instance, in “Unearthing Christmas,” I knew that Lori Hopkins would have to be played by a perky yet ethereal red-head with maybe a light sprinkle of freckles on her nose, nothing too obvious. And my first choice was Sadie Sink from “Stranger Things,” until, well, she’s outgrew the role of a fourteen-year-old. Luckily, I immediately reimagined her younger sister, Jacey Sink, now twelve, among other preteens who could play the role in a few years if the story is developed for film.
But, for the most part, I feel I’m too close to the novel to do a movie version full justice. I selected what I thought to be the most visual scenes and added a few more not in the book. But I’d missed the mark on some of the dialogue that didn’t match what actually happened in the script. For instance, I mentioned that one of the family members had seen the ghost-like figure that appeared to the main character. But earlier, I’d mentioned that she never appeared in their house, which is where the other family member saw her. How did I miss that one? Most likely, I was following the book and not paying attention to the details of each scene. I should have put the book aside while writing the script instead of referring back to it sporadically. What resulted was a disjointed attempt to capture a story that had captured my imagination when writing but needed an unbiased retelling.
So, as of now, the script is put away. I’m not ready to look at it anytime soon. Why? For many reasons, but mainly because I don’t know what to change and what to keep. And I’m ready to hear from other creatives their ideas of how the story should be told on the screen. I remain open to these new thoughts because I know I’m too close to the source. I only hope that I can discern what should remain faithful and what is too far afield from my original intention. At its heart, “Unearthing Christmas” is about forgiveness, first of oneself and then of those who disappoint us. And the key is not to wait to say “I’m sorry” for the chance may never come again. If those messages come through, and the essence and theme of the story is preserved, I’m fine with a reimagined version. What a great gift that would be, rewrapped in a new package!!