Understanding God.

This week i’ve been busy converting my film screenplay of ‘Understanding God’ into a novel. It centres around a poor soul who mourned his dead wife for ten years, blaming a heartless God for taking her. He missed her so much he decided to commit suicide in order to join her. A very sad tale that happens too much in the real world…

On this particular occasion it was the straw that broke the camels, or in this case God’s back, and he was very, very angry… Angry enough to decide that if Wilson Small, to give the poor soul his name, doesn’t understand him, he will obliterate the human race and start again…

The interesting thing  I’ve found in the conversion from the screenplay are the wholesale changes in the story during the exercise.  The normal procedure is for the filmmakers to find a novel, then write a screenplay from the story. I do realise that a film script relies on the vision of a director, art designer, set designer, costume designers, actors and a myriad of other professions to bring a film script truly to life. Writing a novel is totally different!

Writing the novel is totally different from writing a film script inasmuch, in film you see the action taking place, and it’s the skill of all the professions, from the Producer and Director down to show the story, and reveal what the characters are all about, what their intentions are.

In writing the story, the characters are speaking to me… sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? I think it does, and I’ve just written that sentence… By ‘listening’ to the characters They suggest sometimes, no, I wouldn’t have done that… So… the plot develops and sometimes leads me into murky waters… For instance. If our computers are truly being monitored by ‘Others’, who are alerted by certain words used in a sentence, then my searching for ‘Devil worship, Beelzebub, Satanic rituals and human sacrifice, will have had them researching me! Because, before I wrote this novel I had very little knowledge about such things, I truly am ‘an innocent abroad, led by the characters I have created…

So… Enough of this wittering, as my partner calls it. I’ll sign off and wait expectantly till tomorrow, only then will I find out where my characters are going to transport me…