Page 90 - Student: dazed And Confused

successfully because they showed exactly what was happening in the story but made us (the
audience) see things in a different way. Maybe we saw a different layout to a room, or a
different design to the city. The writers have considered all of these factors and paid close
attention to the book.
What we see on screen will immediately, almost always, seem to be exactly what is
in the book. And to some extent it is. But, as in the previous exercise, the original text can
be very vague. As I have already said, it is your job to flesh the vagueness out and bring it to
life.

Exercise: make a list of all the books and novella you can think of that have been

turned to another form. Then rewrite a section of the least visual and make it more so.

*

Your adaptation will not always be from book to film (though it is very likely). It
could be from radio to poem, script to song, life history to TV screen.
It is obviously more difficult to make a picture if people cannot physically see it - if it is not
on a screen or stage - but this is the test of a good adaptor from a great one. If you can

create the same picture on a mind of somebody listening to the radio as you would of
somebody watching a film, you've made it.

Soon, Rebecca took her fingers out of the water
and went away. Bubbles rose rapidly to the
surface as Brian started breathing again and swam back out into the open.
The strange girl either
didn't feed him or fed him too much, depending
on what kind of mood she was in, but he was still getting fatter because his

scales didn't fit any more.
If the fish hadn't had the time to go and hide in
the castle, Rebecca would catch him and take him
out of the bowl. Fish can't breathe properly in the open air but Rebecca
thought that it was so much
fun to watch her beloved Sparky struggle for air.
The moment the goldfish swam out, Rebecca
popped up from somewhere and whipped him out
of the water with one hand, quicker than you can

say Brian is a fish. Why a person would want to
say that, no-one knows.
"There you are you little worm."