Anthology submitted to Kindle store

After a very intensive final 48 hours, I clicked the "Publish" button on Tuesday evening.

The anthology is available from Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon France, and many others.



We weren't expecting it to become visible on the Amazon website for 12 hours, but it was there after only about 5 hours.

We've sold considerably more than expected in this first day, and the Amazon rankings tell an encouraging story. (See below.)

Anthology

Here’s an update on where we are with the anthology.

Most selected pieces have been edited by their authors and returned to me and Diana. I was very impressed by the speed with which the contributors reviewed our comments.

One or two are still awaiting editor feedback, but we hope to have their pieces back to them by the middle of this week.

Some people have said they don’t think they’ll have time to review their feedback in time. I'm hoping they'll decide to hold their work back for the next anthology, in order to review the editors' feedback thoroughly. I've suggested to those people that, rather than just stick their piece in unreviewed, they hold back for the next anthology (which ought to follow not too long after Volume 1) and so give themselves more time. That's what I'd do. Another option is letting the editors wade in and take care of typos and punctuation slips, etc. Speaking as an editor, I'm happy with that - but as a contributor I wouldn't be, so I don't really expect anyone to go that route. All I can do is give friendly nudges, and since I’ve never gotten around to having my own work published, I’m not exactly a shining example.

We’re still on course for the provisional target publication date of 14 February. In about a week’s time (sooner if possible) I’ll send out a document to all of the contributors, with the whole ebook in it. This will be their chance to their own contributions for any errors that might have crept in since the commenting/editing stage.

I have mini-biog material for the most of the contributing authors, and have reminded the others, asking that they explicitly tell me if they don't want a biog included. I've also been encouraging  people to include information on their blogs, Facebook pages, etc.

You may already know about the A215 group which has recently published an anthology. (It’s called “Sea of Ink” and is available from Amazon. A few days ago, it featured quite high in Amazon’s “chart” (albeit in a niche category), which I find very encouraging. They’ve elected to price their one considerably higher than we have ours, so it will be interesting to see how sales figures compare over time.

We’ve confirmed with the OU that there are no rights or property problems with us publishing our TMAs, even when marketing them as work done for TMAs.

If we want to include the actual TMA wording or tutors’ comments, we need to apply for permission. I see some merit in including those things, but at this stage I think we should just leave them out so that we can get this thing published ASAP. There’s still nothing to stop us saying “For this TMA we had to produce a script” or “The word limit here was 1500” etc.

Dr Derek Neale (A363 Course Chair, co-author of both the BRB and the BBB, and published novelist in his own right) emailed us, saying our endeavour is “encapsulating the aims, ideals and spirit of the course and The Open University’s creative writing teaching” and that the anthology “offers evidence of imaginative adventure and writing output, but also testifies to the collaborative and interactive spirit of the OU writing courses.” He then added “Well done!” which almost seems redundant, but does give one a warm glow! (Or is that just me?)

OK, I saved the best for last: Feeling bold, we asked Dr Neale for permission to quote him, and he gave it! I’m not sure whether we’ll put his words on the cover, inside the anthology itself, in the product description on the Amazon website, or a combination of these, but I’m sure you’ll agree this development is a significant coup for us and can do our sales to those unfamiliar with the courses no harm at all!

Thanks, as usual, to everyone involved, especially Diana and Judith, for copy-writing, legal-eagling, editing, feedbacking, and steady stream of abuse disguised as encouragement (or is it encouragement disguised as abuse?)

I was very pleasantly surprised at how well Kindle preserved the formatting for the anthology's two scripts.

A363 TMA 06 part 2: Commentary

Why a commentary, but no creative writing? Because I'm continuing the story I developed over TMA 04, TMA 06, and the EMA as my first novel, and I'm being secretive about it! :-)
When I look back at this commentary it seems horribly stilted. The trouble was that I had so much to say and only 500 words in which to say it, so it ended up reading like notes on the back of a fag packet.
Please note that certain details have been removed for reasons of professional coyness :-)

COMMENTARY
I renamed the main characters for increased authenticity. Pronunciation of [protagonist's name] could be a problem for readers, and the word is not pretty, so I may abandon it, though [it] has traditional resonance which would be great for the character to learn about from his mentor.The story is set in [a real location] rather than a fictional [one] because I relished the prospect of researching^[1] real locations and letting characters loose in them. I will, however, try to avoid offending present-day [residents].I must take care writing about people of a different time and culture. I found Shawl and Ward’s (2011) discussion of ‘unmarked state’ helpful, and have adapted their ROAARS^[2] model to suit historical writing.

Revised plan:

• [Mysterious objects] treated as incidental at first. Their significance is revealed later.
• Main quest is finding [protagonist's] kinfolk (alive).
• [Protagonist's] call to action is realisation that he isn’t a proper member of the  [...] household. (He alone is punished for something both boys did.)
• [Sidekick's] call is, he rationalises, necessity of supervising [Protagonist]. I will show it to be more about guilt (which blossoms into loyalty.)
• Boys discover awful truth – [...] in a desolate valley.
• [Person] responsible for [that location] tries to stop the boys. His actions are less malevolent than they believe, but lead to their tragic deaths anyway, thus preserving the secret and leaving intact the history we know.

Feedback for my proposal suggested establishing the relationship between the two leads early. I have attempted this with an opening scene in which [Sidekick's] callous and condescending attitude to [Protagonist] contrasts with the latter’s naïve acceptance of this. I was advised to include an inciting incident in Chapter 1, but may not do so until Chapter 3. I’m unsure whether the shortness of my chapters mitigates this! I plan to follow the advice to include a shock before the end of the EMA. This will be the moment the boys realise, through violent turn of events, the ‘friendly’ person is trying to thwart them.

Finally, I was advised to consider the usefulness of foreshadowing. I have opened with a flash-forward to the end of the boys’ adventure. This is intended to arouse the reader’s curiosity about how the boys came to that pass, and to cast a fatalistic shadow over the story. However, I mean to give the reader such an exciting story that the flash-forward slips his mind until the final page, where he suddenly finds himself with the [pursuers] at the [showdown location], a helpless witness to the boys’ final moments.

[Word count: 516, of which 116 are Revised Plan.]

Reference
Shawl, N. and Ward, C. (2011) Writing the Other, Seattle, WA: Aqueduct Press.

---

[1] I have researched communications, timekeeping, and weather, but have yet to cover clothing/uniforms, eating habits, and occupations.
[2] ‘Race, Orientation (sexual), Age, Ability, Religion, Sex’. Because my orientation is the same as my characters’, I was able to replace ‘Orientation’ with ‘Era’. (Yeah, I know...)

A363 TMA 05

A363 TMA 05

Tutor-Marked Assignment

• Task 1: Write a 1500-word piece of fiction or life writing, or 2-7 poems totalling 80-100 lines.
• Task 2: Write a 750-word "commentary" about the process, reflecting on form, structure, and style.
• Due date: 15 March 2012
• Mark: About 86% overall. Actual mark is temporarily unavailable on a dead hard drive!

I have no idea why the line spacing changes part of the way through the commentary after being pasted into Blogger! :-/

---

 Option 1 – prose. Genre: Fiction

Title: The Three Prisoners

This story has been removed because it has now been published in the anthology Here's One I Made Earlier, available from Amazon here.

Commentary

The Three Prisoners is an extension of a true story described by a magistrate as ‘one of the most extraordinary cases that have ever been brought into a Court of Justice.’  In preparing to write it, one of the most important processes was the selective omission of details which, though arrestingly dramatic in reality, were so fantastic that they would probably have destroyed the reader’s suspension of disbelief. An additional benefit of making these omissions was that the fraudster’s crimes were not so extreme that they eclipsed the story I wanted to tell: That of three of his victims still feeling irrationally beholden to him.

Beyond the date of his conviction, the fraudster’s life is not well documented but I was not free to do as I pleased. For example, a German lady could not meet a German man from a British prison in 1917. (They would both be interned.) I therefore took a liberty with the dates, choosing December 1918 to keep the change as small as possible. This change had direct consequences for the narrative I had already written (e.g., the crowd in the Sawyer’s Arms had to find something other than the war to talk about.)

 My choice of form was no choice at all: I learned from A215 that the skill and time required for creating poetry are both far in excess of what I can supply.

My choices regarding structure and style were dictated by what I hope was logic. Firstly, since the story is intensely concerned with the perverted relationships between characters, I was keen to keep settings in the background. For this reason I deliberately avoided applying film technique to fiction, as described by Anderson (2009), to evoke settings. I did, however, mimic cinematic ‘cuts’ (Anderson, 2009) when transitioning the narrative viewpoints. I did this by establishing visual anchors (e.g., Anna’s red face, Joseph’s grin, etc) ahead of the cut and then referencing that anchor after the cut (and from the next viewpoint character’s perspective.)

Wanting a surprise ending I had to walk the tightrope between dropping in enough clues to make things fair and giving so much away that the effect was lost. My original synopsis had the travellers having a conversation into which I could insert exposition and backstories. However, I found I could not sustain this for seven or eight pages, even by ignoring my pet hate of supposedly ‘real’ people delivering narrative prose in dialogue. Therefore, I reluctantly chose to split the viewpoint between the travellers, knowing that, like flashbacks, defies the conventions of the short story form. Although my approach has an arguably positive aspect – in that ‘[unlike a movie] it probes the inner workings of the mind’ (Anderson, 2009) I am aware that it forces the story to rely rather too heavily upon the ‘telling’ of backstory which would, ideally, have been revealed better by ‘showing’.

As I already knew how I would go about ‘splicing the strands’ (Neale, 2009¹) in my final scene, the only structural issues still to be addressed were the order in which I would present those strands and how long each would be. My chief concern was maintaining the illusion that they were going to meet three different people, so I decided to separate the women’s sections by placing Joseph’s between them. I hoped to reduce the risk of the reader inferring that both women had married the same man. In order to play down the bigamy somewhat, I called the fraudster a ‘scoundrel’ in the section I heading, reserving the word ‘bigamist’ for section III. The strand lengths were influenced by my desire to avoid boring the reader. I reasoned that by the time the reader reached the third strand, the unfolding pattern would be evident, so I endeavoured to make each of the second and third strands shorter than its predecessor.

I found myself acting ‘as an impersonator, mimicking the various voices’ (Neale, 2009²) in the story by adjusting the language according to which viewpoint character I was writing for, while trying not to get too bogged down in dialect.

My last conscious style choice was made very late in the writing process: I decided to switch tenses, using the present tense to describe the viewpoint characters in the trains. I did this to reduce the danger of their past-tense reminiscences (flashbacks, in essence) being confusing to the reader. I also switched to the present tense for the final few paragraphs of action, but for a different reason: Dramatic immediacy.

[Word count: 750]

References

Anderson, L. (2009) ‘Film technique in fiction’, in D. Neale (ed) A Creative Writing Handbook, London: A & C Black
Neale, D. (2009¹) ‘Splicing the strands’, in D. Neale (ed) A Creative Writing Handbook, London: A & C Black
Neale, D. (2009²) ‘Voices in fiction’, in D. Neale (ed) A Creative Writing Handbook, London: A & C Black

A363 TMA 02

Tutor-Marked Assignment

• Task 1: Write an 15-minute adaptation of the story written for TMA 01 for stage, radio, or film.
• Task 2: Write a 500-word "commentary" about the process, describing how the task was approached, what changes to the story and characters proved necessary, etc..
• Due date: 5 January 2012
• Mark: About 87% overall. Actual mark is temporarily unavailable on a dead hard drive, but I remember that it was 1% +/- from TMA 01 mark.

Sharp-eyed readers will notice the last-accessed dates in the reference section are later than the TMA's due date. This is because I was granted a deadline extension.

I've just pasted the script into this blog page and hoped for the best. The formatting seems, but apologies are offered in advance if any layout weirdness has crept in.

---

1.      Script for film

Keeping Shtum

by Greg Withnail

Cast list:

Johanna: 55-year-old schoolmistress

Young Isaac: Johanna’s son, aged 5

Adult Isaac: Johanna’s son, aged 30

Jacob: former student of Johanna

Kurt: German non-commissioned officer

Wilfred: 70-year-old ex-serviceman

Soldier #1: 45-year-old German

Soldier #2

Soldier #3

FADE IN:

INT. PADDINGTON STATION. EVENING.

The station is crowded. A newspaper stand's sandwich board reads "MARTIN LUTHER KING ASSASSINATED."

JOHANNA waits at barrier with WILFRED. An envelope protrudes from Wilfred's breast pocket.

JOHANNA

It's late.

Wilfred squints over his glasses at the station clock. It reads half-past seven.

WILFRED

Only a couple of minutes.

JOANNA

What if I don’t recognise him?

Wilfred taps the envelope in his jacket pocket. It looks worn, as if it has been opened and closed many times. He smiles patiently.

WILFRED

The photograph he sent last week is recent.

(pause)

Look! Here it comes.

Johanna looks down the track. Train approaches.

Guard's whistle sounds. Johanna visibly jumps at the sound, and looks around.

WILFRED

Easy there, my Schätzchen.

He squeezes her hand.

Guard's whistle gives several blasts, which continue as Johanna gazes at the approaching train. On the soundtrack, the guard’s whistle is joined by the distinctive sound of a police-style whistle. All station noise fades, but the police-style whistle continues as we...

FADE TO WHITE

FADE IN:

EXT. WARSAW GHETTO. DAY.

The street is lined with run-down and boarded-up terraced houses. Some roofs are missing. The road is strewn with rubble, clothing, and other debris. Snow falls. Police-style whistle continues.

Johanna's hand is squeezing a smaller one. It belongs to YOUNG ISAAC. The pair is at the bottom of some basement steps, hiding from a passing military truck.

JOHANNA

It's gone. Come on.

She leads Young Isaac across street at a weary half-run. They reach a closed door. Young Isaac sinks to sit on the ground when Johanna releases his hand to try the door. The door is locked.

JOHANNA

(under her breath)

Oy shtup!

She grabs Young Isaac's arm and hauls him to his feet. She moves towards the next house. Young Isaac stumbles and Johanna stops to steady him.

JOHANNA

Careful, my love.

They reach a FRONT DOOR, which opens to Johanna’s push. They stumble inside and the door slams.

INT. BAKERY. DAY.

Ceilings and roof are missing. Window is boarded-up on the outside. The word "PIEKARNIA" is painted back-to-front on the glass. Front Door has a large sliding bolt on the inside. A heavy snow-covered table stands in the middle of the room. A metal bread oven is set in the rear wall. Its door is closed. Beside it is a SECOND DOOR, which has a sagging lintel. It is also closed. Snow falls.

The muted sound of a police-style whistle reaches the room intermittently throughout the scene.

Young Isaac wanders dazedly towards the table as Johanna bolts Front Door.

JOHANNA

How's your knee, my love?

(beat)

Let me see.

She crouches before Young Isaac. He stares right through her.

JOHANNA (CONT’D)

Oh!

She stifles a sob and suddenly hugs Young Isaac, rocking him as she says...

JOHANNA (CONT’D)

My baby, my baby.

YOUNG ISAAC

(mumbling, his face pressed to Johanna's chest)

Are they going to kill us Mummy?

JOHANNA

  What?

She gently pulls Young Isaac's face from her. Their eyes meet as he says...

YOUNG ISAAC

  Are they going to kill us?

JOHANNA

Of course not, my love.

(laughs unconvincingly)

They've just got orders to chase us for a while. Just to scare us.

YOUNG ISAAC

(weeps)

Johanna hugs him again.

JOHANNA

Don't cry, my love.

She kisses the top of his head.

JOHANNA (CONT'D)

They'll soon get cold and go away.

YOUNG ISAAC

I'm cold.

JOHANNA

You can wear Mummy's coat.

She stands and starts to unbutton her coat.

YOUNG ISAAC

(shivering)

Can we light a fire?

JOHANNA

They'd see the smoke. Maybe tomorrow, my love.

She takes off her coat and places it around Young Isaac's shoulders. A single gunshot sounds from a few streets away.

JOHANNA

(walking to second doorway)

Now, let's see where this leads, shall we?

She walks to Second Door and pulls at it, but it doesn't move. She pulls harder and the lintel shifts.

YOUNG ISAAC

Mummy!

Johanna looks up in time to see lintel break away from wall. Second Door buckles and splits but remains in position. Johanna stumbles back and lintel lands where she had been standing. Pause.

Johanna steps gingerly over fallen lintel and gives Second Door a gentle push.

An ominous creak is followed by a slow cascade of bricks, plaster, dust, and snow.

Johanna stumbles back and collides with Young Isaac, knocking him over. She helps him to his feet. Pause.

When the dust clears, we see Second Door is blocked.

Sound of running footsteps from outside. Johanna and Young Isaac turn to look at Front Door. Pause.

Someone knocks on Front Door. Young Isaac gasps and Johanna clamps her hand over his mouth.

Johanna and Young Isaac grip one another as the Front Door's handle turns, first one way, then the other.

JOHANNA

(slowly removing her hand from Young Isaac's mouth)

Shhh!

Clutching Young Isaac, she backs away from Front Door without taking her eyes off it.

Front Door is kicked from outside. Johanna and Young Isaac start again. Johanna looks around, frantically.

Another kick makes Front Door rattle in its frame.

JOHANNA

(lifting Young Isaac)

Come on.

She carries Young Isaac to the oven and sets him down gently.

Another kick to Front Door makes its bolt begin to break away. Sporadic kicking sounds continue till end of scene.

Johanna pulls open the oven door, revealing the frozen corpse of a small child within. Johanna flinches.

JOHANNA

Close your eyes, my baby. Close your eyes.

Face screwed up with distaste, Johanna pulls the corpse from the oven and sets it gently on the floor. She gags. Pause.

JOHANNA

Keep those eyes closed.

(stoops to pick up Young Isaac)

Time to play hide and seek.

She gently places Young Isaac in oven. She tries to climb into the oven but it is too high. With difficulty, she drags the table over to the oven, and uses it to climb inside. As she does so, a crack appears in the wall between Second Door and oven.

INT. OVEN. DAY.

Johanna and Young Isaac are squashed together, doubled-up, knees touching faces. Bakery interior visible without.

Johanna reaches out and manages to pull the oven door closed. The oven is plunged into darkness. Johanna and Young Isaac are barely discernible.

INT. BAKERY. DAY.

Johanna's fingers release the oven door and disappear from view. Immediately, the oven door starts to swing open.

Johanna grabs the door and pulls it closed again. This time she keeps hold of it.

With a crash, Front Door bursts open.

INT. OVEN. DAY.

The oven's interior is dark. Johanna and Young Isaac are squashed together. Their eyes are wide. Johanna is leaning awkwardly, holding the oven door closed.

Sound of Front Door being closed. Sound of panting. Pause.

Sound of footsteps. Pause.

Sound of table being dragged across floor. Pause.

Sound of footsteps rapidly approaching.

The oven door is flung open.

INT. BAKERY. DAY.

The police-style whistles sound close. They continue till end of scene.

Visible in the oven, Johanna clutches Young Isaac protectively, her face buried in his hair.

JOHANNA

(whimpers)

(pause)

She lifts her face and sees JACOB standing there. Table is now against inside of Front Door.

JOHANNA

(very relieved)

Jacob?

(laughing)

Jacob Eckstein?

JACOB

Let me in!

JOHANNA

There's no room.

Sound of shouting from without.

JACOB

Please!

Jacob tries to climb into the impossibly small space with Johanna and Young Isaac.

JOHANNA

There's no room! Don’t be stupid.

She tries to push Jacob away with her foot. He topples backwards, holding her foot, pulling her after him. They hit the floor together. Pause, while they wait to see whether they have been heard.

Sound of door being broken down in the house next door.

Johanna starts to get up, but Jacob is quicker. He kicks Johanna in the ribs then stamps on her spine. She collapses face-down in the slush. Jacob grabs Young Isaac's foot and tries to pull him from the oven. Isaac wriggles free and curls up into a ball.

Johanna staggers to her feet. She grabs Jacob's arm and pulls him away from the oven.

Sound of Front Door handle being turned.

Door opens an inch and is stopped by table.

JACOB

(screams)

Johanna releases Jacob. He runs to Second Door and starts to claw at the rubble that blocks it.

There is a crash from Front Door – someone outside is throwing their weight against it. The table shifts a couple of inches.

Jacob has made a small gap and starts to wriggle though it. More cracks appear in the wall.

Another crash at the door pushes the table another inch.

Johanna stands in the middle of the room. She looks at Young Isaac, then at Jacob, and then at Front Door. She wrings her hands.

The section of wall above Jacobs suddenly collapses, killing him instantly.

KURT (O.S.)

Schnell!

Another crash at the door pushes the table several more inches.

Johanna stops wringing her hands. She runs to the oven and leans inside.

INT. OVEN. DAY.

JOHANNA

Stay here and keep quiet.

ISAAC

Okay.

Sound of crash against door.

JOHANNA

No matter what happens. You hear?

ISAAC

Yes.

Johanna kisses him and closes the oven door.

INT. BAKERY. DAY.

JOHANNA

Hold this.

Young Isaac's fingers appear at the bottom edge of the door and grasp it.

Johanna picks her way over the heap of rubble and sits near the protruding legs of Jacob.

JOHANNA

(weeps)

FADE

FADE IN

EXT. WARSAW GHETTO. EVENING.

Two military trucks stand at the end of the street. Distant police-style whistles sound intermittently throughout scene.

SOLDIER #1 waits by the open Front Door. He wears spectacles and a non-regulation scarf. His hands are wrapped in rags. He wears a rifle on a sling.

Soldier #1 shivers and hugs himself.

Johanna enters street through Front Door, pushed by Kurt. Soldier #1 straightens.

As Kurt takes Johanna towards the trucks, she looks back at Front Door.

Soldier #1 follows Johanna's gaze. Johanna quickly looks away.

Johanna and Kurt arrive at First Truck. Kurt helps Johanna climb into back, then bangs his hand against truck's side. Pause.

The truck's engine starts. Kurt climbs into back of truck.

INT. FIRST TRUCK. EVENING.

A dozen prisoners sit on two fixed benches that run the length of the interior. Johanna is among them. Kurt sits near the open back of the truck.

Truck begins to move. Johanna stares out of the open back of the truck. Suddenly, she tenses.

JOHANNA

(whispering)

No!

EXT. WARSAW GHETTO. EVENING.

Soldier #1 moves to Front Door. He pauses, then steps inside.

INT. FIRST TRUCK. EVENING.

Johanna stands and takes a step towards back of truck.

JOHANNA

No!

Kurt seizes Johanna and shoves her back into her seat.

EXT. WARSAW GHETTO. EVENING.

Front Door is now closed. The snow has stopped. We hear  truck driving away.

INT. BAKERY. EVENING.

Sound of truck fades. Soldier #1 stands immobile just inside the closed Front Door. He slowly takes in the missing roof, the blocked Second Door, and the table. When he notices the frozen corpse, he grimaces and averts his eyes. Finally, he looks at the oven door.

He hurriedly unslings his rifle and takes a step forward.

He squints over his spectacles, peering at the bottom edge of the oven door. Tiny fingers are visible, holding the door in position.

Soldier #1 looks down at his rifle. Pause. He puts it down, leaning it against Front Door.

He moves forward till level with table. Pause.

He removes his scarf, and lays it on the table.

EXT. WARSAW GHETTO. EVENING.

Front door opens and Soldier #1 emerges. His rifle is slung over his shoulder. He is not wearing his scarf.

He looks warily up and down the street before pulling Front Door closed and moving towards Second Truck.

FADE OUT

FADE IN:

EXT. STREET OUTSIDE WARSAW STATION. NIGHT.

First Truck is departing. Kurt, Joanna, and the other prisoners are on the pavement.

SOLDIER #2 and SOLDIER #3 enter street from ticket hall and escort the prisoners inside.

Kurt lights a cigarette and strolls off down the street, past a sign. The sign reads "SS-Kaserne" and points in the direction Kurt is going.

A distant train whistle sounds.

Second Truck pulls up.

EXT. PLATFORM, WARSAW STATION. NIGHT

Several soldiers stand about near the ticket office door, looking bored. A steam locomotive and line of boxcars stand on the track. The door of the boxcar nearest the engine is open. The boxcar is pretty packed with prisoners, but obviously not as full as it could be. A trio of soldiers waits beside each of the other boxcars.

Johanna and her fellow prisoners enter from ticket hall. Soldier #2 and Soldier #3 follow, and herd them to the open boxcar.

As Johanna climbs into the boxcar, Soldier #1 enters from the ticket hall and joins Soldier #2 and Soldier #3.

Guard's whistle sounds. We hear shouted orders in German.

Soldier #1, Soldier #2, and Soldier #3 haul the boxcar's sliding door closed, then climb onto the small gantry at the rear of the car.

INT. BOXCAR. NIGHT.

The prisoners stand shoulder to shoulder. A baby cries.

Johanna stares in the direction of the ticket hall through a gap in the boxcar door. Her eyes brim with tears.

Train whistle sounds.

The train lurches and the boxcar's occupants stumble, trying to keep upright. Johanna is bumped and jostled as we...

FADE TO WHITE

FADE IN:

INT. PADDINGHTON STATION. EVENING.

Johanna is blinking away tears as disembarked passengers push past her.

ADULT ISAAC is suddenly standing in front of her, holding a suitcase. He is smartly dressed, in hat and scarf. No one speaks. Pause.

Adult Isaac drops the suitcase. He and Johanna embrace.

JOHANNA

(whispering)

My baby, my baby.

Wilfred watches, smiling. He too has moist eyes.

Adult Isaac releases Johanna and turns to Wilfred. The two men face each other for several seconds. Pause.

Without breaking eye contact, Adult Isaac slowly unwinds the scarf from his neck. It is rather old and thread-bare. Reverently, he folds it, then hands it to Wilfred.

With obvious effort, Wilfred replaces his smile with a serious expression. He accepts the scarf and bows slightly with military neatness.

FADE OUT

[Performance time: 14 minutes, 40 seconds]

2.      Commentary

The Assessment Booklet suggests that the choice of medium should be made early. (2011, p.31) While feedback from other students suggested film would be appropriate, I was convinced initially that the one-room setting was perfectly suited to stage.

My original story had little dialogue, so I feared I might struggle to fill 15 minutes. I took heart after reading Neale's advice that "much of the action of your script should be revealed through pictures." (2009, p.116), but felt that submitting 14 minutes' worth of cinematic directions would not benefit me as a writer or invite a good mark. Knowing that padding dialogue would only damage its pace, I needed an extra dimension for the story. I reasoned that if the existing story succeeded in exciting a viewer, then he/she would probably wonder whether parent and child ever saw each other again. Once I had decided to show them being reunited, I decided to give the audience one more surprise by reintroducing the merciful German soldier, in whom some interest had been shown on a tutor group forum (Chang, 2011). I changed his name so someone who had read the original story might still enjoy the screenplay's surprises. I think this is a legitimate and even worthy technique in adaptations for screen. The decision to replace Isaac's father with his mother was necessary in order to make the long-term association with Wilfred more credible; the audience is supposed to assume they are married by 1968. (Incidentally, the new structure demanded some thought regarding dates and ages, so that the younger Wilfred would not be instantly recognisable¹.)

I added the Warsaw Station scene partly to put Johanna in a place where she could be jostled back to the future, and partly so that I could show Soldier #1 and his colleagues depart on her train and thereby suggest a custodial continuity that might make post-war association more possible.

Having opted to position the main story as a flashback, I was forced to reconsider my chosen medium. Film now seemed the logical choice, though it meant breaking up the long scenes to avoid the pitfalls discussed by McKee (1999, p.291 cited Neale 2009, p.121) It was also a choice I was happy with, simply because I have seen many more films than stage plays.

Sadly, choosing a familiar medium did not make my first attempt at screenwriting easy. I struggled quite a lot with the formatting and style of the script. Having heard so much advice on producing correct novel typescripts, I was slow to realise that the "rules" for scripts are less strict and universal. For example, Neale (2009, pp. 125 & 127) gives two very different example layouts for the same film script. My final draft reflects an attempt to balance various styles and incorporates the occasional technical element drawn from sources other than the course materials. (For example, the sample script by Buffini (2009), on the BBC's Writers Room website, encouraged me to use the "he" and "she" in directions.)

 [Word count: 500]

Footnotes

1.      On 5 April 1968, Adult Isaac is 30, Wilfred is 70, and Johanna is 55

On 19 February 1943, Young Isaac is 5, Wilfred is 45, and Johanna is 30.

(References below)

References

Buffini, M. (2009). Tamara Drewe [online]. Available from:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/insight/downloads/scripts/tamara_drewe.pdf [Updated 20 October 2009: Accessed 12 January 2012]

Neale, D. (2009) ‘Writing films’, in D. Neale (ed) A Creative Writing Handbook, London: A & C Black

Chang, D. (8 November 2011) ‘Re. Three apologies and a thank you’, forum message on TMA and EMA work-in-progress. Available from: http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/forumng/discuss.php?d=755153

[Accessed 12 January 2012]