So, for a long time, I’ve been thinking about adapting some of my plays into short stories and novels and I’ve finally decided to stop thinking about it and do it.
One of those stories, Elvis is Dead, is an adaptation of my short play Elvis is Dead and I have to say it was great fun to figure out how to adapt the play into a short story.
Elvis is Dead: Saving the universe takes time.
Time travellers Dr. Fred Bunson and Commander Robert Frump have travelled back in time to retrieve a lost book and save the universe but when things don’t go as planned librarian Sally Knowlton comes to the rescue.
Devil of a Christmas: Not every life is so wonderful.
When George Bailey finds himself scheduled for a lobotomy on Christmas Eve 1949 at Fairview Asylum two demons, by the name of Monica Lynch and Frank Badger, show up with a tempting offer.
Part of the fun comes in the expanded world of the novel and short story because I can dive into the heads of the characters which barring long Shakespearian soliloques isn’t something regularly done on stage. Although, I do have a fondness for one man shows like Six Guitars by Chase Padgett or Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan, with Johnny Donahoe or Letters from Wingfield Farm by Dan Needles with Rod Beattie where one actor tells a story directly to the audience and can, as the character, tell the audience exactly what they are thinking.
So, my collection of short stories is currently a work in progress. The exact number of stories and the order of the stories and how many adaptations of my plays and how many original stories not based on my plays will be included is some months – if not years away. The focus of the collection will be comedy since much of what I write is comedy and some of my favourite novels are things like The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams or Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut but most novels I find aren’t as funny as a movie or television shows and I have a theory about that.
I think that in a play or movie you have mostly dialogue and the dialogue is set up and punchline. So, we laugh. Whereas I find in novels the set up and punchline are often separated by deep dives into inner thoughts, or flashbacks to different places and times, or descriptions designed to set the scene. Of course, this can add a great deal of humour to a novel and you can always have the character saying one thing and thinking another which adds another level of humour. But I think for the most part prose adds a lot of padding around the jokes. Maybe that’s why I like The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy so much. It started out as a radio play and so even the books are dialogue heavy which means they still deliver the set up and punch lines without a lot of padding.
