 Nim's Island movie update
This is not an April Fool joke: the Nim's Island movie outline is finished, and everyone is happy with it. Hooray!
The outline is a detailed summary of everything that happens in the movie, except that there's no dialogue and not much description of exactly how the characters do something. So it might say, "Nim sits down and talks to Fred," but not whether she climbs up onto a rock to sit down, or slides down to the beach, or what she says - those things will all be filled in in the script, or screenplay. However the outline was still over twenty pages long, and was even more work than that sounds! It was also printed out in different colours, so you could see which different part of the story or which characters were important in different places.
So I'm learning a lot - and one of the biggest things is just how different working on a movie script is from working on a book. Of course part of the reason it's different is because I'm not doing the writing - I'm consulting, which really means that I get to talk to (or email, mostly) the script writers a lot, and hear what they're doing, say what I think about it (which is mostly, "Wow!") and suggest ideas that I think might help tell the story. One of the other things is that when I'm writing a book I do it all by myself; when it's nearly ready the editor reads, criticises and suggests changes, and I rewrite it... but that's very different from talking about it with other people right at the start.
What makes it so much fun is working with people who love this book and know it almost better than I do, but are good at looking at how to tell the story in a different way. And of course I get to play with the characters I love, all over again - what a bonus!
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happy reading
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 go back to Wendy's Diary index
Previous entries in Wendy's Diary:
2004 entries:
Is writing relevant? (March 4, 2004)
Jack Henry and Finn up for award (February 1, 2004)
Getting closer! (January 4, 2004)
2003 entries:
Ups and downs (December 3, 2003)
Some tips for sending mail (November 5, 2003)
Young writers and the power of the Internet (October 7, 2003)
A flurry of winds (September 3, 2003)
Waste paper baskets and delete buttons (August 6, 2003)
Cross your fingers (July 1, 2003)
Writing is a very strange job (June 3, 2003)
Looking at life from different angles (April 17, 2003)
On name changes and beach walks (March 4, 2003)
Spook's Shack comes to life! (February 10, 2003)
A writer's Christmas (January 4, 2003)
2002 entries:
On Christmas in Australia, and new translations (December 1, 2002)
Seeing my story through another's eyes (November 1, 2002)
All this and writing too! (October 3, 2002)
An interesting month (September 9, 2002)
Back to normal life (August 5, 2002)
Following in Ruth's footsteps (July 1, 2002)
First day of winter (June 17, 2002)
Spook's Shack is off to the editor! (May 8, 2002)
Do ghosts like Country and Western music? (April 1, 2002)
Autumn in Australia (March 1, 2002)
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