Writing, adaptations and public speaking

This essay was inspired by a private correspondence I have been having with another writer. I realized my experience might be helpful to others and so I decided to make this into a blog post.

Every writer has specific strengths and weaknesses. The differences are as different as the writers themselves and their own life experiences. Back when I was in high school I was a member of our forensics team. In this context, forensics means public speaking and has nothing to do with autopsies.

Being involved in competitive public speaking not only helped me develop self confidence, but it enhanced my own inherent flair for drama, working within time limits and knowing how to engage an audience. I was involved with three different categories during my four years of competition. In my freshman year I was a member of our "multiple." Multiple Interpretation is a category for a group of speakers (between three to eight) and our selection was to be between ten and fifteen minutes in length. We were not allowed to have physical or eye contact with one another. The only props allowed were stools and scripts.

The selection we used during my freshman year was a script from an episode of the old television series "The Twilight Zone." The story was "Monsters are due on Maple Street" and it dealt with space aliens causing the residents in a small American town to turn on each other.

Being part of a multiple meant that I was part of a team effort to succeed. It was similar to a mini-play competing onstage against other mini-plays. Everyone involved in that year's multiple was a first year member of the team and we practiced everyday after school for months working on our performances and our timing. We made the final round in tournaments a few times and even placed second in one invitational, but we did not do as well as we had hoped.

One aspect of being on the forensics team is that our coach had a large filing cabinet with hundreds of scripts. Some had been used in previous years and were considered "winning scripts" that were to be inherited by a new generation of team members. Those proven scripts were outnumbered by ones purchased from a catalog and had never been read before being put in a file.

My sophomore year I was able to change categories and tried my hand at Humorous Interpretation. That was a solo competitive event where the speakers would rotate two different comedic scripts that were five to eight and a half minutes in length. I spent the summer looking for my own selections and settled on editing an essay from one of Erma Bombeck's books and a short story from Shirley Jackson. I was okay, but my talents were not really suited for that category.

In my junior year, I switched to Serious Interpretation and found my groove. The major difference between Serious and Humorous, (other than trying to make the audience cry rather than laugh), is that your selections alternated between poetry and prose. In the beginning of the tournament a drawing would be held and it was announced which of the two formats would be read in the first round of competition.

Because many poems are short, there were some competitors who read collections of poems to fulfill the time requirements. I found that approach to be lame. I also found myself getting bored when I heard the same poem being read by numerous people. "Patterns" by Amy Lowell was one of those overused poems. One tournament I heard that poem read three times and by two different girls in a single round of competition. It was popular because it was a single poem that when read fit the time requirements, was written by a woman poet and most of the competitors in Serious Interpretation were female. I found the poem boring and mentally tuned out when I heard it announced in the introduction. I wondered how many of the judges had similar reactions due to its overuse.

That was another reason why I thought it was better to find my own selections rather than depend on my coach to recommend something.

In my junior year I remember one of my competitors had written his own selection based on a novelization from the movie Apocalypse Now. I had not seen the movie, but was astounded at his performance, and felt that its difference from the majority of the scripts helped him stand out as a competitor. Later, when I saw the movie, it felt as if he were sitting next to me, whispering in my ear. That is how good his adaptation of the movie was to encapsulate its essence into eight and a half minutes.

That inspired me to do something similar for my senior year's selection. I read the memoir Playing for Time by Fania Fénelon. She was a Holocaust survivor who had been a member of the all woman orchestra in Auschwitz. Her life was spared, but she was still in a death camp and was forced to play music up to eighteen hours a day. The reason the musicians were allowed to live is because they played impromptu concerts for SS officers who found it relaxing to listen to orchestral music after a long, hard day of killing people.

I remember reading the book with a highlighter in one hand and marking up several particularly emotional passages. I wrote my script using portions of scenes along with transitions making it fit my time frame and knew that no one else would be reading the same work.

That strategy worked for me.

After the regular invitational season was over in my senior year, my coach told me something that spurred me on to doing another adaptation. This time it would be for the Multiple Interpretation category.

Our team was so large and successful that we had more members on it than could be entered into  the District Tournament. So there were many teammates whose season was going to be over unless he did something creative. He told me that he was thinking of dusting off the "Monsters are due on Maple Street" script and create a second multiple to enter at Districts. I cringed at the thought. It was an okay script, but I did not want to see it used again. Especially since judges had seen it only a few years before. I knew my teammates who would be asked to be a part of it might feel as if they were leftovers thrown together in a hastily prepared soup.

I went home and grabbed a book of short stories by Stephen King and banged out a script for what I titled: "A Taste of Horror." I made sure that it fit the time constraints, typed it up and made a few copies. On the next school day, I told my coach that I had a different idea for a multiple and handed him the script. I also offered to direct.

It was far more than he expected from that little chat we shared on the bus. He also accepted my offer. We only had a few weeks of rehearsals, but I was proud of the performances by my teammates and I am certain they felt more confident with that script when they competed against other teams' multiples who had been together for months.

Then I entered college and didn't have any time for creative writing. Or drama. Or much else besides watching an occasional movie.

After I finished college and began working full time, I felt there was something missing in my life. I realized that I longed for an outlet for drama like I had back in high school and that one of my greatest strengths was recognizing dramatic scenes and adapting it for presentations to audiences.

I decided that I would try that on a larger scale, and so I took one of my favorite novels Whispers by Dean R. Koontz and try to adapt it into a screenplay. I owed college loans and was making entry level wages, so I certainly did not have any ability to buy the movie rights. I did however, decide to adapt the novel as a writing exercise to see if I had the talent and stamina to do such a project. I went back to using a highlighter and marking up scenes, then transferring them into my computer in a screenplay format. It took several months, but I finished the task and it was in the 110-120 page range for a two hour movie. (The working rule is one page of a movie script equals a minute on the screen.)

I was proud of my work, but I also knew that as an unknown writer with no credits I would never get hired to do film adaptations. So in order to have any chance in pursuing that career path, I first needed to write my own screenplays.

I took two screenwriting classes at Wayne State University and learned a lot. I had to write an original screenplay for the course and I realize now that it was spectacularly depressing and would never have been made into a movie had I pursued trying to get an agent. (It seemed like a good idea to me at the time, but hindsight can have better visual acuity than foresight.)

During this time I purchased several scripts of movies that I enjoyed. I re-watched those movies with the scripts in hand and analyzed any deviations. I also began watching movies before and after I read the books and compared the adaptations. I took copious notes including writing down each and every scene in a movie and realized for the first time how many different scenes there are. Sometimes over a hundred in a two hour movie.

I have been devastated when a beloved story's lifeblood was leeched out when it was translated to the silver screen by oversimplification of plotlines and elimination of characters, etc. and I have marveled at how the essence of a story was enhanced by condensing timelines, characters, etc.

I learned by this extended critical analyses that novels and movies are two different mediums and what works in one does not necessarily work in the other. In novels, you can spend an entire chapter in a character's head learning their inner thoughts, but on a movie screen that could be accomplished by a close up of a raised eyebrow or summarized into a single line of voice-over narration. Another thing I learned was the importance of having scenes with conflict and action. A stage or movie script has bare bones descriptions, whereas novels need to describe the setting, the actions/reactions of characters so that the readers "can see" these important details as well as the characters are wearing if it is important to the plot.

I have been told by many of my readers that they can see my story as a movie. I take that as a compliment that my years of analyzing what works in cinema and translating it into a different format has paid off.

My adapting the epic poems of Orlando innamorato and Orlando furioso is a result of my years of experience of larger narratives and culling portions then changing its format so that it will work for a different audience.

I still love watching movies based on books and analyzing the differences between the two forms and formats. One movie adaptation that I am looking forward to watching is the forthcoming, Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters due out August 7th.

Please let me know what some of your favorite or cannot stand adaptations from novel to screen are in the comments.  By the way, I did watch the movie adaptation of the novel Whispers by Dean R. Koontz.  It was awful!  My script was far better.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/07/writing-adaptations-and-public-speaking.html

Dos and Don'ts of Public Speaking

This blog post is intended for writers who are given the opportunity to read portions of their work aloud. However, others who have to speak in front of an audience may also find some of the suggestions to be helpful.

I have over thirty years public speaking experience. In high school I was a member of our championship forensics team and was an award winning competitive public speaker in the Serious Interpretation category. This advice is the product of my experience as well as my frustration when I have witnessed public readings I have found to be embarrassing.

1. Do  know your time limits and plan for them.  If you have a short time frame to work with, say five minutes, select a passage that fits within those parameters including any prefatory comments you need to make to set up the scene for the audience. Time yourself. If it goes long, consider choosing another passage or perhaps change your beginning or ending places so that it fits in the time frame.

2. Don't Ramble or waste time. I have been to a few open microphone sessions where a writer is one of several speakers, but once they have the mic it seems as if s/he will not relinquish it without a big hook coming out and taking him/her off the stage. I particularly hate it when people ramble, because it demonstrates they were not prepared.

If you are given five minutes to speak, that five minutes starts from the time you are given the floor or handed the microphone. Rambling for four minutes before you start reading does not mean you still get to read for an additional five minutes. Nope. If you are given five minutes, you have five minutes. Especially if you are sharing a stage with others. That means that there will be members of the audience who came specifically to hear someone else speak. If you go over your time limit, (by more than a minute or two), you will be cutting into others' time or causing the program to go long.

Recently I saw an author bring her book to the stage, but her opening was not a statement used to set up her reading. Instead she rambled on and on about her life. She spent her entire time speaking without any discernable purpose, used up her entire time and never read a single word from her book. It became nothing more than a prop she waved in the air.

A different example of wasting time was when I delivered an academic paper at an international conference. I was one of three speakers in a session and I was given the last speaking slot. We were all to have an equal twenty minutes to present. However, the first speaker was a college professor who had not timed his presentation until the night before. He became irritated about the brevity and felt this time constraint caused him to eviscerate the heart and soul out of his talk. He complained about this. Repeatedly. Not just to the panel moderator in private, but during his talk.

He took time during his speech to complain that he did not have enough time. He probably spent a total of three minutes during his talk saying, "oh I cannot go into more detail about that because I do not have enough time."

He also ignored the moderator when she told him that his time was over, and continued speaking for a few more minutes. This cut into the time left for my presentation. I was professional about it and was able to condense and speed up some of my presentation so the session did not run overtime.

3. Do make a script that is easy to read. One of my pet peeves is authors reading from their physical books. I think it is fine to read directly from a book if it is a picture book where the pages are read and shown to an adoring crowd of children. Otherwise, it is often awkward for someone to read directly from a bound book. Not only do you have to fight with the binding, losing your place if it closes, but the font is generally not large enough to read with ease.

If you are reading your own story, then make a script off of documents you have on your hard drive.

Boost the font. Make it 18 or 20 point. Make it bold. Whatever works best for you to read without difficulty.

Print it out, and make it so that your paragraphs do not have widows or orphans. It is best to read to the end of a paragraph and then turn the page.  Number your pages.

My personal preference is to put the printed pages onto construction paper. This makes it a script where the pages can be changed with ease. I find this easier to use than plain paper with a staple on the top. I also find myself being distracted from the reading by concentrating at the stapled copy in a reader's hand to assess how many more pages they are going to read. A script with separate pages will remove that distraction.

4. Don't think that reading glasses will make reading from a physical book easy to do in public.

It will not. Wearing reading glasses while trying to read from a physical book will make you have to look down more often. This will hurt your performance. As your head is turned downward, your voice will be focused downward. Or your throat will be at an acute angle and this will change the tone of your voice and your ability to project your words. Alternately, you could hold the book upward so that your neck is straight and your voice is projected well. This will also cause the book to cover your face making it hard for your audience to see your facial expressions or to have any eye contact with them.

5. Do entertain your audience. Express yourself in a manner that will captivate your audience's attention. If you are reading passages with dialogue, create different voices to help them understand and follow who is speaking. Use eye contact to engage the audience with you. Having rehearsed your talk enough times and having an easy to read script will allow you to look up and at your audience.

Remember, if you are sharing the stage with others then many in the audience will be there in support of other speakers. They may know nothing about you. Make them sit up and take notice of your performance. Make them feel as if they discovered someone new to admire.

6. Don't bore your audience. Rambling at the beginning of your talk is lethal for grabbing and maintaining an audience's attention. Once lost it is hard to get back.

Fumbling with a book and reading glasses as well as speaking in a monotone is also high risk behavior for losing your audience.

Whether you realize it or not, you are competing for all of the audience members' attentions. Make it worth their while to pay attention to you and not make a mental list of errands that need running or check their email on their iPhone. They could be other places right now, but they are chose to spend a portion of their lives at whatever venue you are speaking. They could change their mind at any moment and leave to go to the bathroom or go home.

7. Do your best to be heard. It is frustrating when a speaker does not project his or her voice well enough to be heard or does not know how to properly use a microphone. If someone objects when you start speaking and says, "I can't hear you!" make sure that the situation is resolved before you continue with your planned talk. This may mean readjusting the microphone to being closer to your mouth or forcing yourself to SPEAK UP!

8. Don't think you do not need amplification.  I have seen speakers at a podium decide they did not want to use the microphone that is provided. Even after someone in the audience complained. Most of the time speakers are mistaken when they think their voice is loud enough without amplification to be heard in all corners of the room. I only knew one woman who could pull that off with ease, because She Could Project. Loudly. When she chose to project her voice, it was as if she used a megaphone. She was the proverbial exception that proves the rule.

I remember a sad case of a female politician who had become feeble in her old age. She was a guest speaker at an event and when it came time for her to speak, she could not make herself heard by using the microphone. It had worked fine for all the speakers before her, but it seemed as if it stopped working when she took the stage. People scrambled to find a replacement microphone, they tested it and then handed it to her. We were all hopeful this would resolve the problem. She took the microphone and then it became clear that her anemic vocal performance was not due to technology, but due to her inability to perform anymore.

This was heartbreaking for me, because I had looked forward to hearing her talk and knew she had a wealth of knowledge and a lifetime of experience that was worthy of hearing. I stopped straining to make out her words, and instead accepted that I could not hear her unless I was standing next to her onstage.

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Here is an example of a recent public speaking appearance where I read a passage from my novel. You can see how I used a script, varied my voice to entertain the audience, tried to use eye contact and did my best to be heard over the ambient conversation of those in the restaurant who were not there for the literary event.

I was the only participant to stay in the 5-7 minute time frame mentioned at the beginning of the event. (The video running time is just over seven minutes, but that includes the introduction given to me before I started speaking.)





If there are any other pieces of advice in public speaking that I did not mention, but you think should be included in this list - please leave it in the comment section. Thank you and I hope this advice is helpful.


http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/02/dos-and-donts-of-public-speaking.html