Choose one of the options below, and write three-page minimum, double spaced. You can write as many pages as you want, of course, but at least three pages. you should choose Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means for the option you choose, I will give you ten extra points.
Choose one of the works of fiction (one of the novels, one of the short stories, or the first twenty pages of Mrs. Dalloway) and pretend that you are going to write either a screenplay based on the story or you are going to produce A film adaptation of the story. Explain how you would adapt the story for a short film or performance. The sky is the limit on how you would go about this. I suggest for these stories to imagine that you are designing a half an hour film.
If you choose one of the novels—Heart of Darkness or The Girls of Slender Means—DON’T try to do the whole novel! The best route is to explain how you would adapt a particular scene or two for film. Obviously don’t take on the whole novel! I recommend choosing the climax. There are two distinct climaxes in Heart of Darkness: the moment after Marlow recaptures Kurtz when Kurtz dies, crying out, “the horror!” leading Marlow to affirm Kurtz is (in a weird way) a remarkable man; OR the scene when Marlow finally visits Kurtz’s Intended and tells her the lie when she begs him to tell her his last words. The climax of The Girls of Slender Means is when the German bomb explodes beneath the girls’ hostel in London, and, as Nicholas Farringdon (an atheist) makes the sign of the cross when he sees his girlfriend, Selina, climb back into the burning club not to rescue her trapped housemates, but to rescue a dress.
Consider the essential elements of a story in your treatment: Plot; Character; Setting; Point of view. Try to utilize these elements in your piece. Don’t shy away from point of view (although it is ok if you find that too difficult and choose to avoid it). Point of view in a story is the equivalent of camera angles in a film, i.e., how close or far is the camera to the scene; what direction is the camera looking at a scene; what is the camera emphasizing or de-emphasizing; is the camera sharing a particular character’s perspective at certain moments.
Explain how you imagine the film version of your story would progress from the beginning to the end; what you would emphasize; what the characters would be like, look like, how they behave in certain scenes; explain what the setting looks like. Obviously, but ONLY if you want to, you could write an actual screen play, with dialogue, description of settings, and cues for action. Or you could write a blow-by-blow of what happens from scene to scene, describing how it would appear in your film version. Or if you are extra artistic, you can sketch out a rough story board. You can do a modernized version of the story or the sequence from a novel. However you want to do it, as long as you are addressing the work and what it is representing.
– I want you to write this assignment about (Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means).
