What's a writer to do?!

So, I thought I would write a screenplay. I mean, how hard and how different can it be?

I don't care what anyone says, it's hard. Novelists write in paragraphs. Screenwriters write in odd forms. Ever seen a screenplay? It's like a play on speed. Line of dialogue are zig-zagging all over the place and one doesn't know where to look. And there are slug lines. Yeah, slug lines, which are like camera angles, time and location, but are not really because screenwriters are not supposed to tell directors what to do blah, blah, yada yada.

So anyway, rant over. I'm now beginning to understand why screen adaptations are the way they are. My favourite rant about screen adaptations was that they were crap, terrible and really, why can't the bloody movie industry just leave classic books alone? Just thinking about the numerous Count of Monte Cristo's screen adaptations used to make my head boil, but not anymore. I know what screenwriters are faced with.

My book, God has Daughters Too, is book of ten stories of Old Testament women. The book details each woman's journey of faith with God through trying times, challenging times and downright horrible times. Incest, love, adultery, prostitution...they're all in there interspersed with each woman's relationship - or lack thereof - with God.

In a book, it's easy to write about God's voice and how the different women hear him, but how to translate it into a visual medium without being cheesy a la thunderstorm, Moses and the 10 Commandments style? Another problem; Eve's chapter deals with so many things and on so many levels that it is not possible to do them all justice in one screenplay, so I'm just going to focus on one thing and one thing only; conflict. The conflict between God and the devil. And that is the main premise of the screenplay; the devil wants to eliminate all human beings and God's job is to ensure that this does not happen. But how will He prevent it? He has given Adam and Eve independent minds. Who will they listen to; the voice of God or the voice of evil...

And that is my screenplay.