The novel of Cunning Folk also became a literary exploration of the inherent mystery of the wild, of landscape, of how the exterior world affects the interior world. By the time I’d finished the novel, I hadn’t given the screenplay a thought in a couple of years. In fact, I didn’t give the screenplay any thought when I began the novel. The break between the two mediums was total and complete, aesthetically. One is a screenplay; the other is an original novel, not tie-in fiction. The story structure is near identical but the execution and scope of each are worlds apart. Same story with vastly different forms, preoccupations, textures, styles and remits. If someone else was to adapt the novel into another screenplay, I’ll warrant it’d bear scant resemblance to my screenplay. I’m a novelist and I reverted to following the neural pathways required for me to write a story at novel-length. One hundred and ten pages? To hell with that!

Which left me wondering if that divide between a novel and a screenplay could be narrowed next time around. Could more of a cinematic sense be retained in the adaptation of a script to prose novel? So, with the adaptation of screenplay to novel of The Vessel, I tried something new.

In The Vessel I removed the interior of the characters.

I’m a bugger for this, I know. I even produced a collection of stories without characters (Wyrd and Other Derelictions). So thank you all for your patience and willingness to give my new books a chance and to follow my digressions. My premise for this book was so remarkably simple that I wondered if I was kidding myself about it actually working as a novel. And I might still be.

Chiefly, if a screenplay and, therefore, a film are composed of what is seen by the viewer and what is heard (dialogue, etc.) – and I’ve read that our experience of films comprises about nine parts what we see or are shown, and one part what is said by the characters – then what would a novel be like if all of the character interior was cut out? So, in effect, the reader only sees what the characters see, and hears what they say, as in a film; but is never, or very rarely, allowed inside their minds, save for one or two moments that would be flashback onscreen. What if the sets and locations are depicted with a brevity similar to the length of a scene in a script (and scenes are not very long – one page of a script equates roughly to one minute of screen-time), and not built in detail over many pages? My structural goal was to turn the scenes of the novel in a similar fashion to the turning of scenes cinematically – becoming as much film editor as novel author.