Petticoat Sailor to She Crossing: Adaptation in Process, a Writer's Reflection on Adapting a Feature Length Screenplay Into

1 PETTICOAT SAILOR TO SHE CROSSING: ADAPTATION IN PROCESS, A WRITER’S REFLECTION ON ADAPTING A FEATURE LENGTH SCREENPLAY INTO A NOVEL by Georgina Lock Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the degree of PhD Nottingham Trent University July 2015 2 This work is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed in the owner of the Intellectual Property Rights. 3 CONTENTS A. Abstract 4 B. She Crossing – a novelization from a screenplay 5 C. Reflective Commentary 125 1. Introduction 126 2. Adapting Titles and Names 131 3. The Background to the Project 132 4. Methods and Application of Research 137 5. Reshaping Characters 140 6. Building Structure 152 7. Describing Action and Locations 159 8. Writing the Dialogue 167 (i) Dialogue in the Screenplay (ii) Transferring Screenplay Dialogue to the Novel (iii) Voice Over, Monologue and Point of View (iv) Dialogue and Punctuation 9. Conclusion 175 10. Bibliography 177 D. APPENDICES Appendix 1: Petticoat Sailor (screenplay) 189 Appendix 2: ‘The Seafaring Maiden’ (newspaper article by Jennie Bishop) 278 4 ABSTRACT This PhD thesis consists of a novel entitled She Crossing, and a Commentary. The Commentary reflects on my practice of constructing the novel by adapting it from my previously existing screenplay, Petticoat Sailor. They both derive from ‘The Seafaring Maiden’, a Nova Scotian newspaper article dating from 1957. All of these narratives are concerned with a nineteenth-century woman who had to captain a commercial sailing ship across the Atlantic. My screenplay, Petticoat Sailor, is set entirely in the nineteenth century. Both the newspaper article and my novel frame the protagonist’s voyage as a twentieth- century reminiscence. My novel also introduces a fictional subplot, which was not present in the screenplay. This subplot derives from my research into accounts of cross-dressed women who went to sea when only men were legally employed as sailors. The direction of my adaptation from a screenplay into a novel is unusual. Most adaptations move from novel to script and this is reflected in the secondary literature about adaptation. Novels resulting from adapting scripts have attracted little academic analysis as artefacts, and even less theorization of their creative processes. There is also an absence of sustained reflection by other writers who have turned their screenplays into novels. Aiming to increase understanding of the novelizing process, my thesis addresses these absences. The Commentary discusses the differences and similarities in writing screenplay and writing prose fiction by reflecting on my processes in writing this novel. I particularly explore the effects of contingency in adjusting theoretical principles during the creative process of novelization. I also examine to what extent the ways in which I write are themselves adapted from my own experience of directing and acting for stage and film. 5 SHE CROSSING a novel by Georgina Lock novelized from the screenplay Petticoat Sailor 6 Chapter 1 Bad Luck at Sea It’s the house like a ship, peeling paint and weatherboarded, on the windy, unfashionable end of the promenade. The dark, frost-bitten leaves in the window-boxes look like seaweed. The windows, bottle-nosed under their looped canvas curtains, peer across the lowering Atlantic, as if reckoning on casting off and setting out across the rowdy grey. Pauline recognises the plaster fish on the gate post. She used to pat it on her way to school. Sometimes, she would put her fingers into its round kiss of a mouth. More of its scales have chipped away – fifteen years’ worth. As for the house, she has so often passed it. Yet she never imagined who might live on the other side of the weathered front door, with its lion’s head of a knocker snarling at the sea. Soon she will fill her notebook with impressions, enough for a two-page feature if she can spin it out. Checking that her notebook is still in the left-hand pocket of her overcoat, she is about to climb the splintering steps when the door opens. A brown, rangy woman of about forty is raising her tufty eyebrows at her. Pauline keeps her own eyebrows in place. This is an effort in view of the woman’s grey, serge bloomers, black woollen stockings wrinkling over scuffed, tan oxfords and a thigh-length brown cardigan, as shapeless as a man’s. Given her quaint appearance, she’s unlikely to be the maid or the housekeeper. Nor can she be the subject of the morning. Although her crinkly, bobbed hair is greying, her chestnut skin is smooth and glowing. She might, after all, be hardly thirty. Pauline has noticed her in town riding her tall, black bicycle. “The Women’s Herald?” the woman asks. “Exactly. I’m Pauline Stacey, come to interview Miss Hall.” “She’s ready for you and really looking forward to it. I’m Edie Lambert, by the way. Perhaps Miss Mackay mentioned me.” Edie Lambert looks so hopeful that, despite her expert Episcopal upbringing, Pauline lies. She is growing accustomed to lying. Pleasing people, at least in the first instance, makes for informative journalism. “Often! She sends her compliments, along with our first edition.” Pauline dips into her handbag and whips out February’s newspaper. There’s a blush under Edie Lambert’s brownness. She gives a radiant smile which turns her long face handsome. “That’s so very kind of her…. What now? Oh dear!” The smile fades at the shriek on the front page: ‘WOMEN FORCE FED IN BRITISH PRISONS’, 7 illustrated by an advertisement for Watkins and Sons’ millinery and another for the latest gramophone. Muttering about inhuman politics, Edie stands aside so that Pauline can step over the rag-rug into the last century, circa 1870 at the absolute latest. The hall, with a yellowish reek of beeswax, bacon and boiled onions, is hardly warmer than the chill outside, merely stiller and darker. The candlesticks and oil lamps are all unlit, it being just ten o’clock and, probably, the brightest moment of the day. Twirls of sunshine play on the oak banister and glint on the burnished brass of a mirror frame, with a water-colour seascape hung far too close by. “Look here, dear, just to be clear, this is nothing to do with pirates or smugglers or anything else that’s far-fetched and fashionable.” Pauline looks back in surprise. “Oh yes, I’m clear about that. The story so far, the bits and pieces that Miss Mackay told me, sounds stirring enough.” “Please understand that this story really happened.” Pauline blinks at the argumentative tone. She must make friends, at least for the morning, and she must be careful of sermonizing to a woman twice her age. “Yes, it really happened, which is why I asked to interview Miss Hall. And that it’s been kept quiet forty years is another reason to tell it. ‘Story’ is Herald slang for news, news that lets our readers know what women can do, which is our passion. Everyone needs to hear all about it, Miss Lambert.” Miss Lambert looks relieved and a little apologetic. “Edie,” she says and offers her long, thin hand to be shaken. Pauline obliges, firmly. Then she lets the hand and its fellow fuss around her shoulders to help her shrug off her overcoat and hang it on the stand. The resident overcoats are heavy woollens and an oilskin. They reek of tobacco; confirmation that the Capstan cigarettes, that Miss Mackay advised her to bring, will be welcome. She checks that they are still in her handbag. Then she peels off her gloves and picks at the knot on the scarf tying on her hat. She is aware that her grey tailor-made, steamed and brushed for this interview, is attracting Edie’s scrutiny. Might the woman be envious, or have spotted its economical cut? The damp has invaded the scarf knot already. Pauline accepts help with it and with the great bowl of her hat, which won’t take to a peg but fits perfectly on the banister newel. “There! No-one will disturb it. Come into the parlour, won’t you?” Following Edie, Pauline remembers that her notebook and pencil are still in her overcoat pocket and darts back to rustle them out. It’s draughty, yet she sweats. 8 “No hurry,” Edie says which might be sarcastic. However, as they cross a scatter of Turkish carpets into what might be a warehouse of embroidered screens, assorted chairs and an elephant-sized and footed table, she seems delighted. “Bessie dear! It’s the young lady from The Women’s Herald!” “Pauline Stacey,” Pauline says, wondering where, amongst the convocation of furniture, to direct her voice. The only living thing she spots is a cat, stretched in the moody sun on a window seat. Then the coughing starts, and with such phlegmy racks and breathy heaves that Pauline fears for her interview. Edie merely seems to take it as an indication of Bessie’s presence. The coughing subsides with an audible swallow. Then a yellowing-white top knot rises over the back of a floral armchair. The hair leads a scraggy neck, followed by scanty shoulders, then bones and sinews wrapped in saggy fawn and blue tweed. Pauline, who is twenty-two, expected sixty-two to look decrepit.

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