Fiction Adaptation: My Story Ideas/Outline

The Story

I've decided for my film to base it around a story of the poet (or the character within the poem). I was thinking of creating the character within the poem to talk about her husband whom was killed during the war. As I mentioned earlier, the reoccurring rose will be used to allow the story to flow. This is where I came up with the idea of using the rose as a symbol of both the love and the closure of the two characters which of course, the war is the factor which caused this.

For the first paragraph, my story could begin with a flashback showing the poet's husband and herself happily together before the war has started. This relates to how Alice talks about "caressing the pencils of the sun". The main idea is to show the current peace and nature before the war has taken place.

However when the first paragraph ends with "O what sky has walked the world!", I was thinking on ending this flashback and moving forward to her last moments of being with her husband, just before he departs to go to war. This is where the rose comes in and the last moment which we see of the two characters together must be when he gives her the rose. The idea is to show how the rose is used to symbolise their love.

Nonetheless, this is when the narrative begins to spiral downhill. Potential news reports showing deaths of soldiers could be shown or anything which should create tension and to show how the war is becoming increasingly destructive. For example, there could be a scene showing archive footage of soldiers being injured or even killed from the war, as well as additional gun-firing sound effects. Im aiming to make the audience feel uncomfortable so to do this I could also show how the war is devastating the wife as she waits unknown as to whether her husband has been killed or not.

This then should show scenes of the wife beginning to write a poem (this poem). The rose should reappear when she talks about the "flower; and birds, and berries; and benignant skies" however instead of seeing these images instead relate this to gore images of the war and showing the increasing deaths and injuries i.e. showing explosions. The rose could potentially be shown falling through the air and landing on the floor - almost acting symbolic of the end of their relationship thus the death of the husband.

The closing paragraph then should become the most emotive throughout - showing the wife looking at the grave of her husband, then showing her put a rose on his grave. It could potentially end showing the wife finishing the poem then end with a shot of the poem finished - with the rose by her side. I was also thinking on using a graphic match to end the poem e.g. when the V/O or narrator says "dies upon a kiss", a flashback could be used to show the couple kissing for the last time then flashing back to the rose on his grave.

In terms of the narrator I'm still not fully decided. I was aiming on using the character in the story to be the narrator however It won't work very well if you see her writing the poem in the film and then her reading it through, however I could try to make this work. If this idea doesn't work, then I may just use a female V/O instead - it has to be female to make it seem more relatable to the film. Additionally, the female V/O could work by being an enigma - people may question whether that it is the character's voice which would be effective as they don't need to know whose voice it is.