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How do all you bloggers make time to do this regularly? I went to a couple of events last week and was keen to share news of them, but what with the County Show, cricket, and a first-of-the-season-and-possibly-last-too barbecue - well, here we are a week later.

Perhaps what added an extra flavour to these events was the fact that they happened on the same day. First off was Lost in a Box, by students from Exeter University, as part of their final degree assessment. I had circulated news of the free event to reading groups, and decided to swell the number by attending myself. Having held many -and varied- literary events in the Music Room at Exeter Central, I was intrigued to see what a difference it made to have new eyes setting up. The curtains were drawn against the afternoon sun, the audience was seated on and in front of the stage, and the main body of the room was the performance area. What followed was impressive and moving (I hope the lecturer next to me who made notes throughout felt the same) as the story unfolded. Essentially an elegy on coming to terms with loss - but hard to justify in a blog ostensibly about the Orange Prize .... except that each "chapter" in the drama was signalled by turning a page in a giant book which was a Penguin book with an orange cover. Talk about Chris's Top Tenuous.....
The second event was a talk by Deborah Moggach as part of Exeter University's Creative Writing Programme. I knew her to be an interesting and vivacious speaker from her appearance at the last Devon Readers' Day at the Watermark, Ivybridge. On this occasion she spoke about her experience of writing screenplays, particularly for the film of Pride and Prejudice and the recent BBC television series on The Diary of Anne Frank - what she called "turning the 'noun' of a novel into the 'verb' of a film". It was fascinating to hear her take on it - how she reads and absorbs the novel, then puts it away and doesn't refer to it. She insisted that what was needed was for a screenplay writer to be "bold, but loving".While an author works alone, with some input from an editor, the sreenwriter is involved in a collaborative experience. Having worked on the screenplay, the writer hands it over to producer/director/actors. The tale doesn't end there, because the acting team works on it and then hands on to editors, who set about creating their vision. One of the main difficulties in changing a book into a film lies in dealing with the internal dialogue which gives a reader so many clues (without surrendering to voice-overs). Deborah maintained that this was where the actors came in, and that in this part of the filming process the internal dialogue, cut from the book by the screenwriter, reappears again in the actors' faces. Fascinating stuff- and greatly enjoyed by those members of reading groups who attended. No Orange connection there, not even a tenuous one, but thought-provoking. Interesting, too, to see how much thought and judgement went into deciding what to put in, what to leave out, where to put the emphasis. Made me realise that, while I'll generally give authors the benefit of the doubt and not condemn a book out of hand - just feel that maybe it's not for me - I can be as opinionated and instantly judgemental about a film as the next person.