If there’s one comment I’ve heard most from people who’ve read Silver Shoes, it’s “This would make a great movie.” Well, I’ve taken your inspirational thought to heart.

“Silver Shoes” screenplay, first draft.

I’ve always wanted to take a stab at it myself and see what happens: to attempt to turn a page of narrative description into visual images, minimize dialogue, and propel the story in a brand new medium.

It’s already an action-adventure/suspense/fantasy tale (a lot of “slashes” there) and fairly lean when it comes to page length. I write “cinematically,” or so I’ve been told by people who do that sort of thing for a living. I don’t feel like I’m starting out with “unadaptable” material, in other words. It’s good to go.

Although I was  encouraged, I was still ill-equipped. I’d never written a screenplay before, despite growing up in a household with a father who was a filmmaker and a mother who was an actress. I read scripts almost from the time I learned to read anything at all. I began acting in my father’s films when I was barely five years old. Still, the craft of screenwriting from a writer’s perspective was foreign to me, and an essential next step.

So I retreated to a private “boot camp” for several  months. I absorbed, studied, experimented, read, emulated, mutated, and pondered. I have returned from the mountains and now have a first draft completed. I couldn’t be happier with it. I’ve learned how, visually, an emotional glance between two characters can replace half a page of conversation. How “showing” what happens is always better than “telling.” How economizing five sentences of spoken dialogue into one keeps things fresh, focused, and moving along.

Fortunately, Silver Shoes was already a mix of character-driven scenes and action-driven visuals. In both cases, deciding what was most important to the story and finding the essence of each scene proved to be challenging but also rewarding.

I’m not finished yet. Are we ever in life? This is a work in progress, as am I. In the weeks ahead, I plan to pursue ‘the next step” with this screenplay. Let people read it, comment on it, tell me what works and what doesn’t. And see where things go. Good, bad, or indifferent, I feel certain a new adventure is about to begin.