I’m currently working on the creative work for my thesis. It’s a theatrical work, with both a script and music which accompanies this script. It’s my first time scriptwriting, and it’s something I’m really enjoying. The problem is, I’m adapting a sequence of real-life events – a “based on a true story” type script. And it’s harder than I expected!

To start with, I was always someone who, when watching something based on a true story, enjoys finding the deviations from the actual true story: this person didn’t actually exist, or the stakes weren’t quite that high, and so on. I thought when I was writing a work myself that I would be dedicated enough to the sources to not do this. And yet, in the process of actually writing this work, I’ve come to see just why adapting real life is tricky.

Theatre (or film or television or whatever you fancy) requires some suspension of disbelief and is designed to be entertaining. While an entirely true script is possible from what I’m working with, I don’t know that it would necessarily be entertaining or feasible. From the feasibility perspective, one problem is the sheer number of people that are involved in a real event, especially one that takes place over many years. It’s possible to maintain everyone as a unique character, but does everyone get represented by a different actor? And if you don’t, how do you distinguish these characters? And can the audience keep track of a slew of characters that fulfil similar roles in the narrative but are actually different people? This is why characters often get merged. This is linked to the entertainment perspective: I can make a cohesive story from these real life events; but I have to finesse some of the finer details first. For example, having people arrive in one city when they actually arrived in a different one; or even the example earlier of merging characters, so that there’s one band of people we stay with the whole time rather than jumping around. These aren’t massive changes, and you would still come out the end with knowledge of all the major events.

My question has been around how to manage these deviations. In the work itself, I’m planning on having some more factual deliveries through text on a screen, and the program notes I think are also a useful tool for explaining these deviations. A page of “changes from the actual story” would help the audience know what was wrong and what was right when watching. But primarily, I’m writing for entertainment, and if I can keep the story there enough to inform the audience as well, then I’ll be happy.

What are some techniques in good adaptions you’ve seen?