We have just read the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the night-time to the play version. It is really short to compare with the other books that we have read in class. I spent a weekend and I just finished reading it. In the English class there was day the teacher gave us a piece the the novel and a script from the play witch both describe the same scene. When I just looked at them it is totally different. One side of the script is just several words with couple space together and dialogues, which is the easiest kind of piece of reading to read, and also my favorite. But the other side is full of words, stick together.
When I read through it, the script part is mostly dialogues and a little narrate part. And the several parts of the scene changed really fast, if we just read through the script I guess we need to imagine and think about the rest part to make it more completed. The different parts of the scene changed with several large space and a little narrate part. But on the other side of the paper, it is the novel version of the book. It is really long to compare with the script of the play version, too long even I thought they are not talking about the same scene. The novel version is normal, just like an essay separate the different part of the scene with different paragraphs. There are only a little pieces of dialogues, as much as the narrate parts in the play version script. And it adds much more psychological description than the script, just like the monologue. It is also much more detailed compare with the play version script. Here I want to show a compartment, about both of the play and the novel describing same thing.
The play version: "Christopher I made you a chart. Because you've got to eat love. In here is some Complan and it's got strawberry flavoring in it." "Complan?" "Be quiet Roger. Christopher if you drink 200ml then I'm going to put a bronze star on your chart." "I don't believe this." "Roger for God's sake, please. If you drink 400 ml you get a silver start." "Ha!" "And if you drink 600 ml you get a gold star."
And the novel version: " And I hadn't eaten anything since I threw away the red ice lolly on Hampstead Heath, so Mother made a chart with stars on it like when I was very small and she filled a measuring jug with Complan and strawberry flavoring and I got a bronze star for drinking 200 ml and a silver star for drinking 400 ml and a gold star for 600 ml."
As you can see, the play version is totally full of dialogues, and the novel version is opposite. The play version are just like a 3D version, there are couple different people talking and participating. But the novel version is like the 2D picture version. There's only the main character's psychological description. This would be the second part of this essay: What decisions did the playwright make in cutting parts or changing parts of the novel when adapting it into the play? About the example above, it shows the differences. The playwright is making a play, a show for a group of audiences watch it together. So the playwright needs to make the way of describing tridimensional. He may add some parts to make the dialogues more emotional, straight and more colorful to watch. But novels are different. The writer is writing for his readers, but the readers are reading the book individually, so it is all right to make the text detailed, or becoming a "monologue".
The last question that I will talk about maybe really short. I am a bad English reader, I read really slowly and my vocabulary is really poor. So when I got to read the play version of the book I was thrilled. I have never read a kind of easy book like that! No more difficult vocabularies! No more crazy words stick together! Well, absolutely I would say that I like the play version much more than the novel version. I find the script is more enjoyable, and obviously easy to read.
Citation: The curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Time, author: Mark Haddon.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- TIme script, adapted by Simon Stephens.
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