The Orchard Remembers: Why I Turned The Withering Orchard Into a Screenplay
Some stories aren’t content to stay on the page. The Withering Orchard began as a short story, a quiet descent into ritual, memory, and the kind of silence that creeps under your skin. I thought that was enough. I thought prose could contain it. But the more I lived with Burrington, the more I realized the orchard wasn’t just meant to be read, it was meant to be seen. That’s when I started the screenplay. Why a Screenplay? Screenplays are strange creatures. They’re stripped bare, no long inner monologues, no drifting paragraphs, no gentle padding of language. A script is bones and muscle, waiting for light and shadow to bring it alive. And that’s what makes it terrifying. Because when you write something as a screenplay, you have to see it. You don’t write “Anabeth felt the weight of being forgotten.” You write: EXT. TOWN SQUARE – NIGHT Anabeth kneels alone. No one looks at her. The journal glows faintly in her hands. And suddenly, the loneliness isn’t in her head- it’s on th...