Morgan Burdick
Nic Helms
Rethinking Medieval and Renaissance Literature
13 October 2023
For this assignment, I decided to write a script for Marie de France’s “Lanval.” During class I discussed why I enjoyed the story so much: it felt like a rom-com. So I decided to take advantage and write the story as a rom-com script. I took a screenwriting class with Paul Rogalus last year and he taught us how to format a script and how many descriptors to put in a script. Unfortunately for Paul, but fortunately for me, I left out some of the descriptions so I wouldn’t write a full-fledged movie script. 1 page of dialogue and descriptions in a script is roughly 1 minute of screen time. My script is about 15 pages which would make my script/movie about 15 minutes. I used the website WriterDuet to write my script. WriterDuet allows you to write three scripts for free and unfortunately for me, I used those three for Paul’s class. I decided to just write in a pre-existing script from Paul’s class. So when you open the script, it has the title of a pre-existing script I wrote “The One That Got Away,” please ignore that title. The new title is “Lanval.”
I decided to write this script because I was genuinely surprised to learn no one has attempted to make an adaptation of the poem into a movie or play. It has an interesting plot, fun characters, magic, and romance. I would be really interested to see how a modern adaptation of either the poem or a movie would translate to modern audiences. Would there be a way to make it more modern? Nonetheless, when I started writing I decided I wanted to keep it as close to the source material as possible, however, I did take a few creative liberties. I did not enjoy how Lanval and (we assume) Morgan Le Fey just met and decided to get down and married. I wanted some form of connection and meeting before they officially met. So I added a little meet-cute moment before they officially met. When it came to the meet-cute moment, I took a bit of inspiration from Anita and Roger’s meet-cute moment in 101 Dalmatians. I made Morgan Le Fey fall into a brook and Lanval helped her. Anita and Roger both end up falling into a body of water and end up falling in love closely after. So I wanted something of that effect. My writing process was relatively simple. I listened to a good romantic playlist, which I have linked here, and just got to writing.
When it comes to the content I wrote about, there were other creative liberties I took. I added a party at the beginning of the script where Lanval realizes he doesn’t have the same opportunities as the other knights of the Round Table. He has a conversation with Lancelot where he realizes all of this. I also included more of an interaction between Lanval and Queen Guinevere in the beginning and when Queen Guinevere tries to come onto Lanval. I made it so Queen Guinevere had been interested in Lanval since the beginning instead of out of nowhere. I added more to their conversation when Lanval rejected her advances too. I added more flirtations Queen Guivenere gives to Lanval and more of him rejecting her politely at first before they both have their outbursts. I took inspiration for the outburst scene not only from the original text but also from Marriage Story on Netflix. I enjoyed how in that movie they accurately represented the bubbling up of intense emotions before exploding in anger onto the other person. That is something similar I would love to accomplish someday and writing that scene was good practice. Hopefully, it came across as I hoped for, and if not I can always rewrite the script in my own time. Overall, this was a very fun project to tackle and I hope that someone actually adapts this story for the screen someday.
Works Cited
France, Marie de. Lanval – People, people.clas.ufl.edu/jshoaf/files/lanval.pdf. Accessed 13 Oct. 2023.
Industrial Scripts® – Screenplay & Screenwriting Consultants. “Classic Movie Scenes: Marriage Story (2019) // Argument Scene // Script-to-Screen.” YouTube, 17 July 2023, youtu.be/Ex5e_MaCx2I?si=8F1izrICq99XHJ5T.
PerditaTheDalmatian. “First Introductions.” YouTube, 27 Apr. 2011, youtu.be/PRLFeR5NRvk?si=6vEFVFb9x3SGdnnz.
“Professional Screenwriting Software You’ll Love.” WriterDuet, http://www.writerduet.com/. Accessed 13 Oct. 2023.
Sprockets and Springes 