Different mediums

For the past week I have been wrestling with a short story that keeps jumping between being a story in prose and in script. I start writing it in prose form and then I am suddenly hit with a scene that would be almost impossible to write without destroying the flow of the narrative, yet this scene could easily translate to script. Likewise I will succumb and start writing it in script and come up against the limitations of that medium as well. I write in both mediums regularly so it is not a lack of experience that is driving my inability to get this story down it is simply that it is a story of the modern times.

Let me explain. When we write a story we write it for one specific medium, you do not write a piece of prose and start planning how it would look in script. This is generally why most novelisations of movies, of movies based on Novels find it incredibly hard to please their fan led audience of the former. Because the original story has been through many drafts to be distilled into a publishable story for that medium when it is translated it loses that refined quality and becomes a square trying to fit into a circular hole.
If the original author goes back to that story and presents the alternative version it can certainly help to appease fans, we call this 'reimagining' or a 'reboot' but both terms fall short of what is actually happening. Just as the method of transfer changes so does our understanding of the story. No two stories are alike. You can have the same story, written by the same author with the only difference being is the medium and they will never be the same story. Heraclitus famously said "You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." and this is most true for a writer. So many things go into the crafting of a story, and one of the most important variables is the method of transfer to your audience. In other words, you should not even try to recreate your story, but write one that fits in your world that may use the same characters and plot line. If that makes sense :D

The best example I can think of this is with the BBC show 'The Thick of It' to its big screen adaption 'In the Loop', which has some amazingly funny lines 'Difficult Difficult Lemon Difficult'. It follows a similar plot to what you would find in the TV show, but the writers have realised that recreating the TV on the big screen with a bigger budget would lose the charm and wit of the original. So using the same cast, with some characters renamed but essentially the same but without the history of the TV cannon and others were transplanted completely. They recreated the world to fit the shape of the motion picture rather than scale up the TV show.

So my little short story that started this rant? I need to think of it as two seperate stories. Write the prose, and write the script. The concept of the story is quite vast so why not write two different stories in the same world rather than try to rehash one story to meet two mediums.