Character sketch for Mr. Honeygarten #novel #film Heart of Clouds #amwriting

So, grandfathers.  When I was writing this story I meant it to be a film — so it is split into about 25 chapters, very simply.  To convert it to a screenplay probably isn’t that hard, but help would be fab!  Because, this is going to be one of the best films ever made.  One of the most poignant and I will prove the literary agent who said it was “too sweet and lovely” for this market wrong.  The world needs some sweet and lovely.

Honeygarten is really seminal in this story!

He is the “glue” for Teenie Alexander.  A father figure in the absence of her own father.  As I conceived of the character I saw him in a Victorian house — there is a house in Summerland like that that is supposed to be haunted — one of the earliest ones up on Ortega Hill.  Anyway, he lives alone in this big old house with a comforting porch and it’s all very old fashioned.  He has an old and tangled garden full of climbing and briar roses and all the apple trees.  What he will be explaining to Teenie is about how he fell for Claire when he was her age.  Of all the characters in this film, his is the biggest part in a way?

Anyway.  I wrote this to be very economical in terms of shooting it.  There are not that many scenes.  Many are exterior shots on the beach where a sea hut could easily be constructed.  At Honeygarten’s there is a formal parlor, with a fireplace — where he has tea with Teenie.  So simple, for such a huge, huge character.

Honeygarten represents Kindness!  & Wisdom.

So he lives in a Victorian on a hill.  It’s as if time stopped in that house.  When he speaks of Claire, she is turn of the century to him.  She looks like Mary Pickford in his old sepia tone pictures of her.

The house he lives in was his childhood home, but now it is shabby in it’s old gentility and he is a very old man.

Teenie really likes him.  He is a counterpoint to the mother who is the antagonist in the story.  A refuge for little Teenie.  Much as my own grandfather was I expect.  Anyway, off to do some art direction over on Pinterest for Mr. Honeygarten.

xxoo!

Adrienne