JG It's a form of translation: one has to tell a story in cinematic language. But what made The Woman in Black so difficult to adapt? SH It is the pathetic fallacy, isn't it? It would be difficult to write a convincing ghost story set on a sunny day in a big city. All the characters are struggling with loss, and nature echoes that. How would you define The Woman in Black's atmosphere? And when dusk came there was always a slightly odd light…
The sea on shingle is quite noisy but when you dropped down off the path there was a wall and, once you got on to the marshes, the sound of the sea went and it was quiet except for the slight moan of the wind and reed beds that make a dry rattling sound. I borrowed a house facing the sea which had a shingle beach. In the early 1970s I went to Suffolk to write for two or three months in the winter. SH What emerged as chief ingredient was atmosphere. Usually, when those bits and pieces are there, I let them marinade – like stuff for a stew…Īnd how did The Woman in Black emerge as chief ingredient? But I hadn't got – never do – a book particularly. I'd been reading ghost stories and kept thinking: nobody writes these at length any more. Susan Hill I hadn't written anything full-length since before my elder daughter – who was about four or five – was born. How did the birth of The Woman in Black come about? And there is an unusual rapport between her and distinguished, amiable Susan Hill as they set out to explain what is involved in being parent and guardian to The Woman in Black. Everything about Goldman suggests charm and fearlessness – even her flowing pink hair. And she has taken audacious liberties with the plot while in no way compromising the spirit of the book. A journalist, TV presenter and bestselling author ( Dreamworld, The X Files Book of the Unexplained), she moved into screen-writing five years ago ( The Debt, X-Men: First Class). Since 1997 there have been several attempts at a screenplay but it has had to wait for Jane Goldman to crack it. But there is a reason for this: it is devilishly hard to adapt. It might seem surprising the story has not been made into a film before. She is a veteran in the scare stakes, having been spooking audiences for almost 30 years – first, in Susan Hill's accomplished, flesh-creeping novel and then as an indestructible force on the West End stage. Y ou might think Daniel Radcliffe, post-Harry Potter, would not scare easily but that would be to underestimate The Woman in Black.
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