OK, my idea for this year is to write a screenplay for a TV adaptation of "Biggles".

Not, however, the better known Biggles stories of derring-do all over the world, which were written as full-length novels, but rather the (far better) World War One stuff, which was published in collections of short stories.

This is where my difficulty lies. How do I get from a series of loosely (or un)connected short stories to a coherent plot for a single episode, let alone a series (I'm envisaging 55-minute episodes for the BBC here)?

Would it be best to take one story and stretch it into an episode by including more in the way of character development (something Johns didn't bother too much about), or to cram in several to make more of an action piece, albeit a little bittier?

I think the usual thing to do with a series of short stories (like, say, Sherlock Holmes), is to adapt each individual story to an episode.

Now, I've never read the Biggles stories, but since it seems to be more action based...you'll probably end up having to put in more dialogue. In order to, you know, set up the time frame (at least in the first episode), what mission he's going on, why he's going on it, things like that.

Plus, maybe to break up the monotony of planes and stuff flying around?

Anyway, there probably will be character development in all that.

Of course, this is all theoretical, having never read the books/stories or written a script.

I'm actually leaning away from directly adapting anyway now. It's probably going to be more "based on..." than a direct port.

The early Biggles stories were written for a popular flying magazine in the 1930s, with the express aim of recording for the benefit of the next generation of fighter pilots some of the "tricks of the trade" learned the hard way in 1914-18. So most of them essentially revolve around Biggles & Co encountering a new German tactic or aircraft and thinking laterally to come up with a countermeasure. Actual characterisation is pretty thin, though there's some lovely glimpses.

The series proved popular with young boys and after that, Johns started tailoring the writing and the stories to their demands, even going back and revising some of the earlier stories to make them more appropriate - turning Biggles teetotal, for instance, and have him risking death over a crate of lemonade (rather than the rather more valuable crate of pre-war malt whisky in the original).

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