Adaptations

I'm currently adapting a play I wrote into a novel. I started with what takes place before the play starts. Of course, all story-telling is challenging (at least it is for me!). But I thought the parts taken from the play would be easy to adapt; I thought they would flow more readily than the other parts.
Interestingly, I'm finding this not to be the case. In a play, one depends on the actors to supply subtext, emotional tension, etc. In the novel, what the characters are thinking and feeling must, to some degree, be related to the reader. (Of course, one must be judicious in determining just how much to include and how much to let the reader intuit hi/herself. After adapting just half of the initial scene of the play, I found myself exhausted! The amount of concentration it required was quite a challenge. But, it keeps life interesting.
I suppose that dialogue comes easy to me because I was, in another life, an actor. But I realized that I often think in dialogue. If I'm trying to decide some issue, I tend to have a dialogue in my mind.
I imagine some would call that strange. And to them I say, "Guilty as charged!"