The script was substantially rewritten by Jones and Schmidt, with the character of Mortimer now "not really an Indian" but playing one during the "Rape Ballet" sequence. The Wild West setting was abandoned, as was most of the script. All but a few songs in the score were also jettisoned, and the staging of the play was changed to a thrust stage. Tom Jones says that the name of the play came from George Fleming's 1900 adaptation of the Rostand play, which used the name "The Fantasticks". Harley Granville-Barker's book, "On Dramatic Method", provided the idea of using a series of images to help weave a unifying theme to the play. Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" gave Jones the idea of using a narrator, the staging of Carlo Goldoni's "Servant of Two Masters" provided the concept of having actors sit stage-side when not acting, and John Houseman's production of "The Winter's Tale" and Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" suggested the use of sun, moon, frozen action, and incidental music. The song "Try to Remember" was added at this time. Harvey Schmidt says he wrote it in a single afternoon, after it emerged in almost complete form after a fruitless afternoon attempting to compose other songs.