Category Archives: The Writing Life

Based on Your Best Selling Novel

Craft & Skills Nathan Barra The Writing Life 4 Comments

As a young bibliophile, I was often disappointed by movie adaptations of my favorite books.  Like many, I waited in dread and anticipation for movies I just had to see, hoping that they would live up to the works I loved.  I know of several authors who have gone on record as being reluctant to sell their other media rights lest “Hollywood mess it up.”  Then, I learned better.  I received some theatrical training in college and learned that movies and books are different by necessity.  After my experience in theater (both live and recorded performance ), I try to judge the movie on its merits as an adaptation rather than a carbon copy of the book.  Using this training, I try my best to keep my major projects adaptation friendly.

#5. Time Frame

Though the average length of movies seems to have been increasing in recent memory, a movie is considered to be long if it runs more than 120 minutes.  Conventional screenwriting wisdom states that one page of script translates into one minute of screen time.  This means that long scripts are only 120 pages long.  In the world of novels, this is about 30,000 words of equivalent space.  In a way, this is the primary motivating factor for cutting material from a book.  It is also the primary advantage of using a miniseries.

I read an article years ago that proposed that movies were limited to 2 hours in run time due to biology and human attention span.  Sure, at home, you can pause a movie for a visit to the restroom, but this cannot be done in a theater.  So, not only do books have more space for content, but they also have the flexibility to be put down and picked back up with greater ease.

The Take Home: When writing an adaptation friendly book, it is essential to have at least one single, continuous, strong, independent throughline.  Keep the complexity, subplots and backstory in your work, but be sure that your main plotline and characters are strong enough to carry the day even if you drop all the subplots and side characters.

#4.Special Effects

The limit of a book’s special effects budget is the limit of the reader’s imagination.  Epic magic battles with thousands of wizards, spells flying in all directions, dragons and huge armies clashing are really cost effective in the written word, but very difficult to arrange in the real world.  If you need to repeat the scene, such as in live performance venues, it becomes even more difficult to do this without breaking the budget.  Early on in my theatrical experience, we had to pump water up into a trash can in the black box theater we were using for an effect to be used in the play.  I thought it would be as simple as running a hose from a water spigot, but to my surprise, it was much more difficult.  It gave me an appreciation for the sheer logistical and practical challenges that come with even simple special effects.

Also, successful special effects artists are frequently very, very good at their jobs.  Hand in hand with such specialized talents comes high price points.  Granted, the price is often well deserved as the results, but it’s another factor to consider.  High quality special effects aren’t easy to pull off and require specialized software and training.  Another point to consider is that through the years, audiences have come to expect what magic and other special effects should look like.  This is a huge advantage for writers, because we have access to the same media that our audience is exposed to.

Say you want to write a space battle.  Pick a few really popular movies and TV shows that feature that aspect and watch the scenes with an eye to the creative style.  Then apply that filter to your own writing.  Not only does this make your novel adaptation friendly, but it also plays on audience expectation and takes some of the burden off your prose.

The Take Home:  Despite the ease of special effects in books, real world wonders require a great deal of time, talent and effort.  Consider using the common visual forms that have already been developed by the special effects community to keep your work adaptation and audience friendly.

#3. Spatial and Temporal Limitations

A skilled writer can tell a story with numerous exotic locations, spanning multiple generations or cover huge amounts of time.  Movies must pick a limited number of locations and a shorter time frame.  I remember reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in high school and having to stop to create massive family trees and pages of timeline to make sense of how everything related to everything else.  It was interesting and frustrating to try to dissect, but because of the necessity of all that effort, that book would be ineffective as a movie without significant work by a talented screenwriter.

Again, it comes down to cost and effort.  Finding good filming locations is only a start, the next step is to transport a variety of personnel and equipment to those locations.  You must be able to do this cost effectively.  If the locations are accessible by the public, controlling the space becomes a huge obstacle.  I participated in and lead a handful of film projects where we reserved public space, roped them off and put up signs that read “filming in progress, please do not enter.”  Whenever we did this, we had to have at least one dedicated member of the production staff enforcing the barricade.  I was shocked by the number of times people would walk up to the caution tape, stop, read the sign and then duck under the tape to keep walking straight through a scene being filmed.  Somehow, they were always shocked that they were actually interrupting something.  This is why there is usually a core of scenic locations used in most film.  Once you build the various parts of a spaceship in a soundstage, they can be used over and over again.

The Take Home: To be adaptation friendly, it is a good idea to have a limited number of core scenic locations that are easy for production staff to create and control.

#2. Dialog Only Writing

In books, we have the liberty of description, both in scenes and actions of the protagonists.  This is not the case for scripts.  One of the best ways to insult and alienate actors is to tell them exactly what to do, especially if you are the writer and not the director.  In all kinds of theater, there is as much art in how a line is performed as how the line was written, and often actors and directors will take great liberties with the script to make their vision come to life.  This means, that if you want your story told a certain way, you must write the dialogue in such a way that your intent is not only clear, but also the reasonable interpretation for your words.

Many writers neglect their skills with dialogue when developing their writer’s toolbox.  It isn’t intentional, but with all the skills involved in quality writing, it is difficult to cover everything.  To write adaptation friendly books, it is necessary to practice dialogue as frequently that is all that will survive the process of being transformed into a script.  The rest of the book will be handed to the production staff as inspiration for the costumers, set designers and directors.  Your audience, however, will be focused on the actors and what they are doing and saying.

The Take Home: Movie scripts must have strong enough dialog and direction for actors to properly interpret what they need to do to accomplish the intent of the scene.

#1. Show, Don’t Tell

Movies can’t tell.  They can only show.  Well, at least not effectively.  The closest analogue for a movie is the voice over, but that technique has to be used sparingly and skillfully as excessively visible narrators become grating quickly.  Again, it comes down to actors as they will be doing most of the showing.  Yes, the scenery and costuming will be showing as well, but the focus of most movies is on the what the people are doing and saying.

The ability to show a great deal of information quickly is one of the great advantages of movies over the written word.  As a writer, I often struggle with which details to include in my descriptions to keep effective pacing.  In movies, this isn’t that much of an issue.  Writers can spend pages and pages describing in exacting detail what everyone is wearing and all the foods being served at the feast.  All this information can be conveyed in a five second pan over of the room before focusing on the characters participating in the action.

The Take Home:  When writing books, be able to supplement the descriptions in  the book for production staff who are looking for inspiration and guidance.

Digging Our Own Well

Leigh Galbreath The Writing Life 2 Comments

At the beginning of the month, Gregory Little talked about the two main reasons why myths and legends are inevitable-humanity’s unconscious desire to flatter and preserve itself. It seemed appropriate to head back to that well at the end.

Yes, it’s true. We are a selfish species, aren’t we? But we do it with style. And we’ll never stop. Our natural oral tradition of myth-making is alive and well even in this day and age. We see this most acutely in the form of urban legends, or urban myths.

Everyone’s heard them, those stories someone swears is the truth about some strange, off-the-wall incident that happened to some distant relation or a friend of a friend you’ve never heard of before. These myths are based on hearsay and passed from person to person like juicy gossip that has no basis in times gone by.

There are hundreds of them, from the scary but mundane (the guy who went into a store only to find out from a passerby that there’s someone hiding in his backseat, or ate pop rocks and drank a coke only to have his stomach explode), to the weird and unexplained (the moth-man or ghost hitchhiker), to the natural world out to get us (the crazy ways you can catch a simple disease that will kill you!).

Let’s remember, though, that the myths we know were once brand-spanking new, too. What do you wanna bet that there were people in Columbus’s day who knew a guy whose brother had a lady friend whose cousin grew up with a sailor who was on a ship that sailed off the edge of the world or was eaten by sea monsters? That medieval children knew the name of someone long dead who went into the forest on a dare in the middle of the night to be eaten by some sort of hobgoblin?

And everyone will have sworn it really happened.

Sure, the subjects of the stories have changed. Instead of sea monsters, we have psycho-killers. Instead of selfish step-mothers, we have shadow governments. Instead of witches out to snatch our first born, we have kidney thieves. But the message remains the same-be careful, little ones, dark things are waiting to happen out in the big, wide world.

We’re still making up stories to preserve ourselves.

But what about the flattery part?

Am I the only one who noticed that, unlike our ancestors, our current monsters for the most part…are ourselves? Perhaps we’re not as vain as has been put forth.

In fact, I suggest that the purpose of that flattery isn’t simply about making ourselves look good (though that can often be the case, I admit). We take what is best and hold it to the light not just to wash away the dirt of our inequities but to draw ourselves to something purer. King Arthur isn’t remembered because he was a good military commander. Martin Luther King isn’t remembered because he made good speeches. These legends don’t just make us look better. They inspire us to be better. They remind us that even a selfish species can rise above.

And the fact that we remember these legends, even after thousands of years, shows that we, as a species have always aspired to the better parts of our souls even when we don’t succeed.

Myths aren’t just about where we came from. Legends aren’t just about people gone to dust. The importance of these stories don’t just exist in what’s come before. They speak as much about who we are now as what we were then. We may no longer need to explain the world as our ancestors did-that’s what science is for-but there are still things out in the dark that can eat us. There are still silly, stupid actions we can take to hurt ourselves. We’re still insecure little creatures out to overcome our frailties. And it shows in the stories we tell.

Even our modern appropriation of older stories tell more about us than they do about them. There’s barely a hint of Ovid’s statue in George Bernard Shaw’s flower girl in his rendition of Pygmalion. The women of Shaw’s time were very different than in Ovid’s. Is it a surprise that Farscape’s “lotus flower” turns out to be the base ingredient for the ammunition of pulse weapons? While taking a class on West Central Africa, where oral-culture has never lost its prevalence, I read origin myths that had warlords with guns. Yeah, I pretty sure they didn’t had guns at the beginning of civilization.

We like to say that we reuse these stories because they are familiar. People are drawn to the stories that already resonate with them. Yet, when we adapt, we’re not just telling those stories. The present overlays the past in every adaptation we do. It’s unavoidable. So, really, is it the tale itself that’s the familiar? Or is it what we interject into them? Are we using the tale to bring in the audience? Or are we using our own lens to help the reader better understand the message behind the myth?

So, let me offer another facet as to why myths and legends are important and inevitable-they keep us connected. They connect us to each other with their universality and to our past in their malleability. As humans, we are all more similar that different on the inside. Appropriating an old tale is more than using a ready-made plot people are familiar with; it’s communing with the past in a way the present can understand.

In a way, we’re not just going back to the oft-used well when we work with myth & legend in our fiction. We’re digging our own new ones as well.

But then, maybe that’s just another form of flattery.

Myths and Legends in Anime

Guest Posts The Writing Life 3 Comments

StonepicA guest post by Stone Sanchez.

There have been a more than just a few anime that have drawn inspiration from the myths and legends that cultivate our world, some of them are far more popular than most people realized, while still being completely out in the open about their inspirations. One of the biggest names I know of is Dragon Ball Z.

The main protagonist Goku’s Origins stem from a 16th century novel called Journey to the West, written by the novelist Wu Cheng’en about the Monk Xuanzang traveling to the western regions during the Tang dynasty on a mission handed down to him from the Buddha. Goku’s name is a Japanese translation of one of the main characters’ names, Sun Wukong-a boy with a monkey tale that joins Xuanzang in his journeys alongside two more companions. The classic novel is deeply rooted in Chinese mythological and religious basis, which is where Akira Toriyama drew a lot of his influence from in the early days of Dragon Ball; Goku even had similar weaponry to the legendary literary figure, namely a magical poll that was able to get longer or short on command.

Although as the series progressed, a lot of the roots were covered up with a more science fiction type feel with the introduction of fighters from other planets, those roots found in Journey To The West are ever present in the popularized fighting anime and manga.

Japanese Mangaka have drawn from outside inspirations countless times when building their worlds, anime like Mythical Detective Loki Ragnorak, and even Kaleido Star have relied heavily on the cultures that surrounded them to give life to the internal story and conflict that surround the Manga’s and Anime that are crafted at their roots from these stories.

In Mythical Detective Loki Ragnorak, the anime tells the story of Loki, the Norse god, who’s been trapped in modern day Japan and is using a paranormal detective agency to front his hunt for real magic existing in the world so that he can one day return to Asgard, the home of the gods. As the story progresses a very Japanese spin is thrown into classic Norse mythology, like the introduction of Thor-who normally wields the mighty war hammer Mjolnir, instead hefts a Bokuto (a Japanese wooden sword) by the same name.

Kaleido Star finds one of its source roots around the mythological realm of Tarot cards. The show infers a lot of the readings given by the personification of one of those cards, The Fool, for a lot of the situations that spring up in the life of Sora Nagito, a rising star of the theatrical circus, who is one of the few “chosen by the stage” to be able to see The Fool and granted the right to attempt the Legendary Great Maneuver.  At a later point in the show, it even delves into astrology and reading the stars to determine the paths of the characters.

There are so many ways that ancient and mythological tales find ways to spring into modern storytelling, even in Anime.  These classic tales bring so much to the table whenever they’re implemented and used within the vast scope that this format provides. Just like with old legends and myths that have yet to be discovered, you just have to be willing to look beyond what’s there to see them.

Great Anime: .Hack//Sign, Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood, Evangelion, Basilisk, Desert Punk, Cyborg 009, Another

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Stone Sanchez is an aspiring professional author who has been active in the writing community for the past two years. Currently Stone is associated with the Superstars Writing Seminars, where he records and manages the production of the seminars. He’s also worked with David Farland by recording his workshops, and is currently the Director of Media Relations for JordanCon, the official Wheel of Time fan convention. Often referred to as the “kid” in a lot of circles, Stone is immensely happy that he can no longer be denied access places due to not being old enough.

 

Odysseus and the Leviathan

Guest Posts The Writing Life No Comments

Guest Post by Kim May

What could a Campbellian hero quest possibly have in common with a twenty-fifth century space battle? On the surface they are completely different entities, but if you strip them down to their basic building blocks, you can trace the thematic elements in both stories back to ancient myths and legends. To show you what I mean I’ll break down one of my favorite shows – Farscape.

For those who haven’t watched the show, Farscape is the epic tale of American astronaut John Crichton. While testing a prototype spacecraft an extremely large solar flare knocks him into the mouth of a wormhole that takes him to a galaxy far, far away. He joins up with a group of escaped prisoners – Zahn (a priestess), Rigel (deposed emperor), Dargo (berserker-like warrior) – and Aeryn, the kick-ass space marine. They sail through the strange and wondrous galaxy in Moya, a living space ship, with it’s symbiotic pilot as they try to avoid Commanders Crais and Scorpius’ many attempts to re-capture them. Oh yeah, and a third of the characters are Jim Henson Creature Workshop puppets.

This show is so rife with mythic themes that it’s hard to know where to start. I could talk about the character archetypes because Crais is the threshold guardian, Scorpius is a shadow figure, and Rigel is the epitome of the trickster. Or I could break down the show’s biblical parallels with John as Jonah and Moya as the whale. However, that would be too silly since that would mean Aeryn is Mary Magdalene (which is so frelling wrong). So lets look at it through a Greek lens instead.

First off, the overall premise of the show is an Odyssian journey. Like Odysseus, John’s primary objective is to go home. More than once John is within sight of his goal when he is cruelly torn away and forced to travel the path again. Of course, in John’s case, he never makes it because it’s either the wrong version of home or his crewmates need his help out of a deadly situation.

Some of the episodes have an even more direct correlation to the Odyssey. In Back and Back and Back to the Future, they answer the distress call of a couple of scientists, and the good deed almost gets them killed because the scientists were playing with black holes. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the similarities between a black hole and Charybdis – the whirlpool that threatened to pull Odysseus’ ship into the depths of the sea. The Sirens also come to mind since the distress call lured them into danger just as the Sirens’ song lured passing sailors.

In Thank God It’s Friday, Again they encounter the uncharted territories’ version of the lotus eaters – a hippy commune growing plants for “medicinal use” and are a little too generous when it comes to free samples. True to the myth, when Dargo consumes said sample, his rage and desire to return to his son completely disappear. He spends most of the episode in a Matthew McConaughey-like daze and it’s up to John to save his crewmates from their drug addiction before they start playing the bongos.

One of my favorite episodes, A Human Reaction, has a built in Deus ex machina. John thinks he’s made it home only to find out it’s all a dream and his dad is Zeus…I mean an ancient alien disguised as his dad (which is totally what Zeus would do if he ever went into space). The most brilliant aspect of this episode was that they never explained the technology that allowed the Ancients to do this. Because of that they have a very godlike distinction for the rest of the series; and unlike Stargate, the writers don’t overuse the device. One could argue that the Ancients ultimately harm John more than they help him in the end – which is exactly what the Olympians did to the Greeks.

So why do these classical elements work so well in futuristic, technology laden settings? First of all, they’re familiar. They’re the security blanket we can clutch when hostile forces threaten to destroy Moya or when Scorpius is frying John’s brain in the chair. Because of the storytelling tradition of myth and legend, we know that eventually, somehow, the hero will emerge victorious. Whether it’s a clever idea that helps them or they’re rescued by one of their companions doesn’t matter, as long they win the day.

Another reason is that depending on the viewpoint, magic can be science and vice versa. The two can even be combined into one epic tale. Ken Scholes does it wonderfully in the Psalms of Isaac novels.

So when you sit down to write your next story, don’t be afraid to mix the genres and use ancient legends as inspiration. The slipstream may be what your characters need to find their way home.

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Kim May writes sci-fi and fantasy but has been known to pen a gothic poem or two. She works at an independent bookstore and dog/house sits on the side. A native Oregonian, she lives with her geriatric cat, Spud, and spends as much of her free time as she can with family and friends. She recently won The Named Lands Poetry Contest. If you would like to find out what she’s working on, please visit her blog.