A free option is never precisely free: You’re legally obligated to spend at least $1 to say you own the rights. Bizarre as this sounds, Stephen King has granted free options to aspiring filmmakers on several of his stories, calling them “dollar babies,” and to this day on his website he encourages film students to contact him. Some filmmakers, such as three-time Oscar-nominated Frank Darabont, owe a chunk of their early success to being granted a dollar baby by King, so it’s certainly something to think about.
That’s some of the business side of adaptions. If you take a list of movies made in any given year, a good proportion will be based upon existing properties, or as Hollywood glibly terms it, “branded” entertainment. In idea-starved Hollywood, anything that shortcuts the precarious development process is a Good Thing.
On a more craft-enriching level, adaption encourages you to hone your writing. If you’re a novice, paralyzed with fear and doubts about the creation and plotting of your own original story, taking a successful story that already exists and spending time working on translating it can be freeing and educational. Once you’ve got a few adaptions under your belt, you’ll be astonished at how readily you can pick out the poor dialogue from the exceptional, reworking structure and correcting logic gaps. Eliminating all the filler the original author couldn’t bring himself to lose. Killing another writer’s babies is ultimately a Good Thing, as it encourages you to free yourself up for your own future creations.
EXERCISE
1. Subject Research!
If you’re going to spend time on an undertaking like this, why not make it count? Pay attention to celebrity interviews and producers’ ponderings. If in an interview, Brad Pitt (let’s say) expresses a fond wish to play Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, your Spidey sense should start twitching. Keep a list of these.
2. Copyright Research!
On researching The Fountainhead, you’ll notice it was written in 1943. Hmm. You’ll then look at the author. Dang it. Rand died in 1982. That means if you’re going to wait for the copyright to expire, you have to set a computer alarm to notify you in 2052. And that’s if you’re willing to gamble on various copyright laws not changing between now and then, or the planet exploding in nuclear Armageddon. If you don’t fancy those odds, maybe you should move on to researching what Robert Downey, Jr., has been itching to play . . .
3. Persevere with Tenacity! (Part 1: Writing. The Easy Part)
Okay, so you’re not letting a pesky thing like copyright law daunt you. So, let’s roll up our sleeves. Getting hold of your subject matter (comic book, novel) is easy enough. Do not snag yourself a PDF or electronic copy of the book through Amazon or Project Gutenberg, except as a convenience. If you cut and paste the work into your word processor and start pruning passages, all you’ve become is a glorified copy editor. You need to type the passages yourself from scratch, with the sweat of your brow (and sticky fingerprints). This repetition will help you get inside the characters and story, allowing you to diverge where necessary. Creating a virtually identical facsimile of the original text will otherwise, like Jeff Goldblum’s first telepod experiments in THE FLY, only have you manufacture a flavorless doppelgänger. Others will do that. They will fail. You’re special. You will succeed.
4. Persevere With Tenacity! (Part 2: Submitting. The Difficult Part)
Well, you’ve read some of my anecdotes, so you know what you’re up against. Now you have to get your work out to the people who will transform your work from a hunk of dead tree to a piece of entertainment that will enthrall the planet enough that you get ripped off by a million bit-torrent sites. This is the tricky part.
You don’t have to be in L.A., but it helps. You don’t need representation, but that too is a boon. With no connections at all, I managed to get read and represented at a major talent agency in London first time out of the gate, and worked solidly for years without getting onto a California-bound plane.
Lack of representation shouldn’t be viewed as an obstacle. Film societies, organizations, and just plain communicating with people you meet in real life or on the Internet can reap dividends. A few years ago, at a comic book mixer in L.A., the beer was flowing freely and a fledgling writer approached me after I complimented him on his tentacle-festooned T-shirt. I broke my own cardinal rule that day when he asked me to read one of his scripts. I’m glad I did. I helped him set it up with Gary Kurtz the producer of STAR WARS. (It’s now titled PANZER 88.)
Fired up? Good. Now, get out there you Screenwriting Anarchists, and start breaking some rules.
SHARON SCOTT
Writing the Series
SHARON SCOTT has created and written comic book series for over 15 years, including More Than Mortal, Makebelieve, and The Witchfinder. She wrote the first season of the Alien Confidential webcomic for Namco Bandai and is an optioned screenwriter. Scott also works in the videogame industry as a story lead and writer on licensed properties for Warner Bros., DreamWorks, and Mattel.
Many of the tools writers use to create stories can be applied to series writing. However, there are three areas in the development of a genre series that follow their own set of rules: the series concept, its structure, and the development of the series characters.
Let’s start with concept. A stand-alone story is a single idea with a clear end point. A doctor must find a way to cure his wife’s mysterious illness. In a series, the concept is an idea that repeats each week or installment as a predictable formula, but plays out in unpredictable ways. A doctor encounters a mysterious illness every week and must race to find a cure before the patient dies. The concept for a genre series follows similar rules, but adds a “genre” twist, which, by its contemporary definition, is a supernatural, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, or mystery/detective element. A doctor, who is also a werewolf, encounters a mysterious illness every week and must race to find a cure before the patient dies, while keeping his beastly nature a secret.
Now for structure. Writing a series is not as simple as stretching a plotline out over successive installments (novel, comic book, episode). No matter what structure you follow, all stories must have a clear beginning, middle, and end. The same rules apply when writing a series, but with one important addition. The structure applies not only to each successive installment, but to the larger, overarching story as well. What would The X-Files have been like if Mulder hadn’t been searching for his sister all those years? Would Star Trek: Voyager have been as compelling if the crew wasn’t trying so desperately to get back to Earth? A series must have story goals in both the overarching story and each of its installments. But story goals have a very distinct focus in a genre series. The primary goal of the genre writer is to entertain, which means appealing to the masses. So, while literature can get away with more cerebral or internally driven story goals (i.e., to find themselves, to grow up, to learn to love), story goals in a genre series must be active, be externally driven, and carry important stakes (i.e., to get out alive, to save the village, to find the killer).
Finally, let’s talk character development. It goes without saying that, for any series, the aim is to write compelling characters who are surprising and unique, and whom readers will want to see in action again and again. There is a near-endless list of genre traits—super-human abilities, psychic powers, alien species—to aid the writer in that effort. But it is important to point out that in most series, main characters don’t change much, if at all. They become stronger or smarter, they add “weapons” (both actual and figurative) to their arsenal, they might entertain love . . . but they don’t emotionally transform. If they did, they would cease to be the character audiences tune in to see or read each week. Special care should also be given to the supporting characters, which help define, drive, and aid the main character in their story goals. The longer format of a series allows characters to develop complex relationships that play out over time, which helps build an emotional bond with the audience and ke
eps them coming back for more. While The Amazing Spider-Man was a great superhero comic book series, comic readers didn’t pool their lunch money and buy the latest issue to see Spidey sling webs and crawl up the side of buildings. They tuned in because they wanted to see if mild-mannered Peter Parker ended up with The Girl, or because they wanted to witness the moment when he discovered his best friend was also his deadliest enemy.
Heed these special rules for the concept, structure, and characters of your genre series, and not only will you be ahead of your peers, but you will also have a solid foundation on which to start writing.
EXERCISE
1. Establish the concept for your genre series. Is it a repeatable idea that the audience can watch play out in a surprising way through each episode or installment? What element categorizes it as a genre series? Keep the description succinct. You want just enough to create a distinct image in your mind.
2. What is the overarching story goal of your genre series? Remember, all story goals should be active and externally driven.
3. What are some ways your main character might accomplish that larger story goal? The answers generated here become seed ideas for the smaller story goals you need for the installments in your genre series.
4. Who are your main characters? How will you make them unique and compelling enough that readers will want to experience them again and again? Is there a genre element you might add to elevate your main character?
5. Develop an initial list of supporting characters, including formidable enemies. Find ways to make those relationships complex and compelling.
6. Have an ending in mind. We would all love to think that our favorite series would go on forever, but even the greatest of stories come to an end eventually. How will your genre series end? Will the hero win? Will she save the day but ultimately die? Will he succeed in accomplishing the larger story goal only to become a villain in the process?
7. How will the series be paced? What format are you considering? Comic books have different requirements than TV shows or novels. Do the research. The format you choose will help determine where the story breaks will happen, and how to plot out each installment.
When you’re done, you should have an engaging roadmap of your genre series. Good luck and happy writing!
JOE R. LANSDALE
A Writer Writes
JOE R. LANSDALE is the author of more than thirty novels and a large number of short stories. His work has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Edgar, the British Fantasy Award, and nine Bram Stokers, one of those for Lifetime Achievement. He also received the Grandmaster of Horror Award and many others. Some of his works have been filmed.
This is supposed to be an article on writing exercises. So I may be a little in conflict with the subject. I dislike the idea of it. Writing exercises for exercise sake, I mean. Seems like a waste of energy.
Maybe it’s how a person defines exercises. I was once told by a teacher in a class that writers should carry a note pad with them, and if they see a tree that is unusual, they should stop and try and describe it on their note pad.
I don’t like doing things like that at all, which may be part of the reason I didn’t graduate, went to work at hard manual labor, and then became a writer, passing the degree by altogether.
Let me repeat: This seems like a waste of energy and a false or forced exercise. Why write something that at that moment is of no interest to you? It may be fine for some people, but for me, not so much. I might make a note for a general story idea, but I don’t waste my time doing exercises for exercise sake. I have to have a story, and if I’m going to do an exercise, if we must call it that, it has to be one that I think of as the real thing, not conscious practice, but instead, an exercise that builds a valuable and usable muscle. Achieving any measure of success in this field certainly leads to a lot of practice, but you should open up your stores of inspiration to do something worthwhile, not merely to noodle.
I started writing and selling in the seventies, and by the early eighties, I was full-time. Sometimes to get myself going on a project I was working on, I would do this: I would start by looking around my room to see if something might spur a sentence or two, and in turn activate a story. If an idea parachuted in, and it nearly always did, I started building on it. For me it was a way of getting started, and when I wrote this way, I had every intention of it turning into a story, not just an exercise.
Sometimes, in a morning, I would write an entire short story that way. Some of them were good, and some of them weren’t. The best of them ended up being published. I wrote these before I dove into whatever it was I considered my major project. The major work could be a short story, a novel, a screenplay, whatever. Often times my warm-ups turned out better than the major project. If I didn’t write it in one morning, I would do it over a series of mornings, but always stopping at an allotted time to work on the main project.
For a while I had two typewriters. (This was back in the Stone Age.) One on my desk that was electric and one on a slide-out shelf of my desk that was a manual. I kept the exercise, if we’re going to call it that—and at this point it will be easier if we do—in the manual most of the time. If I started the exercise in the morning, then stopped to work on the main project, and if the main project lulled, or if I felt myself looking around the room, I turned to the manual and went back to work on the minor idea again. If nothing happened on either project, well, I continued to look around the room.
By using this method I ran a lot of words through the typewriters. Sometimes, at the end of a day, I looked at my “exercise” and determined that it didn’t deserve to live, and I wadded it up and tossed it in the trashcan. But, often enough, I would realize I had something, and as I said before, it might turn into the major project, or at least replace the major project as soon as whatever was major at the time was finished.
I still do this a little. Have a major project and a not so major project going, but more often than not, now I concentrate on one piece and finish it before I start another. However, now and again I just can’t help myself, and work on more than one thing in a day. I tend to do it more in reverse these days. I start with the main project, then switch to the goof-off project at the end of my short work days. I work about three hours a day, or three to five pages a day. If more comes, I don’t fight it, but that’s my certain goal each day, so I always feel like a hero. It’s a rare day when I can’t do three to five pages on something, and then, if I want, I can go to the playhouse and fiddle with another idea for a while.
What did this method do for me when I was starting out?
I ran a lot of words through the machine and became more facile and confident about my work, even if I tossed out a lot of it. But I never wrote to toss. I wrote to create the best material I could, something that could hopefully be published.
So for me, it wasn’t wasted time, because it wasn’t, strictly speaking, an exercise. I guess the pieces that didn’t work out and that I threw away could be called exercises, but they were not that on purpose. I was trying hard on each and every piece I wrote.
In our family there was a story about a fellow who was little, who was called Shorty, and he got into a fight, and the guy he was fighting was huge and held Shorty by the head while the smaller man swung his arms savagely in the air, hitting no one. Someone said, “Shorty, what are you doing?”
“Fighting like hell,” he said.
I felt that way when I wrote. I was fighting like hell. No matter how useless the work might turn out to be, every day I went in with the mission to fight that blank page and beat it. Those warm-ups that I wrote helped, and I was very serious when I wrote them, even if they were a way of getting started on the main project. I always thought of writing as fitting the axiom that Bruce Lee stated about practicing martial arts. He said, “Play seriously.”
I always have.
EXERCISE
&n
bsp; Try any of the exercises in this book that spark your imagination and take them seriously—apply them to either your main project or use them to start on or work on a minor project. Treat whatever you write as real writing, not just “an exercise.”
CONTRIBUTOR WEBSITES/PAGES
Acevedo, Mario marioacevedo.com
Anderson, James G. stoneharp.com
Anthony, Piers hipiers.com
Barnes, Steven lifewrite.com
Bender, Aimee flammableskirt.com
Benest, Glenn glennbenest.com
Benulis, Sabrina sabrinabenulis.com
Bernheimer, Kate katebernheimer.com
Briggs, Peter imdb.com/name/nm1486009
Brin, David davidbrin.com
Burke, Kealan Patrick kealanpatrickburke.com
Campbell, Ramsey ramseycampbell.com
Carl, Lillian Stewart lillianstewartcarl.com
Carlson, Eric Stener ericstenercarlson.com
Carver, Jeffrey A. starrigger.net
Clark, Simon nailedbytheheart.com
Conradt, Christine christineconradt.com
Cooper, Sara B. imdb.com/name/nm0153384
DeGeorge, Edward youtube.com/user/EdwardDeGeorge/videos
Densham, Pen ridingthealligator.com
Dinsmore, Danika danikadinsmore.com
Dower, Kim kimfromla.com
Durham, David Anthony davidanthonydurham.com
Edson, Eric http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0249672/
Now Write! Page 31