Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

Mutating Novelizations

A week and a half ago, I got an e-mail from my friends at Paradox Entertainment. Among other things, they own the rights to the complete library of Robert E. Howard’s works, and I edited an Age of Conan line of novels for them and Ace Books in the past.

Last year, I wrote a novelization of a film based on one of their other properties: Mutant Chronicles. This is based on a roleplaying game—and board game, collectible card game, and miniatures game—I worked on back in the early ’90s. The film was stuck in development for over a decade, but now it’s actually been shot and is nearly done.

When I got the assignment, all I had to go on to write the book was a copy of the latest draft of the script and a book full of stills taken during the shoot. Having worked with the original games for so many years, I knew the background well, but the world of the film and that of the game didn’t match up perfectly, so I had to take some liberties in interpreting all the material and synthesizing it into something that could contain both the games and the film.

I turned the book in last April. Last week, Paradox arranged for a few private showings of a just-about-final cut of the film to show to their partners and prospective licensees. They also flew me out West Hollywood to see what they’d done.

Paradox had told me that the director (Simon Hunter) had altered the script in a few key spots. This made sense to me. As a writer, I outline my original books and then often come up with better ideas on the fly while I’m actually writing them. The same sort of thing happens in film, and it’s better for the director and his team to work on making the best film they can rather than slavishly follow a script.

I got to watch the film twice in two days. I brought my laptop into the private screening room with me and typed furiously as the action played out on the screen. The film was much as I had imagined it would be, only better.

The imagination is a fuzzy thing, as is language. When I wrote the first draft of the novelization, I had to guess at how a lot of things might look, so I painted the background details in broad strokes, allowing the theoretical reader’s imagination to fill in the details.

Film doesn’t allow for such freedom. You don’t imagine the monsters. You see them.

Seeing something I’d already thoroughly pictured in my head—even with the aid of the still—shown in vivid color on a wall-sized screen was surreal. It was like meeting an old friend and figuring out just how she’d changed over the intervening years.

I understand that most novelizations are written with the writer never seeing the film before finishing the book, and I’d fully expected this experience myself. Most deals for such books, though, are licenses the publisher takes out to capitalize on the excitement around the film. In this case, the people who owned the property hired me on, not the publisher.

Because of that, they care a great deal more about the book than a publisher would. After all, their relationship with the book and the film will go on for many years, unlimited by any license. That, and the fact that the president of Paradox ran the company that originally published the Mutant Chronicles games too, so many years ago.

That’s why they went to the expense to fly me out to make sure I could get the book as right as I possibly could. They care about this thing they’ve created and what it’s morphed into. They respect the time and effort they’ve put into it, and they want to make sure the fans of the film and the book get the best experiences from them that they can.

And that’s why I went out there too.

Related posts:

1. Parallel Life
2. Matt Forbeck - 21st

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