I’m in my fifties, and back when I
was a kid, we didn’t have DVD’s or Netflix. If we saw a movie at the theater
and wanted to experience it again – assuming we couldn’t con our parents into
taking us one more time – we read a novelization. I loved reading them because
they normally contained extra scenes that weren’t in the movie, and best of
all, they gave me insights into the characters’ thoughts and feelings – their internal
lives – which provided a different way to view the story.
As a novelist, I’d always hoped I’d
get a chance to write a novelization one day. Partly because I’m always
interested to see what I can learn from working in a form I’ve never attempted
before, but also because it would be a great way to come full circle and reconnect
to the boy I used to be. I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to write not
one, but two novelizations, back to back: xXx:
The Return of Xander Cage and Resident
Evil: The Final Chapter. And while I’m far from an expert at writing
novelizations, I did learn a few things while writing mine, and now I’m going
to share that knowledge with you.
GETTING READY
Both movies were continuations of a
franchise, and while I’d already seen the previous movies in each series, I
watched them again to prepare. I wanted to immerse myself in the actors’
performances – their speech patterns and body language – but I also wanted to
immerse myself in the style and atmosphere of their respective worlds. When I
write a media tie-in novel, it’s just as important for me to capture the feel
of the property as much as anything else. And since both franchises are action
series, I also wanted to get a strong sense of the actors’ physicality. How
they moved was just as important to me as how they spoke.
READING THE SCRIPTS
People often ask me how much
support IP holders give tie-in writers. The answer: not much. The xXx folks
sent some references photos, but other than that, all I received were
hardcopies of the scripts. Both scripts had been cobbled together from various
drafts (the pages had notations indicating which draft they were pulled from), but
neither were – as far as I could tell – final shooting scripts. At least, they
weren’t indicated as such.
Both scripts were roughly the same
length and had basically the same proportion of action scenes to non-action
scenes. Both had more detailed descriptions of setting and actions sequences
than I expected, but there were plenty of places where there was little – if any
– detail. Both scripts had their idiosyncrasies. One contained different
versions of dialogue throughout: dialogue from the original read-through script
and alternate (and presumably improvised) dialogue recorded during the cast
read-through. There was no indication which dialogue would be included in the
final film. Both of the scripts had repeated scenes located in different places
in the script, with no indication where they would end up in the final film.
Both scripts had scientific errors, so I knew I would have to double-check
every technical detail as I wrote to make sure my books didn’t contain such
errors. (It didn’t matter that these were novelizations. Any book with my name
on it is MY book.)
As I read, I tried to imagine the
films in my mind – the sights, sounds, and even the camera angles. I once read
that scriptwriters always think in terms of image instead of words when they
write, and I tried to keep this mindset as I read.
PREPARING TO WRITE
I wasn’t sure how to get started
since I’d never written a novelization before. I decided to begin by typing in
all the dialogue first. After all, I knew that the dialogue had to go into the
books, and this would give me the opportunity to make decisions about what version
of the dialogue to use from the one script that contained alternate lines. I
figured this way I’d already have a chunk of each book “written” before I
began. I was surprised to find the amount of dialogue in each script was almost
exactly the same: 10,000 words. I have no idea if this is because they were
both scripts for action films or if the proportion was due to some
scriptwriting formula for how much dialogue a film in general should contain.
Since I was contracted to write 80,000 words for one book and 70,000 words for
the other, I knew I’d have to add 70-60 K words as I wrote.
I generated ideas for scenes that I
could add or extend in case the scripts alone wouldn’t provide me with enough
material to make my word count (which I assumed they wouldn’t). I was careful
to come up with ideas that I thought would fit naturally with the stories.
Neither film had a trailer out when
I started writing (although the xXx film’s trailer did drop while I was in the
middle of writing that book), so in order to find out how the actors (or
monsters) looked in the film – hair, clothes, etc. – as well as what the scene
locations looked like, I scoured the Internet for images from the films, including
selfies actors took on set. These images also gave me some idea what changes
were made during the actual filming when I could see they were different than
what was described in the scripts. Yes, my job was to novelize the scripts I
was given, but as a kid, I always found it jarring when a scene in a
novelization was significantly different than what I saw in a movie, so I
wanted my books to be as close to the finished film as possible.
WRITING THE BOOKS
Drafting each book was very different.
I had several months to write the first one, and only three weeks to write the
second. In general, I find dialogue to be easiest to write and action to be the
hardest. You have to carefully choreograph action sequences, and doing so makes
my head hurt. But I’ve worked hard over the years to get better at writing action,
and since the scripts mostly spelled out the action sequences to one degree or
another, that part of writing the books wasn’t too bad.
Even though I didn’t get to consult
directly with the scriptwriters, I viewed the process of writing these books as
collaboration. To that end, I wanted to keep as much of the scriptwriters’
voices in the books as possible. So not only did I use their dialogue, I used
some of their descriptive passages, not word for word, but I wanted to keep the
details and narrative viewpoints.
Scriptwriters don’t always have to
explain how characters get from Point A to Point B physically. They can just
show the characters already present at a new location. So there were instances
when I had to connect dots that had been left unconnected. And, as I mentioned
earlier, I continually checked technical details for accuracy and made
corrections when necessary. When various technology was used in a script –
vehicles, weapons, etc. – I viewed YouTube videos to see how they’re used and
hear the sounds they make, and I checked schematics online to get the vocabulary
I needed to describe them. Occasionally, I even had to do some math to check
things like a bomb’s blast radius.
For Resident Evil: The Final Chapter I added in new material as I went.
Some of this was to strengthen connections between this story and those of the
previous films, some was to provide answers to questions the script didn’t
address. So when I finished that draft, it was more than long enough. xXx: The Return of Xander Cage was
different. Because I had such a short deadline, I used only the material in the
script for my first draft and added nothing. When I was finished, I had 60,000
words. I knew I had to add 10,000, so I created three new action sequences and
an epilogue and added them to the draft, which got me to 70,000 words. (I wrote
that extra 10,000 words over the course of three days, and if you think my mind
was fried after that, you are correct.)
I had time to proofread and edit
the Resident Evil book. I had no time to do so for the xXx book, and my poor
editor had to take care of that job herself in the interest of time. It was the
only time I’ve given an editor an unproofed manuscript, and it was an
uncomfortable feeling for me. I hope I never have to do that again.
The trailer for Resident Evil: The Final Chapter came
out after I’d submitted the manuscript for that book, and as I watched it, I
had two main reactions: “So THAT’s what that looks like” and “Well, shit, that
wasn’t in the script.”
STUDIO RESPONSE
I made a number of significant
additions – along with some minor story tweaks – to Resident Evil: the Final Chapter. The studio only changed one very
minor detail that had evidently been altered during filming. I added three
chapters and an epilogue to xXx: The Return
of Xander Cage. That studio removed everything I’d added, along with a
number of places where I indicated what the lead hero was thinking and feeling
during a scene. Evidently Xander Cage really IS all action.
I wasn’t upset about the deletions
for the xXx book. That kind of thing is par for the course when you write
licensed tie-in fiction. I think readers would’ve enjoyed the scenes, though. I
was happy that everything I’d added to the Resident Evil book remained. I think
(or at least I hope) that the series’ fans will like the extra material.
I’m writing this on January 15th,
and neither film has been released yet. xXx:
The Return of Xander Cage comes out on Jan. 19th, and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter comes
out Jan. 27th. I plan to see
both, and I’ll be interested to see what differences there are between the
scripts I novelized and the finished films – and what I learn from that. I’ll
write a follow-up blog in early February and let you know. Until then, as
Siskel and Ebert used to say, “See you at the movies.”
DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS
SELF-PROMOTION
Want to read both novelizations?
You know you do, so here’s some linkage:
xXx: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE
After coming out of self-imposed exile, extreme athlete turned government
operative Xander Cage must race against time to recover a sinister weapon known
as Pandora’s Box, a device that controls every military satellite in the world.
Recruiting a new group of thrill-seeking cohorts, Xander finds himself
entangled in a deadly conspiracy that points to collusion at the highest levels
of government.
RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER
As the only survivor of what was meant to be humanity's final stand against the
undead hordes, Alice must return to where the nightmare began—Raccoon City,
where the Umbrella Corporation is gathering its forces for a final strike
against the only remaining survivors of the apocalypse. In a race against time
Alice will join forces with old friends, and an unlikely ally, in an action
packed battle with undead hordes and new mutant monsters. Between regaining her
superhuman abilities at Wesker's hand and Umbrella's impending attack, this
will be Alice's most difficult adventure as she fights to save humanity, which
is on the brink of oblivion.
EAT THE NIGHT
You can still pick up my horror
novel Eat the Night. Peter Tennant
had this to say about the book in his Black
Static Review: “. . . this
was a wonderfully entertaining work of fiction, but one that almost as an aside
also explores the nature of reality and our ideas of truth, of how we are to
conduct ourselves in the face of existential despair. And there’s also lots of
blood, gallons of the stuff. I loved it.”
