Welcome to another Creator’s Roulette! 🙂 Today we are talking about books as well as movies and screenplay! It is a pleasure for me to have John Vanghan with me to share his experiences and tell us about the intricacies of screenplay writing.
John studied film at Missouri State University and holds a Graduate Certificate in Screenwriting for Television and Film. He loves fantasy, action, and superhero films, with the occasional drama leaping up on his favorites. His own writings are a series of fantasy novels all interconnected in one large secondary-world with short stories to support the expanding lore.
Welcome to The Creator’s Roulette John! You are a writer who also dabbles in screenplay and film making. Did these interests evolve together for you or did you find your passion for them at different points in life?
Thank you for having me! Actually, it’s interesting that you would ask that. Growing up, I hated writing. I avoided the subject and the study of “English” all the way through highschool. Until I actually ended up gaining an interest in writing after watching through the Lord of the Rings film appendices for a repeated time later in life. As I went through those over and over, learning from the creators of those films, I realized that storytelling was something I would be very interested in. I dabbled in a few ideas for novels, mostly just those sort of early bad ideas when starting out on any new endeavor.
I finally came to the conclusion that I would write a fantasy novel when I had a dream one night. It left quite the impression and has been adapted now into a series of books that are still in development. With that realization, I also felt a pull towards filmmaking as my writing is extremely visual, like seeing the frames of a movie. So, I made a few short films with some friends and applied for my university’s film production program. I ended up getting in and became an avid screenplay writer. Which I still pursue to this day! Long story short, I owe the course of my life to the efforts and commitment to filmmaking of Peter Jackson!
So many books get adapted into movies nowadays. For example, I recently watched Little Women and am now in the process of rereading it. It is interesting to me to find parts that were different in the movie and though I understand that movie only has 2-3 hours to present the story, how does one decide which parts to cut and which ones to blend? Are there any movies or plays that were adapted from books that you found missed important scenes due to the time constraint?
There are nearly countless film adaptations that flubbed on the translation from book to film. It seems that the professional world needs about ten bad adaptations before they get one right.
In regards to deciding what to keep, it’s important to know the essence of the story you are interpreting. What drives it forward in the most basic sense, when all else is stripped away. Going off my mention above, Lord of the Rings does this quite well. Jackson and team realized early on that Frodo was the driving force of the story. Whatever advanced or enhanced the journey of the One Ring from point A to point Morder, was necessary for keeping. This is why characters like Tom Bombadil, despite their fan popularity, were cut. Because they don’t necessarily facilitate the advancement of the plot, the plot being Frodo carrying the ring.
One of the films that leaps to mind that got pretty much everything wrong is a little known title called “The Seventh Son”. It’s based on a series of books known as “The Spook’s Apprentice”, which they basically ignored and turned into a generic action film with a Twilight inspired love story, aging the characters up from children to near adults for that steamy romance element. Basically, adaptation is plagued by either studio interference looking to get that quick pop-culture dollar, or the writer/filmmaker failing to determine the most basic element of the story.
As a final example, the Harry Potter films did this well. Anything that advanced relationships between Harry and others, or moved him closer to his destiny against Voldemort, was kept. A lot of fan favorite characters saw their book moments cut or shortened, but Harry’s plotline remained largely intact as his story was the heart of the series. It sounds super simple when you realize it, but a lot of book adaptations do tend to get lost in the details and forget that, at the end of the day, you’re just telling another story. It’s just that this one was written differently and it’s your job to translate the language of the novel into the language of the screenplay. Which I firmly believe is possible for all books, the films just may not end up looking the same. Which is a good thing!
How do you approach writing a screenplay from a novel? For your own works, do you write the novel first and then the screenplay or it depends on the story?
If I’m adapting one of my own novels/stories, I would specifically wait for the book to be finished, or the series of books. That’s because writers who make screenplays often have “secrets” when they write. Things they feel about characters or know about backstory that doesn’t make it into the dialogue or visuals of the movie, but do inform on how they write those elements of the script. Same thing for adaptation. Knowing all the details of the world makes it easier to know what “secrets” to have when writing for any given character or event.
As an example, writing a screenplay before the novel is finished is like trying to write a movie based on World War II but you don’t know how it ends. Sure, you could probably make a guess based on how things are going via the information you do have. But if you write your story only knowing events up to the Battle of the Bulge (only knowing the Germans pushed forward but not that the offensive failed), you might assume a German victory instead of an Allied one.
This is a similar trap that the Game of Thrones writers fell in.
Disregarding any mistakes they made during the seasons that came from the books that had been published. When they were out of the books and moving forward alone, it was really a no-win situation. As the writer’s intent [George R.R. Martin] would literally never come across without the books existing. Which will eventually come to pass, but only after the show has now concluded. Many fans were not keen on the ending of the show, similar to how people wouldn’t be keen on that WWII movie I mentioned above! If you don’t know the ending of a story, you don’t know what’s important to plant or hint at in the beginning, which leads to botched storylines and easter eggs that go nowhere. Without knowing the ending of a story, with certainty, all opportunity for the film process of “Plant & Payoff” flies out the window, which severely hurts any story.Â
You mention a couple of Fantasy works above and recently, Fantasy and Science fiction have been popular screenplay genres. There is magic and advanced technology in these genres. As someone who specializes in fantasy, can you tell us more about the intricacies of adaptation there?
Adapting fantasy to a film, whether it be an original work or an adaptation of a separate property, is a fine line to walk. You can have works that soar off the screen into people’s imaginations like; Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, or Harry Potter. But you can also have works that leave a bad taste in peoples’ mouths like; Seventh Son, The Golden Compass, or The Hobbit. What separates those lists? What makes one set a series of loved properties while the other is disdained? Unfortunately, in my opinion, it’s nothing concrete. I believe it is as much about intent as it is about what’s on the screen.
Almost the exact same team worked on The Hobbit as worked on The Lord of the Rings. Yet, something about The Hobbit didn’t ring true to even the most hardcore fans. What was it? Well, there are some details from book to script that were odd. Such as including characters that weren’t in the story (Legolas & Tauriel being the most remarkable). However, many people don’t voice that as the specific reason they dislike the series. Most everyone I know enjoyed the section involving Smaug the dragon, they said it reminded them of the original trilogy by Sir Peter Jackson. So, what changed?
Short answer for this specific series is: I think the team was tired of the source material and the studio pushed their mandate far too hard. The team, once a director left the project leaving it to Peter Jackson, was forced to adhere to an impossible timetable and the studio wanted flashy over substance.
Adapting fantasy (or sci-fi) to screen requires time.
You need to work out the right lines for people to say, the right costumes to wear and when, the specific character arcs in relation to each other and in isolation. Because fantasy isn’t just magic and dragons, it’s us. Fantasy is a reflection of our world made a bit more…well, fantastic. So if the people on screen don’t feel real to us, then the world around them feels fake. During production on The Lord of the Rings, the script was literally never ironclad. Changes to scenes would come in the night before, or be worked out on set during the filming. The actors would put in their opinions regarding their specific characters, the writers and director would meet routinely. This doesn’t even get into how often the director and creative teams (concept artists, modelers, set builders, etc) would meet! It was often! That sort of constant work, changing of the gears and dials, made The Lord of the Rings almost a living project on its own (The Director of Photography joked that Lord of the Rings was the highest budget independent film ever made) . The Hobbit, by comparison, was a studio mandated mess with a director who had no time and all the pressure possible.
To briefly touch on the other titles. The Seventh Son left the source material and the writer (Joseph Delaney) in the dust in order to recreate the heartthrob success of the Twilight series. And The Golden Compass was an adaptation mess with more budget spent on the prestigious actors then on the drafting process of the script.
To avoid running this answer to an even higher word count. I’ll summarize with this; you cannot have a successful adaptation of a fantasy or sci-fi property without a passion for that property to fuel the creation process. If you have a studio breathing down your neck, passion is even more critical, as you will be pressured to give up on good ideas for the sake of time and budget. Which will lead to a vacuous product meant to sell tickets and collect dust on the shelves in stores.
What are things you are looking for in a novel when writing the screenplay for it? I suspect the setting (time), the clothing as well as how the characters look have to be as close as possible to the book?
Depends on what is wanted from the adaptation and what the author provided. Some books leave a lot up to the audience in terms of details like clothes or visual motifs of a similar nature. Which ends up giving the screenwriter a lot of freedom, which can be scary cause readers at large may have had a different vision and will be put off by the movie version. This may make it seem like books with higher detail are easier to adapt, which is a falsehood. Books with a higher level of detail actually make the writing process more difficult because you have to wade through all of that description to get to the core of it.
It’s like the Lord of the Rings production deciding on the visual motifs of the Elves and Dwarves. While the books have many rich descriptions of the races regarding their style of living, the writers for the films settled on the Dwarves basically being Art Deco and the Elves essentially being Art Nouveau. It’s so second nature to us to think of them in those terms now, those shapes fit their races so well in that story, but those art styles were not a given prior to the film adaptation. That’s something the writers/filmmakers had to filter the details down into, and the chances of them filtering it in such a nuanced manner is rather low. They put in the time and the thought to get the essence of it correct, knowing that adapting all the exact details is impossible. This is why I think any book can be adapted. Simpler ones allow for more expressive freedom but are at high risk of alienating the audience. Detailed stories provide a difficult puzzle for narrative and visualization, but give you more to go on in terms of unified vision with the audience.
What kind of creative freedom does a screenwriter have?
A screenwriter has both a lot of freedom and very little. There are many discussed rules in the art style, one of the more famous ones is that screenwriters try to keep the word count as low as possible. While that is basically true, there is no ironclad law that a screenplay must be spartan in words, though many advise that newcomers should keep it short to avoid boring potential opportunities.
I think that a screenwriter’s greatest creative freedom is the ability to just focus on the story and dialogue of the movie. Sometimes the writer can include camera movement and direction, but most filmmakers don’t like picking up scripts that tell them what to do. It takes the fun of interpretation out of the game. So, most screenwriters focus on the nuance of story and character. As to why this would be such a fun element, think about any Quentin Tarantino movie. While not everyone is a fan of his work at large, his dialogue is always snappy and holds the audience’s attention. If you can do that as a screenwriter, then the camera movement choices and the color grading can basically not matter at all. When it comes down to it, the most freedom a writer has for creativity is in how they write their characters. Audiences tend to forgive bad effects and editing as long as the characters are interesting and relatable. If you can nail that down, then you have a winning project.
What are some challenges of writing a screenplay?
For me personally, keeping the word count down and allowing the actors to have room in their interpretation.
I mentioned the word count earlier, but it is a good rule of thumb to find some sort of balance between too few words and enough words. If you go too few, the project comes off as stale and simple. If it’s too many words, others reading it will feel their eyes roll back into their heads. So it’s a ballet of sorts.
The second part I mentioned is leaving the actors room in their performance. Writing novels and screenplays beside one another makes it difficult to leave character description and detailing at the door. You don’t want to write a character in your script (unless it’s from a pre-existing story like a novel) as having a specific color of hair, eyes, a shape of nose, etc. Cause that will limit casting choices and annoy the producers. You want to leave the door open for possibilities.
You also don’t want to detail everything the character does. You don’t want to write in eye winks, shrugs, scoffs, etc. Because these are moments actors use to inform upon their character. They choose moments to use such movements when they feel it is necessary for the audience to see it. If you try and write it, you are telling them how to do their job when they didn’t ask for it. Which will make it likely for them to avoid the project.
I believe that a dream many screenwriters share is for actors and filmmakers to ask them their opinions on any given project, specifically the motivations behind scenes or character moments. Because those are the times on set that I remember the most. Many projects will have actors asking the director these sorts of questions, and that’s typically a good idea as directors are the orchestrator of the project. However, writers are where it started and often get left behind in the creative process once film production has begun. So, not being involved in the active visualization of a script is also a major challenge for writers.
What is the most exhilarating part of working on such a project?
Given the job to adapt a novel to film, specifically within a genre one specializes in (and if they are really lucky, a book they already love), is so exciting! I’ve adapted a few short stories to film and pursued the adaptation of other properties during my free time (specifically making an attempt to turn the “Ranger’s Apprentice” series into a script). My two largest aspirations in this field is to get hired to adapt a comic related story to film, and a major fantasy project to film.
I think a source of why this is so exciting to me is that it’s basically taking something familiar and already loved, and giving it a polish. It isn’t a “better” thing than when it was a book or comic, but now it’s shiny and has a specific voice behind it. Much like the difference between Thor 1 and Thor: Ragnarok. A character/story can be interpreted so differently between writers/filmmakers, yet be good and entertaining in both narrative structures! The challenge is also exciting, I’ve always dreamed of being hired to adapt Elder Scrolls or Legend of Zelda into some form of live action, whether it be for television or film. It would be crazy difficult to achieve and to appease the majority of fans, but it’s something I look forward to trying if ever presented to opportunity!
Let’s talk a bit about copyright. The author holds the rights to the book. Who owns the rights to the screenplay?
This is usually pretty straight forward. Unfortunately, unless a writer has a lot of power for negotiating behind them (as R.R. Martin or the Tolkien estate does now), the screenplay rights are almost entirely in the hands of the studio optioning the book. The book will remain within the domain of the author while they will sell the rights to “adapt” the book outright, getting a fee at the exchange and then seeing none of the film revenue. Often the author won’t even be involved in the screenplay writing process either, this isn’t always the case but studios aren’t typically known for being friendly to the original creators. This is to maximize the amount of profit for the studio and minimize the cost of production.
This is becoming a tad less common now, as industry leaders like Netflix push changes on how things are done. Recently the movie “Old Guard” on Netflix allowed the author of the graphic novels to be involved in the screenplay. This is in heavy contrast to Joseph Delaney who was forced to remain silent during the adaption of The Spooks Apprentice. Even when on set he wasn’t allowed to speak in any definitive terms of story to the actors or crew.
Long story short. Authors typically maintain the rights to the novels if they wish, that’s the bare minimum. Very rarely are they involved in any manner of production or back-end when it comes to the script rights and adaptation itself, as the studios seek to utilize the name recognition of any given book, but don’t necessarily have any direct interest in remaining close to the story. Unless doing so will maximize profits.
What is one of your favorite adapted movies that hardly ever gets talked about?
I hope you learned a lot from this interview! Connect with John on Twitter and his blog.
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