Bearing fruit by Jane Ayres

Any business, small or large, will regularly review and evaluate output and productivity.  What is selling?  What isn’t?  Is the reward commensurate with the time expended to produce it?  (Okay, this is a perennial issue for all creators, not just writers.  Creating can be hugely draining and time consuming; also frustrating and difficult, as well as spiritually satisfying.   And we aren’t supposed to be doing it for the money (!) But that is for another article….) Back to the topic.  So how many writers analyse their output in terms of volume and results?  For example, have you ever gone through your records detailing work sent out (you do keep records, don’t you?) to ascertain the ratio of work published to work submitted?

My core work is writing short pony books for children and teenagers, which I have done for more years than I care to remember.  However, I am a big advocate of not putting all your eggs in one basket, so have always tried to establish a parallel writing career that is independent of this; particularly since the publishing industry is so fickle and dynamic.  I have written articles, comic strips, poetry and advertising copy, but my first love was always the short story form.  When I started to analyse my non-pony book output, I discovered that on average only 12% of my speculative submissions resulted in publication, and this was consistent over several years.  Was I producing quantity rather than quality?  Or failing to target my work effectively? Investigating further, I undertook a breakdown of the successful output, to see if any trends were apparent.  The results were illuminating.  I spent a lot of time and energy writing short stories but had disappointingly few accepted. Repeated editorial feedback indicated that my fiction lay uncomfortably between “commercial” and “literary” – a situation I guess many writers will be familiar with.  However, to my surprise, writing features and articles, which I had never seen as my strength, had actually proved more successful and earned more money.  This boosted my confidence writing non-fiction, and as a result of this analysis, I decided to concentrate more on feature writing. 

Being a glutton for punishment, I then scrutinised competitions.  I had given myself three years to make some headway with short story writing competitions.  Where had it got me?  In my best year, I’d been awarded 2 prizes out of a total of 18 competitions entered.  The following year, I’d more than doubled my output, and entered 46 competitions and was awarded one prize.  Ouch!  I hadn’t realised I’d entered so many and when I totted up the total entry fees, I was shocked. Ouch again.  Admittedly, I had recycled some of the unsuccessful competition entries, and several of these were, eventually, published elsewhere.  But I was in a situation where I needed to pay the bills, so in terms of time and money, entering competitions was a poor use of both. 

So what did I learn?   Well, what you enjoy writing and what you are good at writing are not always the same.  And that can be quite hard to accept.  Writers need to be flexible and open to trying anything.  You can’t afford to be precious, especially if you intend to rely on income from writing in the future.   I also learned what I should be doing to use my time efficiently and effectively.  (Note the use of the word ‘should’.  I am still the mistress of procrastination!)

I would urge any writer, particularly if you are seeking to earn an income from your words, to regularly undertake this kind of analysis and evaluation.  Writers need to think about their occupation as a business, and successful businesses understand what they are producing, what sells (or doesn’t) and the reasons for it.  Or at least to try.  And from a creative viewpoint, it can actually be quite a liberating process.  It is easy for writers to pigeonhole themselves, and discovering that you have hidden talents is always exciting.

About the author:

Jane had her first short story published in a UK pony magazine when she was 14. Her latest title, Valentine Horse, is available from Amazon. A passionate cat lover, Jane is donating all author royalties from her e-book Coming Home to the charity Cats Protection. See the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aweX0y3lvL4&feature=youtu.be

Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jane-Ayres/e/B004MWCTD8/

Blog: http://www.janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/124661.Jane_Ayres

Writing Your Non-Fiction Book – The Complete Guide To becoming An Author By Trish Nicholson

Reviewed by Anne Stormont 

An author who practises what she preaches.

Claiming to be the complete guide to anything is a bold claim indeed. The author promises in her introduction that she will lead you ‘a step at a time’ through the whole process of producing and selling your non-fiction book.

In my opinion, the author’s claim is valid and her promise holds true.

This guide book would work just as well for as fiction writing as it does for non-fiction. It is aimed at the complete beginner but there’s plenty that could be useful to the more experienced writer, most especially indie author-publishers.

The book is divided into three main sections – Planning, Writing and Editing, and Publishing and Marketing. At the end there is a comprehensive list of useful websites, books and a glossary.

The advice offered is both general and specific and, indeed, as you read the book you see the author putting her that into practice.

There is genre-specific guidance – for everything from travelogues to blogs. As Nicholson herself says there’s, ‘enough scope here whether you intend to write on particle physics or brewing parsnip wine’. And there is more general advice on editing, routes to publishing and how to sell and market your work.

The book takes you through planning, plotting, point of view – yes these three are just as important in non-fiction as in fiction. There’s advice on workspace and finding time to write. The author also covers how to carry out research, how to avoid plagiarism and explains about copyright. Again, all relevant to creators of fiction as well.

Personally speaking, I found the sections on blogging, having a website and the use of social media to be particularly useful, as was the section on routes to publishing. I also especially liked the sections on how to write blurbs of various lengths depending on their purpose, and on how to pitch your work both to publishers and readers.

Nicholson recommends that you read the book straight through and then re-read as you write. And she says that ‘If you have followed each step with me so far you have achieved by now a thoroughly prepared manuscript, a decision as to how you will pursue its publication and the beginnings of an author platform’.

As I said at the start of this review, whether you’re a novice or an old-hand, drawn to writing fact or made-up stuff, a prospective or actual traditionally or independently published author, you’re sure to find something of use here.

I hope to have shown that this book goes beyond the mission of its title. This is an essential ‘How To’ manual for writers of every sort.

Find out more about Trish and the book here www.collca.com/wynb on the Collca Publishing website.

Drawing Inspiration by Dan Holloway

I have probably bored you to death over the years with my endless protestations that I would have been an artist if only I could paint, or I would have been a musician if only I could find a finger among my ten thumbs.

But in reality, the writer’s lot when it comes to the art world isn’t always that of the yearning wannabe. Ekphrasis is one of the oldest and most respectable practices in the writing toolkit. So old, in fact, it even has a Greek name, literally meaning “speaking from” or “out of.” What it entails is easy to state, and something we all do – but what I want to look at in more detail here is how we can use it to bring a little magic to our work, to add extra layers and resonances that we would only usually expect to find in other branches of the arts.

Ekphrasis is, in straightforward terms, writing that is inspired by a particular artwork, or a piece from another art form. It is often a painting – the most famous example would be Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring – but it could also be a song (as in David MacArnold’s extraordinary poem Almost Blue, based on Chet Baker’s piece of the same name) or anything else. It is often used as an exercise in writing classes because it is excellent for getting you to look at the world differently, for training your eyes to create seamless imagery and emotional potential. We rarely use it quite so consciously outside of the classroom setting, though we should. Because when it’s done well, it is precisely the qualities of imagery and metaphor that can lift our writing to another level entirely.

I want to look at three ways in which a piece of art can add to your writing, not by writing about it so much as by looking at what it is you first responded to in it. It is always easier to work with an example in these situations, so I will share with you one of my favourite photographs from one of my favourite photographers (and my long-term collaborator) Veronika von Volkova (http://www.vonvolkova.com).

This is a photograph of a shop window in Paris’ Rue Charlot, which is probably best described as what Bond Street would be like if it was relocated in Dalston.

Veronika’s photographs have been known to inspire whole poems of mine, and I’ve set the mood for more than one collection around her images, using them as a compass to guide my selection – if a poem or story fits with how a picture makes me feel then I include it, if it doesn’t, I discard it.

But since I have returned from the world of poetry to that of novel writing, I’ve been surprised that I’ve found myself using her work as inspiration even more, when I want to get the tone of a passage right, or to focus in on an aspect of a scene to find the one detail, a single metaphor for my character’s journey I need to give the reader.

Emotional Tone

One of the hardest things to do in a novel is to control your emotional tone. This can present itself in two ways. It could be that you are having a problem with a particular scene. Or it could be that you are finding it hard to maintain an emotional consistency across a sustained piece of writing. These are, of course, very different issues, but going back to a piece of artwork can work wonders in overcoming each (this is one reason I recommend people create detailed mood boards consisting of playlists, pictures, pretty much anything before they start their books – it creates a perfect anchor for moments when you feel the wheels coming off – and tools like Pinterest make it very easy to do).

One of the reasons emotional tone is so hard to convey in writing is that a page of prose lacks the immediate impact of a picture or a piece of music. Words are filtered, and all work together over the course of many paragraphs to create a particular effect. It is, therefore, hard to keep track of exactly what we are doing. Take an action scene, for example. It is very easy to convey tension or excitement in a piece of music – think the crescendo of Bolero, the pizzicato of Psycho. Or in a photograph – jaunty angles convey motion, a panoramic shot of a climber on a precipice conveys an instant message, and so on. But with words we often falter because of the greater filtering necessary to understand their impact. So, we can believe we are creating tension and excitement in a passage only to find either (most commonly) we have extracted all tension by over-describing exactly what is so exciting (“I could hear the footsteps of the man chasing me. They were going even faster than mine and that meant I knew he was catching up with me. I still had 200 metres before I was safe but he was catching me so I probably wouldn’t reach safety.”); by telling the reader rather than showing that the scene is exciting (“I was so scared that he would catch me. I could feel the tension grow with every step I took.”); or by grossly overegging something that, in moderation or a different context, would work incredibly well because you are unable to grasp instantly when enough is enough like you would with a picture (“I ran. Footsteps on concrete. Not mine. Quicker. The sound of blood in my ears. Cars rushing by. Lights flickering. Footsteps approaching faster. Faster. Muscles cramping. Blood roaring. Sentence fragment piling on sentence fragment.”)

What taking your lead from an artwork will enable you to do is to analyse exactly what it is that conveys the emotion, and armed with that knowledge you can apply the same mechanics to your writing – the mountaineer appears so vertiginous because of the close-up detail of his fragility against such a wide backdrop, for example; and the violins of Psycho are so shocking because they burst in so suddenly and leave just as quickly. By reverse engineering an artwork, you can find the ingredients to transfer to the scene at hand.

When it comes to the broader question of the tone of the work as a whole, it can be even harder to see when something doesn’t fit. After all, it’s crucial that scenes have variety, otherwise they lose all impact. But that variety comes within a context, a voice, a tone, something quite subtle that you want to provide the overarching structure for your work. If you can find a piece of art or a song that conveys that structural mood, you will have the perfect way of ensuring that all the component parts behave themselves.

Veronika’s photograph of the Rue Charlot conveys the mood of my current work in progress absolutely perfectly. The mix of melancholy, strangeness, reflection, loneliness, decay and possibility all converge to create a feeling with which I want the novel to be infused. Within that there are scenes that will be exciting, heartbreaking, touching, funny, hopeful, exhilarating. But all of those individual emotions are drawn from the same palette. Making sure a scene fits that palette, just as I would do when selecting poems for a collection, enables me to create something that works as a whole and not just as a collection of scenes.

Imagery

It sounds rather obvious to say that art can help you with your imagery. But actually, it is in our descriptions that we often commit our most heinous writerly sins. Our finest phrases are often contained in descriptive passages. And they often lose all of their effect because we drown them in a sea of detail.

Description is, to illustrate the point by saying what I’ve already said well enough, the pudding we most frequently overegg. And the reason for this is simple. We find it hard to get a handle on how much detail is enough. And so two very understandable traits combine to suck the power from our prose – the desire not to leave the reader floundering, and the desire to recreate in full the splendour we see in our heads.

My characters often walk the city streets at night. And city streets are my all-time favourite landscape. I could go on for page after page describing the detail of the neon, the cracked concrete, smeared windows, sweet sickly smells, disfigured flyers and decaying shop fronts. And if I’m not careful, I do just that. Which is great. And I create some unctuous sentences in the process. But they are almost all unnecessary. Which is where I find Veronika’s photography so helpful. She has a particular eye for cityscapes. I can almost always find a picture of hers that says exactly what I want to say. And analysing it, I will almost always find particular details that makes it work so well.

In Rue Charlot, there are two things that make the photograph so evocative, such a perfect metaphor for a character wandering the streets in search of her identity. First, there is the flattened palette disrupted only by the distant lights. And second, there is the use of reflection, drawing our attention subtly to the fact that we are looking through glass that separates us completely from what is on the other side. By picking up on those in my writing I can avoid all need for interior monologue (the street becomes a metaphor for my protagonist’s inner state).

Cornerstones Mini Masterclass

with Kathryn Price, Co-director at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy.

Each issue, Cornerstones Literary Consultancy explore and critique a reader's opening page. If you would like to participate in their Opening Page Mini Masterclass, send your opening page (400 approx words) as a Word Document attachment to submissions@wordswithjam.co.uk with the subject ‘Cornerstones Masterclass’. Pieces for critique are chosen at random from those submitted to Words with JAM.

The Bloody Bodkins

Liscarrow House
September 1741

John Bodkin braced himself as he walked through the door, but the smell of stale blood assailed his nostrils. Blood was everywhere in the hallway: spattered on the carpet, on the great clock and on the hanging mirror. He hardly recognised his family home.

A shiver ran up his spine as the estate agent pointed to two crumpled bodies at the end of the dimly lit hallway.

John stared at the slit throats of the bloodied bodies. It took a few moments before his brain registered what his eyes were seeing. Good Lord! It’s the butler and the housekeeper. A cold sweat washed over him and his gorge rose. He dashed out into the fresh air. Placing his hands against the wall of stone, he fought to retain the contents of his stomach.

When he had regained control over his stomach, John saw three servants leaning over the body of a dog in the farmyard.

“What happened?” John asked.

“Someone came in the night and slit his throat.” The estate agent shook his head. “The same happened to the other guard dog.”

“Robbers?” John asked.

“It doesn't look like anything was taken from the house.” Joyce’s voice quivered, “Too soon to know what was or was not stolen.”

John said, “Where is Uncle Oliver?” Surely, his uncle would know what had happened.

Joyce paled and said nothing. John trembled. He re-entered the house that he knew so well and followed Joyce upstairs. He stopped at the entrance to the bedroom of the Master of Liscarrow, Oliver Bodkin.

“You should not go in,” Joyce said.

John steadied himself. He turned the knob and slowly pushed the door open. My God! Uncle Oliver lay in the bed, high on the pillows, with his eyes and mouth opened wide. Dark blood had congealed on his throat. His heavily pregnant wife, Margery, lay beside him, her throat slit too.

“I do not believe this!” John cried. It cannot be true. I must be dreaming. How could such an outrage have occurred in the quiet village of Belclare in the county of Galway? He felt the strong arm of Joyce around his shoulder.

“A terrible day, Mr John,” Joyce said.

Critique by Kathryn Price

This is a potentially gruesome and gripping opening scene. The blood-spattered farmhouse; the characters’ horrified reactions; the chilling mystery of what has happened – all these things ought to combine to make this a truly page-turning start.

However, at present, the scene doesn’t carry as much impact as it could. Partly this is an issue of pace, which we’ll discuss in more detail below. It’s also to do with the style and tone; there’s more that could be done here to make the language work harder, to do justice to the content with carefully chosen dialogue, internal thought, and descriptive detail.

Let’s look at the language in the first few paragraphs. Straight away there are a few clichés or familiar phrases creeping in: braced himself … a shiver ran up his spine … a cold sweat. The effect of cliché, particularly when it comes to emotions and reactions, is as a kind of short-hand. They’re handy stock-phrases to efficiently pencil in an emotion, but because they’re so familiar, they don’t really evoke sensation in the reader; our eye tends to gloss over them.

In this instance this is combined with some over-writing: the smell of stale blood assailed his nostrils … he fought to retain the contents of his stomach … when he had regained control over his stomach (note the repetition here, too). Overwriting is almost the opposite of cliché – it can take many forms (including over-wordiness, choosing complex instead of direct vocabulary, using melodramatic language) but its net effect is very similar to cliché. It tends to deaden our emotional reaction, because our attention is drawn to the way the emotion is expressed rather than the emotion itself. When it comes to violently emotive subject matter, simplicity of expression is often best.

To conclude the exploration of style, it would be worth taking another look at the way the POV character’s thoughts are woven in. There are a few choices when it comes to third person, but the most naturalistic tends to be the free indirect form, where thoughts are incorporated into the narrative voice, in third person past tense.

So, instead of:

“I do not believe this!” John cried. It cannot be true. I must be dreaming.

This would read:

“I do not believe this!” John cried. It couldn’t be true. He had to be dreaming.

This tends to feel smoother because it doesn’t involve the intrusion of first person present tense into an otherwise third person past tense narrative.

Look, too, at the content of John’s thoughts (and reactions). Whilst disbelief is quite natural in the circumstances, How could such an outrage have occurred in the quiet village of Belclare in the county of Galway? seems overly specific – would he really think in such terms, or might he instead think of the murders in a more personal way: How could this have happened here, in the village where he’d spent his whole life? How could it have happened to them … to him?

This sort of word-by-word, line-by-line tightening and polishing can make a huge difference to the power of a scene and it’s worth applying throughout the manuscript to ensure every word is as strong as it can be. However, this opening would also benefit from some additional material to slow down the pace a little and ratchet up the tension.

At the moment, everything happens very quickly. Within the first sentence John has smelt the blood; by the second paragraph he’s spotted the bodies. In the third paragraph, It took a few moments before his brain registered what his eyes were seeing. Good Lord! It’s the butler and the housekeeper. Then, further down:

“You should not go in,” Joyce said.

John steadied himself. He turned the knob and slowly pushed the door open. My God!

Let’s look at these sections in turn, considering what makes good pacing. There’s a common misconception that if something is tense and exciting, it should also be fast-paced. However, often greater tension is built by slowing the pace, allowing the reader time to immerse themselves in the scene on a sensory level, feel what the protagonists are feeling and wait – as the protagonist must – for whatever is going to happen to play out.

One way to restructure this opening to maximise tension would be to look at the sequencing. A few paragraphs in, John spots the slaughtered dogs, but if he’s just gone into the house (and back out again) wouldn’t he have seen the dogs already? Why not move the scene back a bit; show him arriving at the house and seeing the dogs first – thus foreshadowing the horror of what he’s about to find inside?

In addition to this, slow things right down. We need lots of sensory input as well as thoughts/reactions from John. What does he see/smell/hear? What colour is the blood (rust/wine/river-dark)? John’s choice of adjectives will tell us a lot about him, too. Give the reader time to build expectations before you reveal the truth.

The same applies to the later examples: if it ‘takes a few moments’ for John’s brain to take in what he’s seeing, then show us those moments rather than telling us about them. What does John’s confused brain initially make of the scene? Which details register first?

And, if the housekeeper tells him not to go in, then show us John’s response to this rather than just telling us that ‘he steadied himself’. What does he think he’s going to find? Does he dare to hope that one or both of them might still be alive? Might they be terribly injured and about to die before his eyes? Show us his thought-processes in real, naturalistic language, and let us absorb the moment of tension and fear before moving on.

The key thing to bear in mind with this opening – and indeed, with any piece of writing that relies on horror and tension – is that readers like to be teased and tantalised. The horror you’re about to reveal is your trump card, the reader’s pay-off – hold it back for as long as possible and it will carry that much more weight.

Things People Get Wrong Every Day

Number 12: The Book is always better than the film, by Derek Duggan

So, you know how it is – you’re at a party listening to someone who is justifying your misanthropy. Your fake smile is hurting your teeth. Your partner said she was just going to the bathroom for a moment, but that was half an hour ago. You haven’t said a single word in all that time, but your new best bud hasn’t noticed. You imagine being able to open your mouth wide enough to just lean forward and swallow them whole and the tremendous pleasure you’d take in shitting them out the following morning. Somewhere along the line they’ve gleaned you’re a writer and they’ve been telling you all about the sort of book you should be writing and how they only read quality stuff like Danielle Steel or Jackie Collins and then, out of the blue they’ll say – Books are always way better than films. They’ll back this up by telling you how the film of The DaVinci Code wasn’t a patch on the book without ever considering that while the film was so bad it could only have been made worse if Jeremy Clarkson had been in it, it was certainly no worse than the scuttering pile of arse gravy of a book it was based on. Eventually you just think Fuck this and kick them in the banjos/flange before making your excuses and leaving.

There are so many cases where the film is at worst on a par with the book it’s based on and in several cases vastly better. This year, for example, sees the big screen release of Noah. Seriously, Noah, for fuck sake. (The tag line is – I’m the father of a soaking son and the husband of a drenched wife and I will have my big boat full of animals in this life or the next!). Now, no matter how bad that film is - and I’d rather let Christopher Dean do a triple axle spin thing on my knackers than see it - it will still be better than the book it’s based on – Genesis (which is about how God made Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel and stuff).

And what about The Hunger Games? The films manage to skirt over some of the frankly staggeringly awful plot holes in the book (although not the biggest one about the selection process – please see prior rant in a previous issue) and it had that fantastic laugh out loud moment when all those people watching the screens did the really corny salute thing. Add this to the fact that despite the film being a whopping 142 minutes long, it’s still a lot quicker than having to sit down and actually wade through the books.

Next year we are to be treated to the big screen version of Fifty Shades of Grey. I struggle to imagine a way in which the film could be any worse than the book. Again, possibly if Jeremy Clarkson was cast as Grey - Do it to me, do it to me like you’re shooting a badger while setting fire to a gypsy camp.

Sometimes you can see a film that is so tremendously bad and yet inexplicably popular that you think the book must have been very good and they’ve just made an orangutan’s anus of the film. But don’t be tricked. This sort of thinking can lead you to do terrible things like reading Twilight, or Eragon. These are perfect examples of instances where the reader’s imagination is so strong that they actually imagine the book they’re reading isn’t cock cheese.

There are times where, although the book and the film are different in many ways, the director has managed to capture the atmosphere of the book so successfully that you don’t notice the changes. Lasse Halstrom did a superb job of making his 2000 film Chocolat exactly as boring as the book it was based on by Joanne Harris.

Of course, there are many books where both the book and the movie are good, even if in some cases they’re quite different. A case in point is Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which was filmed as Bladerunner. One of the main reasons I wanted to mention this particular writer here is so I could tell you that in all truthfulness I am a massive Dick fan. The movie doesn’t stick strictly to the book, but it’s equally successful. And this is also the case with Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes. I’m also quite a big Boulles fan. Between Dick and Boulle my weekends are always exciting and I can often be seen with a Dick in one hand and, well, you get the idea with that one.

So, to sum up, what are the main ways in which many films are better than books?

1. They cut out all the shit bits (although sometimes leave lots of shit bits in – all camping stuff in Harry Potter for example).

2. They’re not as long – all descriptions of each individual fucking rock that Frodo and the gang passed on the way to Mordor have been thankfully left out of the 150 hour movie, for instance.

3. Some films of books have Liv Tyler in them whereas no books actually feature her.

I hope that clears up any misunderstandings.

Glad I could help.

Adaptability by Anne Stormont

Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change – Wayne W Dyer

Adapt and Evolve, Adapt and Survive – both are well-known mantras. Both can be applied literally as essential to the continuance of Life on the planet. They can also be applied in a more metaphorical sense to survival in economics, politics, the world of work and in daily life in general. And a willingness to adapt also has a positive relevance to art, to its makers and its consumers.

For human beings, the capacity to adapt contains within it flexibility of thought and attitude, as well as elements of imaginative, lateral and original thinking, a degree of faith and optimism and a willingness to try and to persevere. It also has a lot in common with resilience.

As far as writers are concerned, adaptability is essential. It’s essential in their approach to the creative process and it’s essential in their attitude to the finished product.

For me, as a writer, the dream scenario is to have one of my books picked up for adaptation to television or cinema screen. A flight to London to meet the head of BBC drama, or maybe even to Hollywood to chat to Spielberg. Ahh... 

A dream for me, but a reality for more successful authors; authors such as Markus Zusak whose international bestseller, The Book Thief, has just been made into a film. In a recent interview in the Scotsman newspaper (with journalist Clare Black  www.scotsman.com ) Zusak spoke of how pleased he was to see how well the young actress playing Liesel his protagonist captured the spirit of Liesel and how she translated it directly to the screen. But he also seemed a bit bemused by the process of seeing his work adapted for the big screen. He played no part in the creation of the screenplay and he says although there were times when the process was exciting, there were also times when it was daunting too.

For a writer, having your work adapted to another medium must indeed be both thrilling and difficult. You have to trust your ‘baby’ to someone else, to someone you’ve never met and who will do unknown things to it, most likely change it in ways you could never have foreseen. For better or worse it will be an emotional experience.

Children’s author Mairi Hedderwick, author of the Katie Morag books, speaking on Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs, said that she cried tears of joy when she saw her little heroine brought to life on television. I could certainly relate to her sentiment. Just seeing your work in print is amazing enough, seeing your characters alive on the page. But to see them brought to life in three dimensions must be truly amazing.

As an admiring reader of both the Katie Morag adventures and of The Book Thief, the prospect of seeing a much-loved novel transferred to television or cinema can be an uncertain one.

In common with many readers, I can be a bit ambivalent about adaptations. From being swept away by Gone With The Wind in glorious technicolor as a teenager in the 1970s, having read the book several times, to adoring the recent stage and film versions of Michael Morpurgo’s Warhorse – much against my expectations – I have found that my enjoyment of a book can be enhanced by its film versions.

I also approved of the television dramatisations of Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie detective stories, but I wasn’t so sure about the transfer of Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels to the small screen. And I wasn't completely satisfied by the film versions of Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, having loved the books.

But you could argue that at least the adaptation process of books to screen exposes the material to  a much wider audience, to people who would never have considered reading the books in the first place. I’m sure many more people have seen the television versions of the works of Dickens and Austen than have actually read them.

Children too can benefit from seeing screen adaptations of books. From Heidi to Harry Potter, films show the power of story, fire the imagination and possibly even lead reluctant readers to engage with the written word.

And where would the BBC and indeed the film industry be without book adaptations?

So there’s a lot to be gained by converting the written format to the dramatic, both for the writer and for the reader. It’s true of other media too of course. Stage plays become movies, think of all those musicals. Paintings become novels – The Girl with the Pearl Earring for example. Television reality shows become fictional stage plays as did the Jerry Springer Show, when it became the musical.

I reckon all this cross-fertilisation can only be a good thing.

But when it comes to the art and craft of writing, what of the inherent adaptability needed by a writer?

Cross-fertilisation is a good thing here too. Authors spend a lot of time alone at their desks. But in order for new ideas to take root and grow, a writer must get out and about. Writers must always be open to new ideas, new approaches, new ways of doing things. If you want the creative juices to flow, get out of your comfort zone, go to art exhibitions and to museums, open yourself up to the visual, go to concerts, to the theatre and to the cinema. Read genres you wouldn’t normally read. I recently, reluctantly, viewed the movie of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. I hadn’t fancied the book having read reviews of it­ – in spite of its bestseller status. The movie blew me away. I then read the book. It blew my mind – in a good way.

And in the twenty-first century digital world, authors must adapt to new ways of publishing and marketing. Routes to publishing are now very different to even ten years ago. The traditional steps of getting an agent who got you a publisher are now no longer essential. Now the adaptable author can be their own publisher. Adaptability has democratised publishing. The cream, more often than not, still rises to the top both in the ‘indie’ and traditional spheres. There’s still a place for the traditional publishers, but they don’t hold all the power. Indeed mid-list traditionally published writers are often actually opting to go indie in order to keep their work out there and to take back some control over their careers. Things have changed and publishing itself must adapt to survive.

 The adaptable reader no longer needs to buy actual paper books, not when books are cheaply available in e-formats. The adaptable and discerning reader can also flit between the big-boy publishers and the author-publishers. What matters to them is quality writing, not provenance.

Change for the sake of it is a futile act. But change for the better is good. Adopting an adaptable and open frame of mind is the way to thrive through change, and is a way of maintaining an element of control. This is as true for writers, readers and publishers as it is for anyone else engaged in the business of human life.

Authors on Adaptations by Gillian Hamer

With this issue’s theme of Adaptation, we look back to some of the Words with JAM interviewees whose work has been adapted for stage or screen. We’ve talked about writing computer games; discussed scriptwriting with producers faced with the challenge of adapting a novel into movie format, and delved into the minds of authors who have had to be cajoled to release the rights to their books.

Here is a selection of replies from both sides of the fence

MICHAEL MORPURGO (AUTHOR OF WAR HORSE, ADAPTED INTO FILM & THEATRE)

How were you first approached about the theatre and cinema adaptations of War Horse? Which idea came first and what were your initial thoughts/fears?

I was first approached via my agent by the National Theatre. It was the director Tom Morris’ mother who originally discovered my book and urged him to read War Horse. I was sceptical at first. I wondered how on earth a convincing drama of the First World War could be made using life-size puppets of horses? For the film, it was Kathleen Kennedy’s producer of films such as ET and Schindler’s List who came to see the National Theatre production of War Horse with her daughter on a visit to London. She was so entranced by the play that she immediately called Spielberg and suggested that War Horse might be worth a read for his next film and that he should come over and see the play too.

Did you ever have any concerns about how Joey’s story could effectively be told via confines of the theatre stage?

I did have fears initially, but I trusted Tom Morris and Marianne Elliott implicitly. They work-shopped the story with Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler from Handspring and the rest of the team – designers, musicians, writers, to explore how it could be done. They came down to Devon where I live to see the landscape of the story, to watch horses working the land. There were some tense moments during the Previews when it was obvious that the play was too long, even clumsy in places, but in the end they got it together somehow. Press night was a triumph.

MARK BILLINGHAM (AUTHOR OF THE DI TOM THORNE BOOKS, ADAPTED FOR TV.)

How much of yourself did you write into your lead character, and is it therefore odd watching the role on television?

I never really believe writers who deny that there is anything of themselves in their characters. There is a lot of me in Thorne, but by the time that was reflected through the prism of the script and David’s performance it did not feel at all like I was seeing aspects of myself. Thorne probably has characteristics that I WISH I had...

With SKY recently showing the first Tom Thorne series, and a second series underway, how much involvement do you have in the actual TV production? Would your choice be for more or less?

I was always of the “keep a wide berth” school, until we made Thorne and having been so closely involved, that is the way I would want to carry on. I enjoyed being involved in casting, seeing scripts at every stage, watching rushes every day and visiting the set. There’s a point at which the writer needs to back off, obviously, but I certainly want to be as involved on any future productions.

You’re quoted as saying there has to be changes in bringing the books to screen. How do you feel TV as a medium handles complex plots and storylines in crime fiction such as yours, and what do you consider the pluses and minuses in this regard?

Where we were lucky with Thorne is that we were given three episodes per novel. That’s more than two hours of screen time to tell the story. I think trying to adapt a crime novel in less time than that inevitably involves an over-condensation of the plot. Sometimes it’s necessary for the central character to make almost superhuman leaps of deduction because there simply isn’t time to show the basic detective work. Obviously there are sub-plots and minor characters that have to go, but I want to see the work that goes into it. I’m not interested in a simple series of set-pieces interspersed with the detective brooding at home and coming up with the solution supernaturally.


DAVID HEWSON (AUTHOR OF THE KILLING NOVEL, ADAPTED FROM THE DANISH TV SERIES)

You’re already a successful author in your own right, so how were you first approached about writing the novel version of the screen story of The Killing?
There was a huge international auction for the book rights. My publisher Pan Macmillan wanted to win and came beforehand to ask me if I’d write. They’d had an internal discussion about who to approach and I was top of the list on the back of experience in foreign locations and writing strong female leads.

How do you go about translating over twenty hours of small screen drama into a normal length novel?

In a very organized way. I went to Copenhagen, talked to Søren Sveistrup the series creator, visited locations, got to know a little of the city. Then I wrote a synopsis of every scene – more than 600 of them – as a kind of massive treatment. That came to 260K words. I then tried to understand the story structure. After that I worked on a prose style. When all those things were in place I could start writing.

How much of a free rein were you given in writing the novel? And how much involvement was there with Soren Sveistrup (the mastermind behind the television series)?

Completely free rein within reason. That was one of the conditions of the deal. I knew there would have to be changes in an adaptation and said so from the outset. Fortunately Søren was incredibly supportive and said very vocally, ‘I want this to be your book.’ He was great help in explaining some ideas and answering some questions but he wasn’t involved in the writing or publishing. He’s been tied up producing the third series of The Killing throughout the whole time I’ve written both Killing books – which shows how different TV is to literature.


JOANNE HARRIS (AUTHOR OF CHOCOLAT, ADAPTED INTO FILM.)

I read that you didn’t like all of the changes made in the film version of the story, what in particular did you feel strongly about?

I tried to persuade Miramax that it wasn’t necessary to change my lead character from a priest to a mayor: it alters the dynamic of the story and dilutes the meaning. But I guess they thought Middle America wasn’t ready for a priest to be the bad guy…

Is it true when writing the novel you’d always dreamed of Juliette Binoche in the lead role? How did you feel when you heard that had become a reality?

I’d tried to suggest her before they started casting, because I thought she was a perfect fit, both physically and temperamentally. For a long time Miramax ignored me, and then Juliette, who had read the book, heard they were casting and asked for the part. It was great to hear that they’d chosen her (though I doubt I had much influence over their decision); it gave the film a much more European flavour, and shaped it into something much closer to the original book (two of the other actresses they’d considered were Whoopi Goldberg and Gwyneth Paltrow).

It’s probably a writer’s dream to have a cast that includes not only Binoche, but Judi Dench and Johnny Depp! What did you think when you saw the characters on screen?
It was a terrific cast. Not everyone was as I’d imagined them - everyone needs to make the part their own in a movie – but there were so many wonderful actors in CHOCOLAT. I was so moved to see Judi Dench playing Armande (a character based on my great-grandmother); and Alfred Molina really managed to make Reynaud come to life…


TESS GERRITSEN (AUTHOR OF RIZZOLI & ISLES, ADAPTED INTO US TV SERIES)

How were you first approached about the television adaptation of Rizzoli & Isles for the TNT Network in the US?

I got an option offer from a producer named Bill Haber, who had been reading the books for years and had loved the characters of Jane and Maura. As he told me over the phone "I love your girls and I think they belong on television." He focused straight away on character, not on the crime stories themselves. He thought the concept of female crime-fighting partners was something no one else on TV was doing. Not since "Cagney and Lacey" 30-some years ago have we seen female partners.

What were your initial thoughts? Or fears?

I was pretty pessimistic about the project ever coming to fruition. I've had a number of books either optioned or sold outright, and nothing ever came of it; I assumed this deal would hit a dead end, like all the others. I signed the option contract, cashed the check, and forgot about it. It's the only way to stay sane when you deal with Hollywood. Don't ever get your hopes up.


ANN CLEEVES ( AUTHOR OF NOVELS VERA & SHETLAND, BOTH ADAPTED FOR TV )

Setting plays a huge part in your books, Northumberland in particular in Vera. How do you think the sense of place comes across on TV compared to your books?

I think that’s one of the things that the adaptation does brilliantly. Each of the films had a different director, but they’ve all captured the space and the variety of the landscapes in North East England. So of course we have the hills and the coast, but they also show the post-industrial areas along the Tyne and in South East Northumberland and they look stunning too.

The brilliant Brenda Blethyn plays the lead character in the TV series, how do you feel her portrayal mirrors the character in your head?

Brenda doesn’t look like the Vera I created. My Vera is bigger and even scruffier. But Brenda absolutely captures Vera’s spirit – her wit and defiance and commitment. And when I’m writing dialogue I hear Brenda’s voice in my head.

With ITV currently filming the second series of Vera, how much involvement do you have in the actual TV production? Would your choice be for more or less?

I’ve been very fortunate and feel very much a part of the team. It’s become a tradition that we bring scriptwriters up to the region to give them a sense of the landscape, its stories and its possibilities. I get invited to the read-throughs, see the scripts in advance and I’m made welcome when I go on set. I have no contractual influence though, and I wouldn’t want that. It’s a different medium and I’m happy to leave it to the experts.


CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS ( AUTHOR OF THE SLAP)

Changing your work for another medium intrigues me. Can you explain how you worked with the screenwriters on the television adaptation of The Slap?

The model we took was from HBO. As someone who grew up with cinema, it’s actually television which has been the most out there in the last 10-15 years. I’m talking about the Anglophone world, of course; Mad Men, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos. We got as many people as possible involved in the creative writing process to discuss how the story worked, how narrative works, how characters work and I found that collaborative process really exciting. As a novelist, you work often in isolation. We worked Monday to Friday for a fortnight, separated for a three-week period and came back together.

Some writers find the process of collaboration more frustrating than exciting, because you’re not in full control of the decisions made.
But I’d done it before when working in theatre. Although I’d been going to the cinema two, three times a week since I was this high (indicates his knee), I came to theatre later in life. So getting involved in writing for the stage, I really had to think hard about the writing process. I learnt a lot from rehearsals and working with actors. I’m not scared of that process, but I can’t imagine a collaborative novel. Working that way, I would bite someone’s head off. But in other media, I enjoy it. You’ve got more freedom for collaboration in television. It’s not bound to the auteur, in the way that film is. At least in Australia. There the auteur still rules.


HELEN FITZGERALD, AUTHOR

You’ve had your work adapted for screen. What do you see as the positive parts of the experience and which bits piss you off?

I’m getting better and that is a result of learning from adaptations. How to pare things down, how to think things through. The downside is creativity by committee. It takes years to develop a script and each new person who comes aboard has a new take. I’m not precious, far from it. My problem was being far too much of a yes-woman. I was easily persuaded into changes by people I saw as experts.

And I’m guessing the writer has very little influence.

Absolutely the bottom of the pile. That’s why I prefer to write novels. But the process has helped me to think about my books more as a film. This is Act One, and this is Act Two and so on.



JANE GOLDMAN, SCREENWRITER, PRODUCER, AUTHOR

Do you have a system when writing an adaptation of a book? Where do you start with something like The Woman In Black?
First, you have to make it movie-shaped. The form of a book is so different, so you have to find the spirit of the story and find a cinematic structure to suit. That probably takes me around three weeks to develop. Then you have to look at how to bring out character on screen. In books, a character can have a whole internal monologue, but on screen, that has to come across by putting them in different positions to reveal themselves.


DANIEL MARTIN ECKHART, SCREEN WRITER

Where do start when adapting a novel?

By reading it as a reader. Then read it again and find those instant connections. If those strong connections aren’t there, I’m the wrong writer for the project. I was once asked to adapt a crime story about a missing body, but the thing that jumped out at me was a minor character, a child kept in chains. That was the story I wanted to write.


NAOMI ALDERMAN, AUTHOR, PRESENTER, GAME WRITER

How did you get into writing for games?

It's a long story, which boils down to "I mentioned the right thing to the right person at the right time". A friend had heard about a game that was going to be "the modern-day Masquerade". I mentioned to this friend that I was obsessed with the book Masquerade. He put us in touch, it all came from there.

Why do you think interactive games receive so little media coverage, unless it's negative?

I think we suffer from neophobia, the fear of the new. When videogames are older, we'll all feel less frightened of them and more understanding of their place in culture.


DAVID MITCHELL (AUTHOR OF CLOUD ATLAS)

What about your relationship with (producers) the Wachowskis and Tykwer? How much involvement did you have?
Almost none. The desire for my approval for an early form of the script I do believe was genuine. We met in Cork, and that’s when they discussed foregrounding the reincarnational theme by having the same actor play different ethnicities and genders at points in time. Which you can only do in film. You can’t have actors’ faces in books.

You were happy with that?

Absolutely. John le Carré, speaking about the film of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, said what I wanted to say. The biggest compliment you can pay is to take the book and interpret it your way. What’s the point in making an audiobook with moving pictures? I want it to be disassembled and reassembled. And they’ve altered some plot lines, to make the Tom Hanks/Halle Berry relationship evolve over time, and that’s fine. It has its own, pure internal logic. It was very hard for the Wachowskis and Tykwer, but my first Hollywood experience has been unusually lucky. They really are artists. With people like that, it’s an honour to be adapted.


Extracts from interviews by Gillian Hamer and JJ Marsh