Know your medium
And I don't mean getting friendly with the old lady who thinks she can speak to your dead nan
WRITING:
One of the first spaces online that I explored back in the pre-Facebook, pre-MySpace days was the Oni Press message board. I was a huge fan of the comic publisher, off the back of their Kevin Smith Clerks titles, which brought me into a world that legit. changed my life. Different story for another day. One thing I read there always stuck with me, though, and that’s one of their editorial staff giving advice to people pitching comic ideas at cons - nothing puts publishers off more than people thinking of an idea they wanted to be a movie and then pitching it as a comic because it seemed easier to make happen. They wanted to work with people who wanted to make comics.
It’s a piece of advice that, though I’ve never had an idea for a comic (or a movie), has shaped my view of storytelling. Different media have different requirements, and are consumed in different ways. Thinking back to when the Harry Potter movies were being made, it was awfully common to see people bemoaning about this scene being cut, or that character being marginalised, without any concession to the fact that those books are HUGE and paying the sort of reverence that fans demanded would result in six hour movies.
Running time is the least of it though. Movies are traditionally watched straight-through, in one sitting1. Books, on the other hand, are generally consumed piecemeal, and we flip back pages to remind ourselves of stuff, or check the list of characters at the beginning2. We put them down and walk away and sometimes it’s weeks before we pick them up again. Consequently, they require a different kind of storytelling. There’s so much more to adapting a book for screen (or a comic for TV, or a movie into a comic, or any combination thereof) than shooting what’s on the page. And that’s even before you get to the other issue which is if you don’t have something new to bring to it, why are you even adapting it in the first place?
This week I re-watched Terry Zwigoff’s screen adaptation of the Daniel Clowes comic Ghost World. There’s a film that takes huge liberties with the source material. Stuff’s added, stuff’s dropped, some characters are cut, some are merged… It’s a totally different beast. And it’s my go-to point of reference for how to make a perfect movie adaptation, because it absolutely nails the essence of the source material. Ghost World was originally serialised over eight issues of Clowes’ comic Eightball. Eight individual episodes, each with their own arc. The movie took that, trimmed it, gave the story a much more direct, single narrative through-line, and in doing so took a story that worked in comic form and made it work as a movie. That’s how you adapt something. The clue’s in the name - “adaptation”.
This is something I always try and keep in mind when I’m creating. How does this story work? Is this a short story, or a novella, or a novel? What format serves the story I want to tell best? Sometimes you write a thing and when you’re finished it’s not even half the length you thought it was going to be. When that’s the case, before you start looking for ways to stretch it out, ask yourself - is it this long because that’s how long it needs to be? What’s the right way to tell this story? Because there’s so much more difference between a short story and a novel than just the number of words.
EVENT REMINDER:
I shall be reading from my book Greyskin at the Norwich Book Slam on Tuesday 4th June. Event takes place at the Anteros Arts Foundation, at 7.30pm. Tickets are £10 and I will be one of five authors present reading from, and answering questions about, their books. Tickets are available here.
I have enjoyed:
Any Given Sunday - Oliver Stone’s 1999 American Football movie is a showy, bombastic, frenetic piece of cinema, but fair to say that its OTT style, as grating as it may be, is entirely appropriate for the multimillion industry it’s portraying. And as sports movies go, it ticks all the boxes. Ageing coach (Al Pacino) faces off against young owner eager to prove themselves (Cameron Diaz), while injury-prone veteran quarterback (Dennis Quaid) is in a similar position with upcoming fresh-faced star (Jamie Foxx3). James Woods, Aaron Eckhart, Matthew Modine, LL Cool J and John C. McGinley all have a stake, and EVERYBODY IS VERY ANGRY ABOUT A LOT OF THINGS. The team are down, then up, then down, then find themselves in THE MOST IMPORTANT MATCH OF THEIR LIVES. It’s glorious, and you don’t even need to understand American Football to enjoy it, I can vouch for that.
“Basically, kid, it’s like rugby, I don’t know what else to say…” Mersea Island - Just off the coast of Essex4, a few miles from Colchester, lies a delightful spot that I cannot get enough of. Full of quaint houses and just the right sort of beach to be pleasant, but not a huge draw, it’s a little spot of tranquil beauty that makes me feel alive every time I visit.
C’mon, look at that! I could easily see myself retiring there. We had a few days off just recently and, both in dire need of rest, we spent a couple of nights there and honestly, the hour we spent just sitting on a bench by the water was one of the highlights of my year.
An hour, just looking at this. Heaven. Richard Widmark - Watching 1965 sub-hunting movie The Bedford Incident recently, I found myself wondering why Widmark isn’t more revered. He was working during Hollywood’s Golden Age and all the way through to the early 1990’s, he was handsome, and a formidable actor (in the afore-mentioned Bedford Incident, even Sidney Poitier is left in the shadow of Widmark’s Captain Finlander). Yet he’s not a name that comes as easily to the lips as Stewart, Grant, Gable, Mitchum or Peck. There was, in many of his performances, something moody, dangerous, even mean about him and I wonder if that’s it. People remember the heartthrobs. But Widmark’s legacy of over 60 movies deserves more. He never delivers a less-than-captivating performance, and every time I see a film popping up on TV with his name in the cast, I’m there, no question.
I guess not everyone loved him. Getting back to work - Even I can’t believe I’m saying this, but after weeks of feeling like the walking dead, I couldn’t wait to get back to work and feel like a useful member of society again. Just don’t ask if my colleagues were as pleased to see me.
Greyskin (Deixis Press) and Playtime’s Over (Propolis) are both available direct from their respective publishers, as well as from all the usual places, online and off. You can also support my work by buying Ray Adams’ self-published books, or by simply buying me a coffee.
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I have one friend who will routinely watch half a movie one night and then come back to it another night, but I think they’re ill or something.
That might just be a fantasy genre thing…
At this point, a comedian with a couple of tv shows to his name.
Literally just off the coast. If you didn’t pay attention, you might not even realise you’d left the mainland.