Adaptation...

By Tony Lee

I went to see a show this week. Two, actually. The stage adaptation of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Three books adapted for a touring cast and split into two performances, each around three hours long.

Was it faithful to the book? Did it cover everything? Of course not. Characters like Mary were ignored completely, the Metatron (the Authority's Regent) turned into a priest hitman with a rifle, and the various epic battles in the book were turned into very quickly staged choreographed pieces.

But wait. I asked whether it was faithful to the book – not whether it covered everything that the book covered. And in that capability, it did. The end was still the same. The Polar Bears still had their armoured fight. The good guys were still good, the bad guys were still bad and the characters were all very recognisable. It might not have been a page for page adaptation, but it was an adaptation nevertheless.

And that's the main thing about adaptations – they'll never be the book. If someone was to try to adapt His Dark Materials properly, it would have taken an entire week, and would have had to be performed in a variety of very large fields. The movie The Golden Compass, in turn the movie adaptation of the first book (well, a large chunk of the first book) keeps the same story, is faithful to the main points – even if it does move a couple of scenes around. Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings movies are incredibly faithful, apart from a ton of extraneous pieces, such as Tom Bombadil – and even with the cuts and the forgotten pieces, entire subplots of the third book wiped with a single click of a PC keyboard – we were still looking at over twelve hours of movie time for all three books. And don't forget the Narnia movies, where characters alter repeatedly, and the next movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is rumoured to have all four main human characters again, even though two never appeared again until the last book.

But as long as the adaptation is faithful, it's a good adaptation. But good doesn't necessarily mean good, as in it's a good movie. And a great movie might be a bad adaptation – Stardust for example is an incredible movie, but pays a lip service to the book it took the source material from. The seven year market is gone totally, for example.

But an adaptation is an adaptation is an adaptation. Every one is different to the other. And why am I going on about this after watching a play? Because adaptations are a very important part of a jobbing writer's, well, job.

A page of Shadowmancer adaptation, art by Pedro Delgado...
I've adapted several books now. The first, G.P Taylor's Shadowmancer was a twelve part series. The upcoming Anthony Horowitz book Raven's Gate was a one hundred and forty four page graphic novel. Were they different? Absolutely. The former was a two hundred and seventy page book, and twelve issues of twenty two pages each pretty much meant that I had the freedom to do a page to page comparison A page of prose equalled a page of comic. Easy, eh? No. Because every twenty second page, I had to have a cliffhanger. Which meant that sometimes I had to move a scene around a bit. Or emphasise something that wasn't (to that point) a cliffhanger. Or I might even have to draw out a scene by a couple of pages, compress a scene by a couple of pages, anything that meant I had those nine 'end of issue' cliff-hangers. So obviously the latter, Raven's Gate was easier? After all, I didn't have to do this, I just started on page one and worked up to the mid hundreds. But again, that didn't work – because I had less pages, I was averaging one page of comic for every two pages of prose, and more importantly I was having to make sure that scenes ended on the turn of a page, that long moments of exposition had something exciting to look at while the plot was put across and, more importantly that the book didn't sag at any point. It's easier to forgive an adaptation's shortcomings when you read it in monthly instalments.

But both of these adaptations are essentially the same. I'll read the book, usually twice, the first time fresh, the second time with a pencil to mark scenes that I think need to be emphasised, or underline sections that I think should be 'right page enders', highlight where any character has a description, or any type of reveal about their person – because the artist has to get these parts so that the characters he or she draws are the same as the ones the person reading the book imagines, and also underline any scene settings. And a book that is pure action is far easier to write than a book that has a large amount of internal narrative – because in the latter you have to find a way to make that narrative external, either as captions, or more likely as extra dialogue, sometimes spoken by the character to him/herself. Which is all fine and lovely until you realise that there's no space to put the dialogue, and you have to start making sacrifices.

I know writers who adapt, who take a long sentence of dialogue and just re-write it, whereas I try to keep the dialogue as exact as I can. It's a personal choice, but to me, it's not your dialogue, it's another writers. You're not paid to 'make it better', you're paid to change it from one genre to another. Totally different thing. And you'd be surprised how many people don't realise that.

I've now adapted thousands of pages of novels – G.P Taylor's Shadowmancer, his first two Dopple Ganger books (the first of which was originally called The Tizzle Sisters and Erik), the first three of Anthony Horowitz's Gatekeeper books, Raven's Gate, Evil Star and Night Rise, the first half of Wendy Alec's Brothers – The Fall of Lucifer (before it was cancelled) and I've recently adapted some pages of a possible new project. And there are a few things I've learned along the way.

A page of unlettered Ravens Gate adaptation, art by Dom Reardon...
Firstly – if you're adapting? It's work for hire. You're not the creator, and as such you have no rights to any royalties. It's like someone covering a Beatles track and expecting to get money from the Beatles. If You are offered royalties, or a share in profits? That's great. But to demand a percentage? That's just unprofessional in my eyes. I got Shadowmancer when the previous writer signed to do it demanded a slice of the pie as well as a page rate. When I was asked if that was standard, I said Hell no, and explained that no writer worth his or her salt would expect that. As I said, to be offered? Nice. To expect? You're an idiot, and your arrogance is writing cheques that your talent probably can't cash. Suffice to say, the next day I was told that I had the gig if I wanted it. I didn't even know I was in the running.

Secondly – you have the gig, now read the book. You won't believe the amount of people who start an adaptation picking up the book, and reading page one, typing it exactly to the screen as they do so. This might save you time, but how do you know how many pages you'll need for scenes? I know someone who did this, worked out that every two pages of book equalled a page of story (which many Graphic Novel adaptations equal out to) and started. Page one and two of the book? Page one scripted. Until he reached the late hundreds, when he realised that he had a period of incredibly epic and important scenes, scenes that took way more than two pages to a page to adapt. And suddenly his graphic novel was hitting two hundred pages. He sent it to me and between us we cut the first ninety pages down to fifty. Which brought him just under the wire – but he sacrificed a lot of time re-editing it, when a couple of days reading the bloody thing would have stopped this. So always read the book. Because you'll find yourself working out scenes subconsciously.

Thirdly. Writers of novels often don't need to worry about right hand page turns – they write until bored and then the next chapter starts. It's never unified. It doesn't even need to be a cliffhanger. Your job isn't to take the story as dictation, your job is to make it exciting. When we adapted Raven's Gate, out this August from Walker Books, we had a five page scene that was pure exposition, yet desperately important to the entire story, as it was the point where the main character learned the entire history of the world, the bad guys, the first battle – everything. Unfortunately, it was told by a professor in an office.
We tried everything to make it pop. We changed the angle, we even had then walking around the museum – but it was a tour guide. It wasn't exciting. At that point the third book, Night Rise, had just been handed in and I was sent the manuscript, as the book had a massive scene, set during the exact same battle that the professor was talking about in book one. Using this scene's description, I was able to re-write the exposition history lesson as a flashback, the professor's words as captions, and the scene was way more exciting. And even more, when I adapted book three (due to art delays we're far ahead on the scripting of this series) I was able to take these scenes and mirror the first book, which means that the readers get that sense of 'aaah! This is the scene that was talked about' that always puts a shiver up my spine. Your job isn't to make this book great by any means, your job is to take the book you are adapting and make it great from the materials you have. If we hadn't had that third book arrive, we would have had to keep the tour guide scene, because the past hadn't been written by Anthony. And to create that scene without his input, would be to tell him how he should write it later. Which of course is a no-no.

Fourthly – while reading the book, mark it. Go back to your days in school, college, whatever. Ring important reveals. Block out sections that you think need extra care. Then, when you reach the planning point, do a page by page list – scene one is ten pages of book, but can be done in four of comic. Scene two is only seven, but will need five, etc. Even if you use rough guide estimates, you'll hit the end of the book knowing already whether you need to compress or expand.

THIS IS IMPORTANT.

I cannot express that enough, because if you do the first fifty pages lazily, easily, five panels a page maximum, lots of full page splashes and then bugger, you're behind and the next fifty are condensed six panel pages with tons of dialogue – not only will it jar the story, it'll make the whole thing look crappy when read together. Also, by doing it this way, if you hate a particular scene, you can jump ahead to one you've already planned out, and you can work on that and simply go back later.

And finally – don't take credit for the book. You can take credit for the adaptation, but the story itself? No. And if you go 'Ah yes, but I put the zeppelin in the scene at the end that cut out fifteen pages of pointless running and so therefore I should be applauded for that' – NO. You've re-written the book. That's not adapting. That's re-writing the Lord Of The Rings so that Gandalf gives the ring to the Eagles who fly to the mountain and drop it in. Job done.

So the next time you read an adaptation, take a good look at it. And there are some amazing ones out there, the main one of course is the upcoming Dracula one by Leah Moore and John Reppion, commonly touted as the most faithful adaptation of the book into comic yet. Will it be good? Only time will tell. But it won't just be the skill of the adapter that will decide this – it'll be how good the book is that's being adapted.

Pick one up off your shelf right now. Adapt a chapter and see how you do.

But keep the armoured bears in. And forget Tom Bombadil. Because I really hated him.

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And so today AAM/Markosia are releasing the official PR of From The Pages Of Bram Stoker's Dracula: Harker, a graphical 'sequel' to Dracula, of course one of the greatest novels of all time and the grandfather of pretty much every Vampire novel that followed, including that bloody awful Twilight. And of course as I'm writing this column, I'm now going to talk about it.

Harker is a book I've talked about a lot here, it's one of the few books I've written where I've truly been excited as I've written sections. I love Dracula, and last year discussed it with Tracy who, having worked on her dissertation involving the Count, was very interested in my ideas for a 'sequel' – as was Harry Markos of AAM/Markosia. I'd enjoyed going back to the 'what happened next' style of writing that I did with Dodge & Twist (the characters of Oliver Twist, twelve years later) and I had this vision of a story that involved the characters of Dracula – all of them, even the dead ones – six months after the death of Dracula, and six years before the 'End note' that ended the novel. I had a story of revenge worked out that had some nice twists and turns and involved a variety of things including Dracula's Guest, the supposed 'original beginning' of the story. I had more deaths, betrayal, the revenge of the Countess Dracule, the fourth bride of Dracula – and I had a story that I felt was a true to the source 'sequel'.

But there have been lots of 'sequels' to Dracula. Most were done by Hammer in the sixties and seventies. And of course this October, the same month as our Graphic Novel came out, the first ever official - and by that I mean Stoker Family endorsed - sequel, Dracula: The Un-Dead comes out, written by acclaimed Dracula historian Ian Holt and Bram Stoker's Great Grand-Nephew Dacre Stoker. I was lucky enough to meet both of these men while I was in New York in February and, while my story goes in a different route to theirs, set twenty five years after Dracula and focusing on Quincy Harker, they enjoyed my story enough to get involved, agreeing to write one of two introductions for the Graphic Novel – which, to my knowledge is one of the first endorsements ever for a graphic novel from a member of the Stoker Family. And in addition to that, after meeting him in London in the New Year, equally acclaimed Sherlock Holmes and Dracula historian Leslie S. Klinger, writer of The New Annotated Dracula (with an introduction by Neil Gaiman) has agreed to write the other.

There's a lot of pressure on me with such important luminaries writing introductions to my story, but with the art team of Neil Van Antwerpen and Peter-David Douglas on board, I don't think I can go wrong. Expect this book out in October 2009, the same month as Dracula: The Un-Dead. I personally expect you all to go and buy both.

And if you don't believe me, I'll leave you with some samples – the cover, the meeting between Jonathan Harker and the ghost of Quincey Morris, and the resurrection of R.M. Renfield...

Until next week.

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© 2008, Tony Lee

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