How To Make Your Adaptations Work!

When it comes to your writing, you may be tempted to translate some story that's not your own into a script. Before you start writing, you need to keep in mind the audience.

The biggest problem with an established story is that it has a reputation, and that fans of the material want it to live up to that reputation. This can be good and bad, and you need to decide if that reputation is something you can deal with. Take a close look at “The Golden Compass”: When Phillip Pullman originally wrote the book, he wanted a book that would attack the Catholic Church (“undermine” was the word used). It's hard to read the “His Dark Materials” (even the title is evocative of anti-church sentiment) and not realize that the writer is anti-Christian; the Magestrium is obviously a stand-in for the Catholic Church and any dogmatic types are automatically bad guys. It also has everyone assigned a “daemon” that represents them, and the worst villains are those that seek to rend the daemons from their owners (in other words, dogma rips imagination and willpower from its adherents).

But, when it was made into a screenplay, a problem developed: In order to keep its fanbase, it needed to keep its atheist values, but atheist movies don't play well to an American audience. Thus, the message had to be toned down, but the atheist message is so intrinsic to the story that it ended up killing the movie. (Did you follow that?) What could have been a new franchise ended up flopping because the production company realized that it couldn't market a $180M picture about atheism to a Catholic audience; it's a gorgeous movie, but it has no heart. It needed to be done for no more than $75M, but that wouldn't have done justice to the story.

On the other hand, someone that paid attention to the audience is X-Men 3, written by Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn. Although a lot of drastic changes were made to the X-Men that ticked a lot of people off (such as the origin of Phoenix, the death of Cyclops, and more-than-cosmetic changes done to a lot of characters), those changes were accepted because the story itself was still strong and there was some great character development. Better yet, a lot of characters were given their trademark moments and sayings (such as the fastball special, X-Men vs. Sentinels, and Beast's “Oh my stars and garters!”). Because the changes made to the X-Men made sense, and the spirit of the original (that of an oppressed group in a world that is trying to stop them) remained, people were willing to trust that they would be entertained, overlook some major mistakes, and so it was a profitable movie.

Obviously, don't worry about making the adaptation match the original completely; compromises will need to be made and you should have no problems making them as the material calls for it. Just remember that you need to find a new fanbase while at the same time making the current one happy. If you can't do that, you will tick off the old base while forcing potential fans to shy away trying to figure out what you did wrong. But, if you can bear in mind the needs of the old fans with the new material, you will make everyone satisfied with your changes, and your product will be successful!

Bad Business Practices and You

[What's that other word in my blog title? Oh yeah, business...heh...]

When it comes to business, keep in mind that you need to come through on any obligations. Your business dealings have an effect on your comic; anything bad that you do will be translated to your comic as well, and affect its fanbase.

Consider Pepetual Entertainment. They are in the process of releasing Gods & Heroes, a MMORPG based on Roman mythology. Although the game looks great, it was set for a general release in October (not an issue in and of itself, as changing due dates seems to be an unfortunate part of the gaming industry). However, they had a major push in the PR department, hiring Kohnke Communications to do everything that it possibly could, which would include press release, web design, and reviews that would make it seem like cyber-Heaven.

However, Kohnke isn't getting payed. For that matter, neither are Perpetual's investors. Perpetual's new owners decided to shift funds from Perpetual to another company. Worse, Perpetual had asked Kohnke to create marketing materials for G&H, even though the decision to cancel the project apparently came down on September 27. Worse, Perpetual had apparently promised Kohnke a bonus when the game was released. Suffice to say Kohnke is suing Perpetual for $290,000.

So what's the relevance? It's that when G&H comes out, it will need to overcome a lot of negative publicity. The gaming community tends to be tight, and tends to take issue when someone get screwed by a company; gamers in general are cut-throat, and have no problem with nailing each other, but even the worst PvP-killer dislikes when someone gives gaming a black eye. Regardless of how Kohnke felt about doing business with a gaming company before, it's going to seriously debate doing business with one again. Also, the suit gives anti-gaming enthusiasts yet more ammunition in the next go-round.

And it gets worse from there. Perpetual is developing another MMORPG, Start Trek Online. Although it's going to be popular, it's not likely to do well; it's business will probably be limited to hardcore Star Trek fans who will be interested in the novelty, but may not attract the hardcore gamers who keep games like that going. The Strek Trek MMORPG is going to need the best game ever in order to do well over time; it's going to be interesting to see what Penny Arcade and VGCats do to them.

Thus Perpetual's decision to not Kohnke (which was meant to save them money) will probably cause them loss of potential profit down the road. And, even though it isn't a comic, comic creators should take note: Regardless of the quality of your comic, your business deals need to be done with an eye to fairness and good business practices, or the popularity of your comic will suffer, and that can spell bad things in your future...

Guess I need to do the obligatory miscellaneous blog....

My apologies to the WiR site. It turns out that was wrong re: Alex DeWitt; she's the actual inspiration for the site. My confusion was based on reading the comic book in question (where Katma Tui died), and then not seeing DeWitt mentioned on the site beyond the clip of the comic. Again, sorry for any confusion created by my post.

It's Christmas, and time for presents. Please check out the sites attached to this blog (Lulu and SakuraCorp especially) and feel free to go on a wild spree. That said, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and Fun Kwanzaa, and Happy New Year!

I'm also looking for an artist for Sex Percussions. If you're not interested in doing the 65-page script, would you be interested in doing a guest comic?

And since it's no surprise that I support the writer's strike, I guess I post something...so how about some fun stuff?

A World Without Writers

Voices of Uncertainty
The Office is Closed
Stop The Hollywood Writers Strike
Sandra Oh: How Greedy Can You Get?
Writers Strike: Unfair to Producers
Hollywood Writers Strike- Day 72
Videoblog of the Strike (one of the Colbert writers

Poor Colbert Show

[Thanks to Sam McManis, of the Sacramento Bee for pointing this out...well, some of it.]

--FR

Common Mistakes in Character Building

There are some basic problems when people build characters. They either give the characters too many advantages or disadvantages or forget to flesh them out. There are also characters that are forgotten or otherwise abused by writers. As such they need a little love; here are some ideas for making them better characters.



Mary Sue/Gary Stu's: Some characters have too much power on one hand and enough psychological issues to pay off a therapist's student loans on the other. Girls' comics are filled with these characters, because not only is empowerment considered a great thing (thus the sheer number of abilities), but so is sensitivity and admitting your problems (thus the sheer number of personality problems). Another way to look at it is that they are given so much, and so must have a number of things to make up for it. There was a reason that I suggested no more than four good things and no more than two bad things; it's a simple way to balance out your characters. You should always strive for balanced characters, and should avoid characters that have too much going for them in either side of the balance sheet. They are just too hard to write and rarely become fan favorites.



Caricatures: At the other end of the spectrum are the shallow characters, those that are more caricatures than characters. The problem is that these characters aren't intended to be serious characters, and so the writer doesn't treat them seriously. It needs to be remembered that all characters need to taken seriously, no matter how silly they are; in fact, the silliest characters come off as even sillier if they are played straight. Thus, you need to make sure that all of your characters are fully developed, and that characters that are caricatures show themselves to be fully developed in order to take your running gag go to the next level.



Disrespected Characters: Some people just shouldn't write certain types of characters. This is usually most obvious when it comes to military or religious types, or even authority figures in general, but it can apply to any type of character. The obvious example here is the character who is treated as a caricature; the FBI agent that is far too official, harasses the main character while spouting arcane laws or interpreting laws in order to nail the main characters, and is basically not someone who you want to invite to Christmas dinner. More than any other character, this kind has the highest possibility of taking your readers out of the book, and possibly ruining any scene that he is in. The only real advice I can give you here is that you need to be aware of those types of characters that you don't have any respect for, and try to avoid writing those kind of characters. If you do need to write those characters, then you need to make an effort to treat the character respectfully.



Mandatory Characters: Every genre seems to have those characters that are mandatory, and that everyone seems to make sure that they are in stories of that genres, such as the barbarian in fantasy stories or the cool alien in science fiction. Jut remember that there are reasons that they are “mandatory” characters and take advantage of them. The obvious solution is to don't worry about omitting the character type, and be happy about it. However, if you're using the character as part of a running gag, then see the notes regarding caricatures above.



Love Interests, Sidekicks, and Villains: Always make sure that these characters are well-developed. One of the problems is that these characters are part of the story, but combine elements of various character types as mentioned above: Sidekicks may be treated as puppies, love interests may simply be elevated trollops, and villains limited to the Snidely Whiplash version. Respect these characters, as they are the most important ones to your story, and the ones that pop up the most. Used correctly they can add a lot to your world, but if you abuse them then they will drag your story down with them.



Remember this advice, and your characters will love you for it and you will have some great stories.