This post originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on May 8th, 2014.
Buckle down and get ready for pictures, because today we’re going to talk about, well, insert title here.
Let me start out by adding my voice to the crowd and state that there are really no laws of writing, just training wheels to take off when you feel you’re ready. And then you try not to crash into a car. So don’t think that I’m telling you that this is the one way to Heaven. This column isn’t called Things That Everyone Should Like, and this article isn’t called The One Right Way for You to Get Things Done either.
[This column was originally published at Ganriki.org. Meet guest columnist Serdar Yegulalp.]
Here is a conversation I find myself having way too often for my own good. A discussion of anime X comes up, which is itself an adaptation of source material X(1). I cite a number of things wrong with X, only to be told, “Well, all that stuff was in X(1) to begin with.” Meaning the adaptation was faithful enough to preserve a piece of source material that was redolent with flaws — something the creator in me rebels against on principle. Shouldn’t the point of an adaptation be to do the best possible justice to the spirit of the material, without being the wrong kind of faithful?
I love certain things, enough to want them adapted to other media for the sake of gaining a broader audience , but not so much that I want to see them adapted with no attention paid to how the original might well need to be rethought in the light of the new medium. Much of my writing in Let’s Film This revolves around that problem, where I look at the problems of adapting anime to live action and sometimes feel it’s only slightly less tricky than getting an elephant to parallel park. The endless array of issues posed by a live-action AKIRA will serve as a great example: you can’t film that material in the West without gutting it of so much of what made it what it is in the first place.
But I shouldn’t ignore the much larger, far more prevalent, and often far thornier issue of the way manga, light novels, and other common source material are adapted to anime — and how, the vast majority of the time, they’re often preserved a little too perfectly in the process.
Why they adapt
Much of what I mean by this I hinted at in the opening paragraph, where something inexplicable or clearly flawed about a given show can be traced back to the source material being a certain way. You don’t dare tinker with the source material too much, because then you’ll be alienating the very fanbase that exists for the material.
Or so goes the conventional wisdom about such things.
One of the reasons why things are adapted across various media in Japan in the first place is because of something Ed Chavez of Vertical, Inc. once pointed out during a discussion of the light novel scene: the reason things are adapted to or from light novels (and, one could assume, any other medium) is to expand the existing demographic base for those things, because those demographics are often completely tapped out. Think of it as a Venn diagram with circles representing manga readers, light-novel readers, anime watchers, etc., with only the slighest of overlap between any two circles and barely any overlap between all of them at once. Hence adaptations, which increase the overall audience for your average franchise sometimes by a couple orders of magnitude.
So if that’s the case, why do some adaptations end up being slavishly faithful to a fault, even when they don’t need to be? This part I’m not as certain about, but I suspect it has to do with the sense — one not limited to Japan — that the creator knows best. Good or bad, s/he created the work a certain way for certain reasons, and we who have not created it but are simply adapting it need to respect that for better or worse.
I respect this thinking, while at the same time feeling it’s the wrong kind of fidelity. Yes, it’s good to honor the intentions and the work of the original creator, and not distort what they’ve done; what you end up with won’t deserve the original name. But you also can’t forget that any adapation is a chance to take a good long look at the source material and remember it’s just that: a source.
… and why they tinker
Some of these issues were exposed, ironically enough, by director Jaume Collet-Serra when discussing his proposed AKIRA live-action film. He ended up saying something I agreed with in principle — that the original comic wasn’t much of a human story — but he said in such a derogatory, unthinkingly offensive way that people rejected it. I don’t blame them: if someone told you “We’re going to adapt one of the seminal works of your subculture, even though it kind of sucks,” you’d have trouble not being offended, wouldn’t you? It’s hard not to see this as only one step removed, and maybe not even that much, from the kind of gratuitous Hollywood tinkering that gave us Dragonball: Evolution.
The other side of this, and the one which looms all the larger the more I think about it, is how anything we could call a flaw won’t always be thought of as such by the people who fall in love with a given work, whether long-time fans or newcomers. My feeling about AKIRA is that I love it because of its flaws — that the things that can be called flaws are at least as much also expressions of the uniquneness of the project. I don’t love the fact that the story manifests contempt for the human race, but I love the totality of its vision and its willingness to see its ideas through to the bitter end. Where my love for such things ends is where, I feel, the creativity of others ought to pick up — that they should see such things as one part of a dialogue, and be encouraged to continue that dialogue on their own terms.
Flaws may not be flaws to the fans. They may be what makes something worth watching in the first place. The problem is that we often have no way of telling in advance; it’s not as if there’s a rulebook we can consult that will put us in the clear as to when something — some absurd plot element, some eye-rolling twist — needs to be ripped out for the good of the whole.
On leaving well enough (or bad enough) alone
Maybe, in the end, it’s best to be faithful to the flaws, too, and let the work as a whole stand or fall on its own. But that doesn’t mean a prospective adaptation should leave all revisionism off the table — especially if it means revisionism of approach.
Still, that has to be balanced against what you gain from the changes. Many people decried the way Flowers of Evil looked nothing like its source material; why tinker with a perfectly good thing? I saw it as a failed experiment, but an interesting one nonetheless, one well worth being exposed to if only to indicate how it might be better used in another production. On the other hand, I thought the remake of Berserk actually suffered somewhat from having higher production values, by giving us a convenient level of remove from the blood-soaked, horrific, passionate core of the story. Both experiences provided lessons that were valuable, even if they came at the cost of the work itself.
The reason a work has an audience at all is because of what it is in its entirety, not because of any one thing. If a work is changed in adaptation, it should only be because the new whole that is produced will be at least as good, or better. And who can guarantee such a thing? No one, but then again creativity of any stripe has never been about guarantees.
[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum, MuseHack, and Ongoing Worlds]
We’ve all had those moments where we’re just not inspired to build our world – or in writing in general. Other times we’re inspired but it’s actually not coming together, which is somehow worse. I imagine many a writer feels they exist inside a permanent form of writer’s block from which they escape only momentarily until their lack of creative forces drag them back to their prison.
With “World Blockage” it’s exceptionally daunting because worldbuilding is a complex process. A single idea or clever exercise may not spawn new continents or languages. An hour of effort may yield little results because the parts just won’t come together. It’s just as maddening as writer’s block, and you need something to jumpstart it.
You need inspiration – inspiration to build worlds. (more…)
[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum and at MuseHack]
Last column, I looked at writing magic and technology for your setting – and noted that in many ways for the sake of world building they could be treated the same. I still believe that, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out the differences as well. Or perhaps I should say “areas of variance,” as it gets complicated, but more on that shortly.
I believe it’s important to loo at differences, as in too many cases creating the magic and/or technology for a setting treats them as the same for all the wrong reason – as opposed to the right ones. Technology easily becomes hand-woven neutron particle miracle rays, a mythology with lab tools and circuit boards. Magic can get systematized or explained in such a way it either is technology, or is really just magic wearing technologies clothes and wandering around looking out of place.
So, having suggested that you have to look at them as similar for the sake of worldbuilding, I now want to deal with when you have to look at them differently. Yes, this may produce writing whiplash, but who said worldbuilding was going to be boring and straightforward? I certainly didn’t promise that.
Think of it as general and specifics. In general, they’re the ways people change and affect the world. In specifics, well . . . (more…)
[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack]
I’m going to start by assuming the setting of your story has intelligent life in it. If not, well that sounds like a challenging write, and feel free to skip this part until you need it. Or don’t because hey, you never know.
Now first, allow me to define intelligent life, so we’re on the same sheet of virtual paper here. Intelligent life is that form of life that can process information, adapt and retain this information, pass this information on to others, and possesses a level of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Intelligent life is essentially a kind of conscious computing, even if I personally dislike that simplistic terminology.
I would especially argue that intelligence contains a level of self-awareness as intelligence life as we think of itis self-modifying and self-directing. You can’t separate intelligence from consciousness, because someone has to “be in there” to be intelligent. “I think therefore I am” is also “I know I am as I think.”
With that all-to brief (and doubtlessly incomplete) journey into the philosophy of intelligence, let’s continue a to why it’s important. I’ll also try not to overdo the words “intelligent life,” but no promises here. (more…)
[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack]
So you’ve got the origin of your universe (or perhaps you used our universe as a template, which does save a lot of effort). So now that you know how it all began, it’s time to move things to the next level. Namely, what’s going on in the places your characters will be living, working, loving, dying, and in other ways advancing the plot.
Cosmology is decided. Time to move to Ecology
Now when I talk Ecology, that’s a word with a lot of meanings and a lot of applications. So for the sake of the column I’m defining Ecology in world building as how you define how the living parts of your setting (world, worlds, etc.) work, relate, interact, etc. Your plants, animals, biospheres, diseases, and the like. I’ll refer to it as Ecology with a capital “E” for general purposes, and with a small “e” for specifics.
You know, where life comes from and/or lives. Life in short, like your characters, or the things they’ll be interacting with, domesticating, fighting, eating, and so on. Or come to think of it the reverse as well . . . (more…)
First, please accept my apologies for not producing anything for over a month. Life got away from me and needed to be netted. Okay, there were butterfly nets involved. That’s what they told me.
As I mentioned before, I particpated in the National Novel Writing Month. To add to the challenge of writing a novel of at least 50 000 words, I decided to create a story that took in the lessons of Lost in Translation. That is, I wanted to write something that could be easily adapted without worrying too much that there would be much to be altered. Those who want to read Beaver Flight can download it from Google Drive. It is currently unfinished, unpolished, and low on my writing priority list, but will work as an example here.
My first consideration was cast size. While a novel can have a huge cast consisting of main, supporting, and incidental characters, often for adaptations they will get combined and even cut to save on the costs of hiring actors. Thus, my core cast was kept to four characters; Darcy, Renée, Victoria, and Dominique. The story had a Canadian slant to it, in part because I am Canadian and in part to make it easier for the adaptation to get grants from the Canadian government. Cynical, but funding needs to be a concern, especially with an adaptation that requires special effects.
Next, setting. The core idea is a gender-flipping of the classic B-movie trope of Mars Needs Women! However, I wanted to keep the fighting away from Earth itself and possibly the populace kept in the dark. This builds off the limited cast idea above. With an isolated base, replacement characters would take time to arrive. The pilot episode (if Beaver Flight was a TV series) could show the difficulties of getting to the lunar base with its higher budget with later episodes helping to ameliorate the cost of the setting. The moon’s low-gravity is still an issue, though, even in the unfinished manuscript.
Props are going to be an interesting element. Each of the main characters pilots powered armour; something larger than Iron Man‘s suit but far smaller than the traditional Japanese mecha as seen in the various Gundam series or Patlabor. Each suit will be distinctive; Dominique’s needs to be taller since she herself is the tallest character in the story. However, and only implied in the story, the base design of the powered armour is common to all suits, with only the paint and the markings by nation and pilot being the main visual differences.*
Key sets are minimized. The main ones on the lunar base includes the mecha hangar bay, the pilots’ briefing room, Beaver Flight’s shared bedroom, and the cafeteria. Other locations can come up, but aren’t as key. The area outside the hangar bay doors needs to be created, as will lunar landscapes. Fortunately, reuse of graphics and settings will be common.
As mentioned, I’m placing Beaver Flight low on my priority list. I feel that the story doesn’t really fit a novel format. The original concept, I feel, would work better in a more serialized manner, whether it’s a webcomic, TV series, or even a series of short stories. As I neared the 50 000th word of the story, I started adding elements that were meant to appear later, such as the breaking of the secrecy and the appearance of the alien invaders. However, with the manuscript, I can go back, turn the work into something that fits it better, and then polish it up.
In the end, getting the story to a point where it can be adapted without too many problems is extra work. Consideration has to be taken for the more expensive budget elements to try to keep costs in hand. Casts need to be limited; few movies and TV series have a core cast larger than seven. However, getting these elements worked in should make adapting the work easier, keeping the adaptation closer to the original.
Next week, urban fantasy renewal.
* Not used in the manuscript but completely acceptable by my standards – cutie marks on each suit of powered armour to add to the distinctions.
