by www. clarkesworldmagazine. com; Mike Resnick; Lezli Robyn; Simon DeDeo; Catherynne M. Valente
Jeff VanderMeer was also weaned on Blish’s Star Trek work. When the opportunity arose to write a novel based on the Predator franchise, he grabbed it. He’d enjoyed the films and this was a chance to write a different kind of fiction than his usual fare. “I love Joyce and Nabokov, but I also love action-adventure movies and really good thriller novels and pulp noir. So this just seemed to me like exploring some aspect of my tastes I’d never worked on in fiction form before. It’s bloody, violent, has some sex in it, and it’s amoral. Period.”
Rogers had gone to Wizards of the Coast to pitch an original novel and instead was offered the opportunity to write a novel based on the new and massively popular Magic: The Gathering card game. He loved the game, thought it would be an intriguing challenge, and the money was good.
Elizabeth Hand, however, had no interest to explore but the bottom line. “I’m a working writer,” Hand said. “I don’t teach or have a tenured position anywhere, or a pension, or a 401K. This is my day job, and doing media work has been a way to help pay the bills and underwrite my serious fiction. Period.”
STRUGGLING AGAINST RESTRAINTS
Tie-in fiction is largely defined by its limitations. You can’t just kill Captain Kirk or give Chewbacca a sex change, no matter how awesome a story might result. Your work must be consistent with the original source material, and this consistency is referred to as the “continuity.” Depending on the property, continuity can be light or heavy, and such limitations can be a pillory box for creativity. “I would blow my brains out if I had to write in the Star Trek or Star Wars universe,” said VanderMeer, “… they have such a huge bible and backstory, I wouldn’t have the patience and I personally would feel horribly claustrophobic.”
Both VanderMeer and Rogers worked on properties whose continuity had few limitations. VanderMeer had a few Predator movies and novels, but otherwise was left to create the story he wanted for Predator: South China Sea. The approach was the same as his other work “write for myself and hopefully people will like it.” Still, he needed to keep in sight what “the core Predator audience would like.”
For his novel based on a card game, Rogers had almost no narrative to work with. “I actually saw this as positive… As long as I wrote fiction that used creatures, settings, and props from the game world, I could tell pretty much whatever story I wanted to tell.” The result was Ashes of the Sun, written under the penname Hanovi Braddock, a fantasy novel that found appeal with the gaming and non-gaming fans. Normally a slow writer, Rogers felt he could just “write and write without deciding on every detail. The editors might want to change everything I did, in any case, so I might as well commit to the first ideas that I thought of. As it turned out, the editors wanted minimal changes. And the novel was pretty good.”
Cavelos, on the other hand, dealt with the breadth and depth of B5′s continuity limitations. “I wrote my first B5 novel, The Shadow Within, while the TV series was still on the air. Major revelations about my main character, Anna Sheridan, and the novel’s antagonists, the Shadows, were forthcoming on the show, though I didn’t know this. I only found out when some B5 fans in the UK (where the show aired about a month ahead of when it aired in the US) emailed me. This forced me to make a bunch of 11th-hour changes once I did get the information. Luckily, these changes were generally minor, but chasing down the information caused a lot of anxiety and extra work.”
For Cavelos, writing her B5 novels was “harder than writing my own fiction in many ways.” Her original plots smacked against the continuity of the B5 universe, and again she had to scramble. But in the wake of this aggravation, she found ideas that were significantly better. “The limitations forced me to be more creative, to not go with my first thought (which was usually a familiar plot device) but to come up with something better. I feel that, in many ways, the more limitations I have, the better I write.” But Cavelos conceded that her B5 experience was also exceptional. Other properties are jammed with rules. “At some point I think the rules can become overwhelming.”
Even in the continuity-thick Star Wars universe, Hand found some room to breathe. “The four Boba Fett juveniles were all original books that I wrote, with original storylines and some original characters. I might receive directions to have various Star Wars characters make an appearance, but that was it. So it was fun. I wrote Hunted as a Jack Vance juvenile and had a great time with it.” George Lucas and the Gang were generally supportive, great to work with, and hands off. Not like Chris Carter, who demanded all the adjectives and adverbs be removed from her X-Files movie novelization. She also had the unenviable task of translating the awful script of Catwoman into something readable, only to have several more versions of the script arrive at her door, each with a different ending, each forcing her to do a re-write of a bad story that kept getting worse and worse.
Still, such frustrations were water off a duck’s back. For me,” Hand said, “tie-in work is work for hire and nothing more. It’s hack work, and I’ve never pretended otherwise… I have no emotional investment in media work, and no artistic investment save that I try my best to produce something worth the cover price.” While never substandard work, it wasn’t her best.
FROM GOOD TO BAD TO UGLY
All these complaints pale compared to the tsunami of ruin that accompanied Bruce Bethke’s efforts to novelize the film The Wild, Wild West. This cautionary tale is fully recounted at his website, so here is a summation of his self-described Faustian bargain. Bethke, the man who coined the word cyberpunk in 1980, had won the Philip K Dick award for his SF novel Headcrash in 1995. While acclaimed, it had mediocre sales, so when Bethke attempted to sell his next original novel, his editor said that while she loved the book, they could only make an “insultingly low” offer for it.
But, if he wrote a bestseller, he’d have more stroke with the publisher, and his future work would likely get a lot better advances. The editor said she had a tie-in project that would do the trick, the novelization of an action/comedy film staring Will Smith that would guarantee sales of an estimated 250,000 to Smith’s large fan base.
Bethke respected the original script and signed on to do the project so he could do his next novel with the promise of a solid advance. In doing so, he walked into a creative and imaginative bramble bomb. The original scriptwriters were fired, and a rotating door of replacements was brought in. Plot, character, setting and tone changed monthly as new scripts arrived. Eventually, Bethke was receiving faxes on a daily basis regarding script tweaks, and was expected to change the entire book at the same pace. The deadline approached before final script approval was made and the book went production with many continuity breaks from the final movie.
Then, the film tanked. Warner Brothers lost $180 million. The book sold in the mid 30,000. The film’s failure was a tar-baby that glommed onto Bethke’s name. When he pitched his next novel to Warner, he received a letter saying they could no longer afford to buy novels from him at all.
Ten years later, the experience still stings. Yet, the field is not all doom and gloom. “I’ve talked this business over with a lot of writers over the years,” Bethke said, “Dragonlance writers, Star Trek writers, game spinoff writers, screenplay novelization writers — and in the end, I have to conclude my experience with Wild Wild West was exceptional.” He also noted that many people can write good and fun media tie in work, and novelizations have many more restrictions and headaches attached to them.
Still, he warns against tie-in fiction if your real heart in fiction is to compose original, compelling work. “In the long run [tie-in fiction] will only anger and disappoint you, and sap the energy you need to chase your idiosyncratic vision, whatever it may be.” In short, stick to your original-fiction guns and “don’t quit your day job.”
CONCLUSION
Jeanne Cavelos, Elizabeth Hand and Bruce Holland Rogers have largely given up writing tie-in fiction, each one feeling their time is precious and best spent on their own fiction. VanderMeer may or may not take up a
nother property in the future. And Bethke won’t touch one with a ten-foot clown pole. Each one looked at the sub-genre a bit different than when they started, for good or ill.
VanderMeer had his expectations challenged. “I’m on record as saying I think tie-in fiction is crap. But it’s easy to say that if you haven’t written one… Would I have thought to do a Predator novel without luck and chance? Would I have done one without being paid up front? No. But from the beginning I thought of it as an interesting challenge… All I can really say is, like always, I tried to write an honest book and to invest it with the sense of beauty and horror I find in the world. And that it truly gets stranger and stranger as it goes along. You’ll find many VanderMeer signatures.” Plus, it has a Predator in it!
Jeanne Cavelos acknowledges the field has problems. “While there has certainly been plenty of bad tie-in fiction (and I mean plenty), there has also been some great tie-in fiction. It’s sad that tie-in novels are dismissed by critics and by many writers of ‘real’ fiction. A writer of a tie-in novel is doing the same job that a writer of an episode of a TV show is doing. The writer of the TV show episode can be celebrated, can be awarded an Emmy. The writer of the tie-in novel can’t even get reviewed… We could value [their work] a bit more.”
Rogers enjoyed his experience, but won’t dip back in. “At this point, I’m not sufficiently motivated by money to be interested in any work but work that is entirely my own.” Hand has given up writing tie-ins, focusing on her own work. She never pretended tie-in was anything other than hack work, though she had no problems with writing it, nor disdain for anyone else who takes up the work, whatever their motivation. “I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve kept the two streams of writing separate in my own professional career, but I’ve never written under a pseudonym, or denied having done media work. Still, I prefer not to. It takes time and energy from the work that matters most to me.”
Bethke concurs. Despite his experience, though, he offered this final does of pragmatism. “There are good media companies to work for. There are insane idiots who treat writers like migrant bean-pickers. The best advice I can offer to any writer who is thinking of tackling this kind of work is, do your due diligence. Contact other writers who have written for this media company before. Don’t believe the hype, ever. Try to get some sense of what you’re getting into before you sign anything.”
Writers come to tie-in fiction for different reasons. Some dig contributing to a mythos they love, adding their unique voice to the existing choir. Others desire a fistful of dollars and just get the job done. Most are stuck somewhere in between, just as the work itself is caught between the large and enthusiastic demands of readers and the disdain of the sub-genre from those outside its boundaries. Wherever you fall in the spectrum, tie-in fiction is too popular to die. Just like Spock!
About the Author
Jason S. Ridler's fiction has appeared in such magazines as Nossa Morte, Big Pulp, Crossed Genres, New Myths, Necrotic Tissue, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. “Billy and the Mountain” appeared in Tesseracts Thirteen, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrell. His popular non-fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Dark Scribe, and the Internet Review of Science Fiction. A former punk rock musician and cemetery groundskeeper, Mr. Ridler is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada.
“Voodoo Economics: How to Find Serenity in an Industry that Does Not Want You”
by Catherynne M. Valente
In the antiseptic, sour-smelling halls of psychology, there is an entire wing devoted to Anxiety. Within that wing is a dingy corner containing a dry mop and a broken drinking fountain bearing a sign that reads “Please Love Me.” This section is wholly devoted to Writer’s Anxiety.
There is a hierarchy of Writer’s Anxiety, and since this is a magazine which splits its favors more or less equally among the tiers, it is this hierarchy which concerns me as I sit down, fresh from my latest rejection, to tell you all how I keep the temptation to rip up paperback copies of The Sword of Shannara and choke myself to death on their pulpy remains at bay.
The first tier of Writer Anxiety can aptly be described as “Oh, God, Let Me Get Published.” This pupal stage in the development of the author is fraught with misery and self-doubt, characterized by a willingness to do any number of unsavory things for the chance at a stapled, mimeographed contributor’s copy and a steadfast conviction that publication vindicates all.
The second tier falls under the fluttering banner of “Oh, God, Let Me Keep Publishing.” This intermediary stage is full of dread and attempts to scry the market using arcane methods of haruspicy and blog-reading in order to keep oneself relevant and employed. These tiers often snipe at one another in a morbid kind of Misery Olympics — is it more wretched to have no credits to your name and a burning, thwarted desire for them or to have to deal every day with a hostile market that could dump you onto the landfill at any arbitrary moment? Meet me at the con. We’ll compare ulcers.
It was not so long ago — about four years–that I was squarely in that first tier, just hoping against hope someone would see in my work what I saw, that someone would reach down from the gold-paneled heavens of New York City and say: yes, you are what we want. That didn’t happen.
How can I say that, when I, in fact, did get a two-book deal with Bantam Spectra, followed by a third, when I’ve gone from total unknown to multi-award-winning author on the cover of Locus in less than four years? Because the industry doesn’t want me. And they don’t want you, either. The word industry is applicable here only with squinted eyes and foil-wrapped antennae affixed firmly to the skull. Imagine, if you will, that instead of the effete, latte-sipping literati we surely are, that we all work together in a steel mill in, let’s say Ohio, oh, round about now.
The glory age of our employers is long past. Most of the field has either gone out of business or merged or found other, cheaper workers who will not insist on decent pay and benefits. The world is actively, eagerly looking for some way to completely replace what we make with something more energy-efficient, modern, and interesting. Every once in awhile our employers land a big contract, and that keeps the rest of us afloat for awhile, but it’s been on the downhill for a long time. Take a look at some of the steel towns in Ohio. It’s a metaphor, but it’s also a mirror. The difference is, if steel production ground to a halt today, it would be a problem.
There are more writers today, producing more text, than ever before in the history of the world. It can’t have escaped notice that this entire article is pregnant with the assumption that its audience is primarily other writers and aspiring writers. More books, more blogs, more everything. If everyone with literary aspirations were to, at this very instant, wake up, laugh, and get a banking job, the publishing industry could go for decades, even a century, on just those who are working now, reprints, and endless new editions of the ten most popular books of all time. No one would even notice.
We’re selling steel to the steel barons, kids.
So when I say it didn’t happen, what I mean is that the barons will never look down at me and say: yes, you are what we want. Let’s be honest, I don’t even sell machine-grade steel. I sell Damascus steel, folded and intricate, dug up from the earth, practically useless, desirable only to lovers of the arcane, the beautiful, the old. No one slammed a fist down onto their desk and shouted: what we need here is a woman writer with too much education to natter incomprehensibly about fairy tales! It doesn’t work like that. It’s a ghastly game, trying to predict how an author will perform, betting on her like a horse. And how she runs! As long as she can, she runs. But usually, it’s not that long.
I’ve been questioning myself a lot lately. Questioning my steel, if you will. I choose to write the aggressively strange, almost virulently outside the mainstream. Does this hurt me? Does it, slowly, kill me? I can’t tell. I just can’t. I try to recall Ted Chiang’s words as I was working on this
article: “I once heard that, on average, published novelists earn only slightly more than migrant laborers. With prospects like that, why not just write what you want?”
It doesn’t always get me to sleep at night.
I contracted to write this article at the beginning of the summer, when I felt like I had something to share about finding serenity, finding the zen of choosing yourself over your industry, of pursuing your strange, unseemly niche until it carries you where you ought to go.
But a funny thing happened. I got rejected. A lot. A couple of projects I believed in made the rounds and went precisely nowhere. Now, I know we’re not supposed to talk about our failures — we manufacture a propaganda of success that promotes a narrative where every worthwhile book gets published, but Virginia, it just ain’t so. But it’s a funny thing to stare at the title to this article for a couple of hours when all your awards and buzz add up to the same rejection letters you got when you were waltzing with the mop in the Anxiety Museum. Kind of like the universe smirking in your direction. How does that serenity taste now, kid?
And it’s taken me a couple of days, it really has. But I’m here to tell you: it tastes fine.
When you work in a steel town, you either cling to the mill and drink for all you’re worth or you embrace the new world: new technologies, new economies, niche markets and products no one has thought to want before. The only other option is death. And proximity to death brings clarity: they don’t want me. They don’t want you. There are no job openings and there are lay-offs by the thousand, every day, that you never hear about and no pundit weeps over. We are the ones full of want, full of desire. We transmit our want to them like to fickle gods and like gods they accept us or turn away for reasons we cannot scry.
