Novelizing THE TUDORS

There was a very nice article in today's Waynesboro News-Leader about author & IAMTW member Elizabeth Massie winning the Scribe award for her brilliant novelization of THE TUDORS.

A two-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, Massie is an accomplished writer of original horror stories, as well as historical fiction. She has had numerous short stories, novels and anthologies published since 1984. Her "Tudors" novelizations of seasons two and three were published in 2008 and 2009, respectively. The show aired for four seasons and ended in June. As a writer of original works, Massie's "Tudors" projects presented her with some unique challenges.

Massie, 56, was sent scripts for each episode and then wrote the season into one book at the same time it was being filmed in Ireland.

The books had to be loyal to the show, but the scripts, as they tend to be, were scant in details and description.

So Massie had to conduct historical research to bring the story alive on the page.

"The script would say something like, 'King Henry enters the room. He sits on a chair. He starts to talk,'" she said. "I had to fill in details of the way things looked, what they ate, how long did it take to get from London to Hever Castle (by horse and carriage). Things like that."

[…]Goldberg said Massie's "Tudors" work is especially unique because she wrote an entire season into one book.

"She managed to make the book read like a literary novel," he said. "She gave it this classy patina that these books don't often have…"

You can find out more about the challenges she faced in her chapter on novelizing THE TUDORS in TIED IN: The Business, History and Craft of Media Tie-In Novels, which is available in a Kindle edition and in a trade paperback edition.

1 thought on “Novelizing THE TUDORS”

  1. Hi I just finished reading your book Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii and I just had a few comments first of all it was a very good book but the part in the beginning where they are talking about orgasms was unnecessary there are children reading your books I would hope you can leave that stuff out. next on page 247 on the last paragraph it says that monk ate his check and drank his milk… if you haven’t noticed from the shows monk is terrified of milk and would never drink it lastly when you have the hawing people speaking in a accent you could not understand what u wrote so it became very frustrating when you could only understand half the conversation I feel that was poorly written. Overall the book was very good and I am going to the store to buy more soon but those were my few concerns thank you for your time

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