Writing

William Johnston Named Tie-In Grandmaster for 2010

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IAMTW’s GRAND MASTER SCRIBE AWARD,
THE FAUST, GOES TO THE GENRE’S MOST
PROLIFIC PRACTITIONER,
WILLIAM JOHNSTON

 The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers is
bestowing The Faust, its Grand Master Award for excellence, to author William
Johnston, the writer of over a hundred tie-in novels and the most prolific
practitioner of the craft, it was announced today by organization co-founders
Max Allan Collins and Lee Goldberg.  

William Johnston 2008  Johnston was born in Lincoln, Illinois, in 1924.  He joined the Navy in 1942 and served in the
Pacific.  He worked as a disc jockey,
advertising executive, magazine editor, and PR man before his writing career
took off in 1960 with The Marriage Cage, a comic mystery that earned him
a Best First Novel Edgar Award nomination from the Mystery Writers of America. He
followed that book with a slew of pulp titles for Monarch Books, ranging from
light comedy (The Power of Positive Loving) to medical romance (the Doctor
Starr trilogy) to soft-core erotica (Save Her for Loving, Teen Age Tramp,
Girls on the Wing). 

Johnston’s medical novels dovetailed with his first tie-in
assignments — original novels based on the TV series The Nurses, Doctor
Kildare and Ben Casey. Those books, published between 1962 and 1964,
were so successful that his next original medical romance, Two Loves Has
Nurse Powell, was presented as “From the author of Ben Casey.” 

In 1965, Johnston wrote an original novel based on the TV
comedy Get Smart. The book was a huge success, leading to nine more
novels over the show’s five-season history and making him the “go-to” guy for
sitcom-based tie-ins. He wrote books based on Captain Nice, Room 222,
Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter, The Flying Nun, The Brady
Bunch, Nanny and the Professor, The Munsters, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched,
The Monkees and F-Troop, among
others.

 But his TV tie-in work extended far beyond sitcom
adaptations. He wrote books based on Ironside,  Dick Tracy, The Young Rebels, The
Iron Horse, Then Came Bronson,
and Rod Serling’s The New People, to name a few. He even adapted the cartoon characters Magilla
Gorilla and Snagglepuss into books for children.   

Johnston also penned many novelizations, including the
pilots for the 1930s-era private eye series Banyon and the high school
drama Sons and Daughters. His feature film novelizations include Klute,
The Swinger, Echoes of a Summer, The New Interns, The Priest’s Wife, Lt. Robin
Crusoe USN  and his final tie-in project, Gore Vidal’s
Caligula (under the pseudonym  “William
Howard”). 2055-1  

After
retiring from fiction writing, he opened his own bar, which he operated for
many years. He currently resides in San Jose, California. 

The International Association of
Media Tie-in Writers (www.iamtw.org) is
dedicated to enhancing the professional and public image of tie-in writers,
educating people about the craft and business of tie-in writing, and to
providing a forum for tie-in writers to share information, support one another,
and discuss issues relating to their field. 

The Faust, the IAMTW’s Grandmaster Award, is named in
honor of Frederick Faust (also known as Max Brand) and is given annually. The
award recognizes a writer for their extensive and exceptional work in the
tie-in field. Past honorees have been Donald Bain, Alan Dean Foster, and Keith
R.A. DeCandido.

Just Like the Mail I Get

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My old high school buddy Christine Ferreira sent me this hilarious email exchange, which comes frighteningly close to many that I've had with people who'd like me to work for free. Here's an excerpt:

From: Simon Edhouse
Date: Monday 16 November 2009 2.19pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Logo Design

Hello David,

I would like to catch up as I am working on a really exciting project at the moment and need a logo designed. Basically something representing peer to peer networking. I have to have something to show prospective clients this week so would you be able to pull something together in the next few days? I will also need a couple of pie charts done for a 1 page website. If deal goes ahead there will be some good money in it for you.

Simon

From: David Thorne
Date: Monday 16 November 2009 3.52pm
To: Simon Edhouse
Subject: Re: Logo Design

Dear Simon,

Disregarding the fact that you have still not paid me for work I completed earlier this year despite several assertions that you would do so, I would be delighted to spend my free time creating logos and pie charts for you based on further vague promises of future possible payment. Please find attached pie chart as requested and let me know of any changes required.

Regards, David.

Fwd Pie Charts %E2%80%94 Inbox 20091204 101416 This must be the funniest email conversation ever

Good Stuff

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I read Walter Kirn’s novel UP IN THE AIR not too long ago and he had some lines of description that I wish I wrote… lines that made me want start writing something, anything, just to be writing. Here are a few:  

Two months ago she teased me into bed, then put on a showy, marathon performance that struck me as rehearsed, even researched […] Now and then I’d catch her in the middle of a particularly far-fetched pose and see that it wasn’t appetite that drove her but some idea, some odd erotic theory.

[…] in a suburb that might have been squeezed from a tube.

Old tailors love me. They tell me I remind them of men from forty years ago.

[…]becoming one of those women who need make-up not to highlight their features but to create them.

My call is passed from computer to computer and then to a person who only sounds like one.

She looks like a girl in her twenties who’s been aged by an amateur movie makeup artist using spirit gum for wrinkles and sprinkled baby powder to gray her hair.

His face is soap opera handsome. Full lips. Sleek forehead. A scar on his chin to remind you he’s male.

I manage to be brotherly to her merely by sitting nearby and shedding heat.

He’s reading Dean Koontz with a squinting intensity that Koontz just doesn’t call for and must be fake.

Everything and Nothing

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Upintheair  Two things got me thinking today about the challenges of adapting a book to the screen — my friend John Rogers' blog posts on the subject and the movie UP IN THE AIR, which I loved.

I've written a few adaptations over the years, some filmed (eg. Rex Stout's "Champagne for One," "Prisoner's Base" ) some not (eg. Mary Higgins Clark's "The Lottery Winners," Aimee & David Thurlo's Ella Clah novels), some filmed after they were taken over by others (eg. Marv Wolfman's "Blade"), some based on my own books (eg ".357 Vigilante" and "Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse,")  and some inching tantalizingly towards production (Victor Gischler's "Gun Monkeys"). 

Some of my favorite book-to-movie adaptations include JAWS, GET SHORTY, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, THE CIDER HOUSE RULES… and now, UP IN THE AIR. You can learn so much by watching the movies and then reading the books (or vice versa, of course).*

What all of my favorite adaptations have in common is that the screenwriters made major departures from the source material and yet still captured the essence of the books and what made them great. Often, the movies actually improve on the source material. JAWS is a good example of that…and so is UP IN THE AIR. 

Major changes from the book are inevitable and necessary. For one thing, you're telling a story in two different mediums. As a result, the biggest changes often have less to do with artistic concerns than they do with the realities of production. If you're doing a movie, and not a six hour mini-series, you're going to have to make some hard choice about what to drop and what to condense. To do that, you have to sit down with the book, strip everything away and find the true heart of the story… and then build backward from there, keeping only those characters, moments, and plot strands from the book that support the essence of the tale. Your job isn't to transcribe the book to film (which is what the first HARRY POTTER movie felt like to me), but to write a great movie. In many ways, the book becomes inspiration, rather than something you should follow with slavish devotion. That's especially hard for authors adapting their own books to pull off (read John Irving's excellent memoir of his CIDER HOUSE RULES adaptation for a glimpse at that…and he managed the feat brilliantly). 

Whenever I adapt a book, I read it first for pure pleasure and then afterwards ask myself if I liked it or not…and, if so, why? What is the story? What makes it special? What are the defining moments? What is the author trying to say? What is the tone? 

If I'm adapting the book for a movie, I also ask myself what are the three acts? 

If I'm adapting the book for a TV pilot, I also ask myself, what is the franchise and what are the conflicts that can generate episodes every week?

Then I re-read the book and highlight the key plot moments, the best lines of dialog, and any prose that sets the tone, establishes the theme, or reveals an important detail. At the same time, I also write a broad outline of the story as it exists in the book.

Next, I sit down and decide what the story is that I want to tell. Who are the central characters? What is the essence of the book? And then I write my own outline. Once I am happy with that, I go back and pluck out key lines of dialog or description that I want in the script. And then I start writing.

With "Ella Clah," a CBS pilot, Bill Rabkin & I decided that the most intriguing conflict in Aimee & David Thurlo's series of books was in the heroine's backstory: a female, Navajo FBI agent caught between two worlds, two nations, two ways of life. In the books, she's an ex-FBI agent who leads the Major Crimes Unit of the Navajo Police… so by keeping her an FBI agent, we made a major deviation. But we didn't end there. We gave her a male, Hispanic partner with some cultural conflicts of his own. And we resurrected a character who was killed off before the story started in the first book: Ella's father, a Navajo preacher, who drove around the Rez spreading the gospel, much to the shame of Ella's brother, a traditional Indian medicine man. We did it because we thought those conflicts would give us lots of interesting stories. Ultimately, instead of adapting "Blackening Song" or one of the other Ella Clah novels, we ended up writing an entirely new story but kept the characters true to who they were in the books. The pilot didn't sell, but I'm pleased to say that the authors were as pleased with the adaptation as we were.

With Victor Gischler's "Gun Monkeys," I streamlined everything, dropped the hero's entire family (and the subplots that went along with them), condensed events, and created an entirely new third act that I hoped stayed true to everything that I, and thousands of readers, loved about the Edgar-nominated book. At first, Victor was stunned by the changes but after getting over the surprise, he discovered that he actually really liked what I did (or at least that's what he tells me).   

What I'm leading up to with all this is that I think UP IN THE AIR is a brilliant adaptation, one that aspiring writers can and should learn from. And yet, in many ways, it's not an adaptation at all. Let me explain…  

Walter Kirn's book is about Ray Bingham, a charming yet emotionally remote guy who spends 322 days a year in the air, going from city-to-city firing people, and is on the verge of reaching a million domestic frequent flier miles, something that only a few others have ever attained. Oh, and he's also a motivational speaker reluctantly facing the prospect of going back home for his sister's wedding. Beyond that, and maybe a dozen lines of dialog, screenwriters Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner scrapped everything else. Instead, they started from scratch with only the basic premise as a foundation.

It was a brave creative decision. And, I believe, also a necessary one. 

They stripped the book down to its narrative studs — its unique voice,  its attitude, and its central character. They created a much stronger narrative spine and added two new characters — a young woman at Ray's company who tags along with him on the road because she believes that his job can be done better via webcam and a traveling saleswoman much like himself who offers him no-strings-attached sex and might just be the soul-mate he never knew he was missing. 

As different as UP IN THE AIR is from Walter Kirn's book, I would argue that it's a loyal adaptation, a pure distillation of the story's soul that is perfectly suited to the medium in which its being told. In many, many ways, I think the screenplay is a vast improvement over the book. The screen story is more focused, Ray Bingham is more sharply defined, and yet the message, the tone, and the unique point-of-view of the book remain the same.

In the end, virtually nothing from the book made it on the screen. And yet, I would argue that everything from the book is there.  And, if you are a writer, accomplishing that contradiction is something to be admired.

UPDATE: I just saw Jason Reitman, who directed UP IN THE AIR, and his father Ivan Reitman, who co-produced it, interviewed together on Charlie Rose… and the story they tell of how the film was developed is very, very different than the one reported earlier in the press. Neither one of them mentioned the earlier scripts by Sheldon Turner and Ted Griffin, nor that Ivan was initially going to direct the movie for Dreamworks before Jason got involved.  That said, it was interesting to hear Jason talk about the adaptation. His approach, not surprisingly, is to take what he needs from the source material to make a good movie…and go where-ever his inspiration takes him from there. I forgot to mention earlier that his adaptation of Christopher Buckley's THANK YOU FOR SMOKING is every bit as good as this one and is another terrific example of how to do it right.

===============

*let's not forget the great TV series adapted directly from books,  like DEXTER, TRUE BLOOD, REBUS and MORSE (and, dare I say it, NERO WOLFE). You can learn a lot from them, too…even the ones that aren't directly based on the books, but rather the character or the franchise, like BONES, WIRE IN THE BLOOD, and many of the episodes of MORSE. When developing a book into a pilot/TV series, you have an even bigger challenge than you would simply adapting it for a feature. Not only do you want to be true to the essence of the book, and build a three-act structure into the tale, but you also have to develop an open-ended franchise, and the strong central conflicts, that together will become the narrative engine capable of generating 100 episodes. BONES did that brilliantly…so did DEXTER. 

The Girl Who Played with Cliches

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I hated THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. I thought it was a boring, cliche-ridden, bloated mess. The Lisbeth Salander character was, by far, the best thing about it…unfortunately,  the story centered primarily on Michael Blomkvist, a thinly disguised, idealized version of the author himself and the magazine he founded. It's an awful book.

Girl-who-played-with-fire  The only reason I read the sequel, THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, is because so many people told me it was a much better book than TATTOO…and that it would make me understand the phenomenon. To some degree, they are right. The first third of the book is centered on Salander and her adventures abroad and back in Sweden…which actually are a lot of fun to read, if you can get past all the cliches (more on that in a minute). Salander is a great character that's stuck, unfortunately,  in two lousy novels.

The instant Michael Blomkvist returns, and even before he takes the spotlight, the book becomes overwhelmed with dull exposition (which is repeated endlessly, telling you the same facts over and over and over again), ridiculous coincidences, and pointless scenes that neither move the story forward nor reveal character. The characters become so thin that calling them "cardboard" would be giving them more substance and depth than they actually have. As if this wasn't punishment enough for the reader, the cliche-count radically increases as the book slogs on until it seems like there's one in every paragraph. Here are just a few of them:

"Nutty as a fruitcake"

"Go jump in a lake."

"he's pulling my leg."

"too many irons in the fire."

"out like a light."

"keep it under our hats."

"like a hot potato."

"you're clutching at straws."

"afraid he'd spill the beans."

"the penny dropped." 

"she's a loose cannon."

"cool as a cucumber."

"fight tooth and nail."

"kept her nose clean."

"fly in the ointment"

And so it goes, on and on, one dusty old cliche after another. By far the most used cliche in the book is "Hung out to dry/hang out to dry." It was used a dozen times before I gave up counting. I doubt these are Swedish cliches, so I blame the translator for being a lazy hack…and his editor for not doing his job.

This is a truly terrible book on just about every level. That said, it's marginally better than TATTOO by virtue of the first third.

The Voices in Our Heads

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There's a terrific interview with my brother Tod over at The Writers Inner Journey. Here's an excerpt:

"That I am able to ruminate on these rather dark issues for great lengths of time is somewhat disturbing in that I think the difference between what is clinically considered insane and what is clinically considered a writer isn’t that different—we both have voices in our head for prolonged periods of time and, occasionally, have intense conversations with them—but I think the only time I’ve been frightened by an idea was when I didn’t think I knew how to write it or wasn’t confident in my ability to do the story justice."

As if Harlequin Wasn’t In Enough Trouble

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Pardon  Harlequin seems to be tripping over itself lately with one public relations blunder after another. First, they start up a vanity press program and use the editors of their traditional publishing imprints to recommend it to all their rejected authors. As if that wasn't bad enough, they've just re-released a series of vintage pulp paperbacks from their archives…but edited out anything they thought might be too sexist, racist, or politically incorrect for a contemporary audience.  The editor of the project, Marsha Zinberg, says:

Remember, our intention was to publish the stories in their original form. But once we immersed ourselves in the text, our eyes grew wide. Our jaws dropped. Social behavior—such as hitting a woman—that would be considered totally unacceptable now was quite common sixty years ago. Scenes of near rape would not sit well with a contemporary audience, we were quite convinced. We therefore decided to make small adjustments to the text, only in cases where we felt scenes or phrases would be offensive to a 2009 readership.

Naturally, this idiotic censorship hasn't gone over well, especially considering how sexually explicit, violent and sexist Harlequin titles can be nowadays. Vintage paperback collector Steve Lewis, a well-known historian of old pulps, was justifiably outraged. He wrote:

This business of sheltering our eyes from things you think might offend us now is absolute nonsense. Who do you think we are, a bunch of weak-kneed sissies? Even if it makes us uneasy every once in a while to look at our past, history IS history, and it’s ridiculous to try to cover it up.
Please do us a favor, and keep publishing your X-rated romance novels, and leave the mystery and noir genres well enough alone. You say you’re delighted to have been able to reprint these books. I think you should be ashamed of yourselves, trampling on the work of others, especially when (as far as I can tell) it’s been done without their permission.

Another collector of vintage paperbacks wrote:

Are these slap-happy bitches kidding? So I suppose it might be fine to edit out, or even re-shoot, scenes of guys smackin’ dames and dolls in The Big Sleep or a Robert Mitchum classic? How about The Big Valley, that S/M TV western?
Does this also include spanking? Do no Harlequin romances contain rough sex where women like to be slapped during a hard bang, or have rape fantasies in the dark hearrt of the urban sprawl?

Yet another collector wrote:

Had Harlequin finally decided not to reprint material it deemed offensive, I wouldn't have minded – more adventurous publishers might have taken the relay and it was just fine.
But this is not what Harlequin chose to do, instead they decided to butcher books from another era to make them palatable to modern readers deemed too stupid or too sensitive to tackle "hot stuff" from the past.

Why bother reprinting vintage paperbacks if you are going to butcher them first? Isn't the charm, popular appeal, and historical significance of the books that they do reflect that grammar, writing styles, and social attitudes of a different time? Did they really think that censoring the books would be a selling point? Oh, wait, I get it.. they were hoping to tap that vast, under-served audience that has been waiting for somebody to publish censored, vintage paperbacks.

Between the vanity press venture and this censored book line, I have to wonder… is Harlequin truly oblivious about why people object to censorship and unethical conflicts-of-interest? Or are they fully aware of the the issues… and just don't care?

Widespread Positive Reaction to MWA’s Action

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The reaction to MWA’s delisting of Harlequin has been overwhelmingly positive. I wish I could share with you the dozens of emails I’ve received from authors, many of them published by Harlequin, expressing their support for the MWA’s action. But here’s just a small sampling of the positive reaction from authors around the blogosphere… 

Author John Scalzi wrote:

Good on the Mystery Writers of America for keeping Harlequin’s feet to the fire on this.

Author Jackie Kessler offered an excellent analysis of Harlequin CEO Donna Hayes’ letter to the MWA…

DellArte Press is still a Harlequin imprint — one that **Harlequin is steering rejected authors toward**. You are still telling these rejected authors that even though their manuscripts are not good enough for you to pay them, they are good enough for them to pay you.

….and Kessler applauded the MWA’s actions.

bravo to MWA, which is standing behind its authors. The group spells out very clearly exactly why Harlequin’s actions have gotten it delisted — and further kudos for the organization making it extremely clear how Harlequin broke the rules

Author Maya Reynolds was also bothered by the ethical issues raised by Harlequin’s pay-to-publish operation.

It simply is not kosher for Harlequin to reject writers while at the same time referring them to its self-publishing arm. Furthermore, it is inappropriate for Harlequin to imply that their editors will be “monitoring” the self-published releases with an eye to possibly offering a contract with a traditional Harlequin imprint. This is not an arms-length relationship. It offers false hope to writers while benefiting the Harlequin bottom line.

Author Nick Kaufmann writes:

The Mystery Writers of America (MWA) has stepped up as the first to put its money where its mouth is over the Harlequin Horizons/DellArte Press debacle […] It’s interesting to note that MWA’s actions, quite appropriately, offer protection from consequence to Harlequin authors who signed contracts before this nonsense began.[…]It’s a ballsy move, taking the delisting of Harlequin from threat to reality, and I applaud MWA for it.

On Twitter, author Stacie Kane wrote:

I applaud the MWA for this; not because it doesn’t effect me but because it DOES effect ALL OF US

Author Laura Kinsale tweeted:

HQ’s reply to MWA splainin self-servin “shiny innovative new book industry, where YOU pay US” makes me ill. Truly ill.

Prior to the MWA’s decision being announced, literary agent Kristen Nelson says that she voiced her concerns about the pay-to-publish program directly to Harlequin editors:

one editor did try out the spiel about how publishing houses need to shift models in this bad economy but I wasn’t having any of that.
I said vanity publishing was predatory—plain and simple and that needed to be understood. That Harlequin had a reputation that they are now putting in jeopardy and that the writers organizations had every right to speak out strongly as their whole purpose is to protect writers.

Not surprisingly, the strongest criticism of MWA’s action has come from self-published and vanity press authors. For example, Henry Baum writes:

What’s so troubling about this is that the traditional publishing mindset has won the “battle” this week. And there shouldn’t even be a battle. The move by the MWA to drop Harlequin from its roster is particularly infuriating. It’s like they see the creeping influence of self-publishing and want to bat it down.

The MWA, SFWA, RWA, and HWA — all of whom strongly condemned how Harlequin’s pay-to-publish venture is integrated into their traditional publishing business — aren’t threatened by writers who’ve paid to be published.  What these organizations are concerned about is a vanity press industry that preys on the desperation and gullibility of aspiring authors and publishing companies that engage in unethical and predatory publishing practices.

Mr. Monk and Mayhem

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There’s a Q&A interview with me today over at the MAYHEM & MAGIC blog about me and my latest MONK novel. Here’s a peek:

Lee, tell us about a bit about your latest book and your writing schedule

[…]My writing schedule isn’t set in stone. I basically work on my books whenever I am not working on a script, or vice-versa. I have about four months to write each book, so I write anywhere and everywhere I can put pen to paper (or fingers to a keyboard). No matter what I am writing, I tend to do my best work between 8 pm and 2 am. Don’t ask me why…my brother Tod is the same way.

Will you be guest speaker at any mystery conferences this year?

I’ll be attending Left Coast Crime in L.A, the 3rd Annual Forensic Trends: Psychiatric & Behavioral Issues Conference in Las Vegas, the International Mystery Writers Festival in Owensboro KY, Bouchercon in San Francisco, and the Professional Pierce Brosnan Impersonator Convention in my living room.

Capture The Saint

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6a00d8341ec3da53ef0128760e4ea3970c-500pi Burl Barer's CAPTURE THE SAINT, the first all new adventure of the famous Simon Templar since 1983's SALVAGE FOR THE SAINT, is finally available in a Kindle edition.
The novel, approved by the Leslie Charteris estate, finds the Robin Hood of Modern Crime pursuing dangerous criminals and beautiful women with equal passion.

Sparkling wit, grand adventure, high style — Burl Barer's CAPTURE THE SAINT brings back Simon Templar in all his glory.