The Problem of Novelizations

John Scalzi's recent interview of Karen Travis is quite good and it carried me through to her recent essay defending her work on the Star Wars Expanded Universe. It is an excellent essay that highlights the difficulties of writing works using corporately owned copyrights.

So apart from the fact that it can be a lot harder for the author, there’s no fundamental difference between writing a tie-in for any franchise and a creator-copyright piece. It still has to stand the tests of good fiction, except that it’s got to be done fast, it’s got to be done right, and it’s got to be done despite changes, deadline shifts, studio diktats, or — here’s the real white-knuckle ride — trying to fit in with an ongoing TV series that’s still being written, as many of my colleagues do. Those who’ve novelized movies tell me stories of not being allowed to take scripts away home, and having one chance to read them with a security guard standing over them: and a movie script makes a novel of about 20,000 words. Adding another 80,000 words without deviating from the film takes real talent. Tie-ins are not a job for the faint-hearted or the dilettante.

I mentioned that last bit about the movie scripts to my brother over the weekend.