Is a great movie always based on a great novel?

There is an old saying that ‘the novel is always better than the movie.’ But is that always the case?

A lot of people don’t want to read a book once they’ve seen its cinematic adaptation. I’m a bit of an odd duck (in lots of ways 😊) because I like to read the source material for movies that I particularly enjoy. I love to see how the two differ, how they’re the same, and whether the quality of the writing holds up to the excellence of the move.

In August, I’m going to be chatting with my friend Andrew Stamper on The Stamper Cinema podcast. We’ll be reviewing Jackie Brown, which is a perfect film in my opinion. The movie is based on the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch, which is also a favorite of mine. Other instances in which I love both the novel and the movie include The Exorcist, The Godfather, and Valdez is coming. But I’ve found a lot of mismatches as well.

One of my favorite westerns is One-Eyed Jacks, starring and directed by Marlon Brando. The source material for this classic western is The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider, which I found to be so-so. Likewise, I’m a big fan of the WWI adventure movie, The Blue Max, but the novel by the same name is very different and kind of boring. The Hustler with Paul Newman is perhaps my favorite low-budget movie, but I found the novel by Walter Tevis to be a bit bland.   

So, at least in my case, the old adage that the ‘the book is always better than the movie’ rings hollow. But I still enjoy finding out.

Write a lot and rewrite a lot.

Everyone writes at their own pace. Stephen King sets a daily count of 2000 words, although he’s a phenom. Most writers settle for five hundred to a thousand. One of my literary heroes, Ernest Hemingway, used to say that four-thousand words was a good week. I’ve always used that as a guidepost.

That’s not to say that I always make the mark. A distracted week rife with writer’s block and wheel spinning may top out at two thousand words. A week with travel or holiday parties my be zilch. But the thing is to keep plugging. The only one who can stop you being a writer is you.

Stephen King is quoted as saying “You need to write a lot. You need to rewrite a lot. When you’re not writing or rewriting, you need to read a lot. I don’t know of any short cuts.” Good advice.

If you haven’t seen any of my podcast interviews, here’s a link to my recent chat with Joey Calvo. https://www.youtube.com/live/cdxgOtltD8Q?si=g72dsLvzUYD6vUng

Podcast marketing.

It is often said that story trumps writing. I would add that ofttimes marketing trumps both. This is why we see mediocre tales become NY Times best sellers.

The hardest part of writing books is often selling them. We writers are typically not the best marketers. Writing is a solitary and insular profession, while marketing by its nature is gregarious and outgoing.

In my marketing endeavors, I try to do a little something every week. Social media posts here. A newsletter there. A library event somewhere else. One of my favorite marketing activities is appearing on podcasts.

Podcasts appeal to the ham actor in me and they can potentially reach hundreds to thousands of readers. I’m fortunate that my background is interesting enough to attract podcast hosts, so I am able to do a couple every month.

Yesterday, I appeared on the Hidden Gem podcast with writers Roland Hulme and Craig Tuch. We focused on how I’ve used “what if” to formulate plots and move them forward. It was a fun hour, and should be interesting for readers. I’ll post on social media when the podcast airs.

A few weeks ago, I had a nice chat with Virginia Grenier, one of the hosts for Language of the Souls. That interview is available now at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2267353/episodes/16203837. Meanwhile, here’s the promo:

“Thrills, chills, and storytelling skills! Listen as John Bukowski discusses his journey from science to suspense. Explore the therapeutic power of fiction and its role in facing existential threats on #LanguageOfTheSoul.”

I’ve also recently chatted with Robbie Ross on Conversations Ignite. You can check that one out at  https://open.spotify.com/show/27U9FaNjBAnNplzSC6SksN 

Two podcasts are currently slated for February. I’ll be speaking with Dr. Julio Caba on the Empowering Humans podcast, and with Corwin Johnson on the CJ Moneyway Show. I’ll let you know when those become available for viewing.

In the meantime, don’t forget to buy your copies of Checkout Time (www.checkouttimenovel.com) and Project Suicide (www.projectsuicidenovel.com). You can email me at johnb@thrillerjohnb.net if you would like a signed copy. Amazon reviews are always welcome.

Show don't tell and the death of a master

Every year, a lot of celebrities pass away. For some, I’ll marvel that they were still alive after so long, for others that they passed at such a young age. But every once in a while, the passing will affect me emotionally. Such was the case when Charlton Heston died in 2008. More recently, it was the passing of Kris Kristofferson.

He wasn’t a favorite singer—his voice was more a croak. Nor was he a favorite actor of mine, although he acted quite well. It was his song writing that I loved. The lyrics were rich and emotionally charge, the phrasing unusual.

It is often said that writers should show not tell. Kristofferson was a master at that. As an example, I’ll use my favorite of his songs—Sunday Morning coming down.

Kristofferson tries to describe a loser waking up lonely on a Sunday with a hangover and more regrets about the past than hope for the future. But he doesn’t say that. Instead, he says…

            I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.

            And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad, so I had one more for dessert.

            Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes to find my cleanest dirty shirt.

Hangover and drinking problem are never stated, but he gets the point across dramatically. Likewise loser. The rest of the song is much the same, with wistful notice taken of everyday experiences such as laughing children, church bells ringing, and the nostalgic smell of frying chicken. Things that he’d lost somewhere somehow along the way. I wish that I could write emotions that well.

Rest in peace Mr. K.

PS. I recently had an enjoyable chat with my friend Andrew Stamper of Stamper Cinema. We discussed a favorite film—Michael Mann’s Manhunter. You can checkout our discussion here.

Manhunter (with author John Bukowski)

Caveat Emptor!

Many years ago, I played Jonathon the psycho (type casting 😊) in a production of Arsenic and Old Lace. After a read-thru, one of the actors asked the director what a blackjack was. The director didn’t know either. I pointed out that it is a covered lead weight used to render people unconscious (in the series Blue Bloods, the cop patriarch calls it a slapper). The actor and director both looked amazed, and the young actor asked if I went home and read the dictionary. My response was no, but I do read.

Vocabulary is important to a writer. It allows you to pick the perfect word or phrase to describe a place or emotion. Vocabulary adds nuance and lets you focus your sentences around interesting action verbs. Vocabulary keeps the prose sounding fresh, rather than repetitious. Of course, it can be overdone, so that your work sounds pretentious or spooneristic (I think I invented this word 😊), but you get the idea.

The main way I improve my vocabulary is through reading fiction and history. Recently, I have added the online word game called Zen Word. It’s free and it’s supposed to be free of ads. This latter claim is BS, as there are many ads between levels. One of the most frequent ads is for an online solitaire game. There is nothing unusual about that, as solitaire is a widely played time passer among many age groups. But the solitaire game I’m referring to is a bit different—it’s a gambling version through PayPal.

Based on the ads, the target audience for this online gambling game seems to be young people, especially college kids. This makes sense, as young people game much more than older folks and often have a lot of disposable income. But the advertisers also tap into another aspect of youth—naivete. The focus of almost every ad is that it is so easy to win that you can use the game as an alternate source of income when you need money for gas or groceries. Heck, winning is so easy that you can make a career of it!

I guess you’d have to be young and naïve to believe that the odds are in your favor with any gambling game. The advertisers seem to be counting on the fact that the players won’t ask the basic question--“why would somebody start a game for the purposes of sending me money?” Where’s the profit in that?

I’ve come to believe that the modern education system has shamed logic out of the curriculum. This just seems to be another example.

Unfortunately, overwriting is nothing new.

I’ve read several novels lately that I would consider ‘overwritten.’ Typically, they are modern thrillers in which the author tries to do too much: too much research, too many locations, too many descriptions, too much internal dialogue, too many characters. Characters end up being under or over developed and the narrative flow slows to a crawl; do we really need to know why the villain is villainous? As I say in my Research in Fiction workshop, it is at least as important to know what to leave out as what to put in. If you’ve ever found yourself flipping pages looking for when the action resumes, you know what I mean.

Then there are authors who love their own writing to the extent that they find it impossible to cut detailed descriptions or clever turns of phrase, even when these slow the narrative. It’s important to remember to kill your darlings before they kill your story.

I mentioned that I’ve seen this in some modern thrillers, but I guess it isn’t really new. I just finished Fallen Angel by Howard Fast, a 1950s thriller that was turned into the movie Mirage with Gregory Peck (a must see if you haven’t). Fast is guilty of sparing some darlings and over-indulging in internal dialogue that caused me to skip ahead on more than one occasion. While I appreciate that it was intended as a psychological thriller, the psychology was a bit excessive and heavy handed. Things tended to speed up with dialogue, and he should have used more of this to reveal some of that internal struggle.

As with most 1950s pulp fiction, the novel is short—only 126 paperback pages. Judicious cutting would have made it even shorter, leaving considerable room to add plot lines and action that would have heightened the pace. That being said, the novel was enjoyable if a bit tedious, but the movie is much better.

What dreams may come

An old adage says to edit when you are sober but write when you’re drunk. The point is that intoxication opens the mind to possibilities that the sober mind would never consider. The same can be said for dreaming. During dreams, strange and creative ideas float up from the subconscious, ideas that are normally suppressed behind day-to-day mundanity.

I’ve written several stories based on dreams I’ve had, but I can’t really remember which ones. That’s the thing about dreams, their imagery is intense, sometimes startling, but only for a moment. Then the mind buries them again upon waking. At least that’s how it works for me.

A few weeks ago, I had a very powerful dream that I thought would make an excellent idea for a short story. I woke long enough to use the bathroom and considered writing the idea down. But it was so strongly in my mind at that moment, that I figured I would have no trouble remembering it come daybreak. But when I woke, I was left only with the memory of having had a great idea, not with any memory of the idea itself.

So, my advice to all my writer friends is, when those great ideas flick into your head, write them down. It may save you some sleepless nights kicking yourself.  

The vagaries of publication

If you want to get your writing in front of the big NY publishers, you need a literary agent. However, I haven’t had much success pitching my novels to literary agents. I think this stems from a variety of factors, the main one being that most agents are looking for younger writers that appeal to younger readers; Millennials and Gen-Z are the biggest audience for books these days. As any of you who have read Project Suicide or Checkout Time know, my writing ain’t woke.😊

Lately, I’ve tried querying smaller traditional publishers that don’t require representation by an agent. The chances of acceptance are much higher, but these smaller presses come with their own problems. A recent submission is a case in point.

Just before Christmas, I submitted the first fifty pages of my dark thriller The Peeper to one such small press. A week later they requested a full manuscript. A few days after that they said they were “definitely” interested and would send me a contract. The holidays came and went without hearing anything. So, a few days ago I followed up. Turns out the definitely was really definitely maybe. The editor now said that they liked the book but didn’t want to take it on because it wasn’t part of a series. While I understand the reasoning (series sell better) it might have been nice to know early on that this was a necessary criterion.

This is the second time similar thing has happened to me. Early last year, a small traditional press was thrilled with the first chapter of And a Child Shall Lead Him, but just wanted to see a couple more chapters before pulling the trigger. I sent the chapters, and they acknowledged receipt. Then my follow up emails met with cricket chirps.

Just goes to show that the path to publication is fraught with obstacles that good writing cannot necessarily