Television Novelizations

They must be signed by the company owning the show I believe. The characters are a copyright product of them. When Earl Hamner wrote The Homecoming and Spencers Mountain he sold them and copyrighted, then he had spencers mountain into a movie..where warner brothers copyrighted the characters of the movie. When the waltons came out he wanted to use the original characters but could not. They were under contract and it would breach the contract. He was the original writer and this happened to him.

Novelizations are almost all assignments, written to an outline that the show's producers have to approve.

Star Trek used to be an exception, in that you could write and submit an ST novel to the publisher, however, if they decided not to publish it, you wouldn't be able to sell it elsewhere (obviously).

Typically, a writer has to sell their original work first, then land a work-for-hire assignment.

Jo Scott, I'm surprised to hear that story. I was under the impression that couldn't happen. Do you have a cite for it? Thanks.

Anyone can write TV novelizations IF they have the rights to the book. My husband learned this one the hard way. When he first started writing -- and before he knew the ways of the world -- he read a book he knew would make a perfect film. He diligently and painstakingly adapted it into a very fine teleplay. He the began to shop it around. Produers loved it until they realized he didn't own the rights. The author was contacted and no, he wasn't interested in his book being made into a screenplay or TV movie. I would say that all of my husband's efforts were for naught except the teleplay did demonstrate to producers that my husband could write!

In other cases, a producer acquires the rights to a novel -- or series of novels -- and then assigns a writer to adapt it to the screen.

Adapting a book into a screenplay or teleplay is not as easy as it might seem. First, you're condensing a 300+ novel into 110 pages. Secondly, in a novel, so much of the action is internal; for the screen, it must be dramatized. Thirdly, novels usually don't fall into the neat three-act structure that is used for a screenplay. I'd recommend before you attempt such a task, you contact the author's agent to see if rights are available and then go from there.

KelseyF said:

Are novelizations of television shows written on assignment or can anyone just write one? I know I used to read those Buffy the Vampire Slayer ones all the time and those are written by the same two people, with a few exceptions.

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No, you can't just write one. The studio (or whatever parent company) owns the rights to those characters and worlds, and you can't use them without permission. Getting permission nearly always involves your being an established writer whose agent gets you the assignment, and usually the project will be work for hire, meaning you get a lump payment, no royalties.

cleoauthor said:

Anyone can write TV novelizations IF they have the rights to the book.

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In other words, "No, not just anyone can write one." Having the rights to do so is CRITICAL. What your husband did was a copyright violation, as I'm sure you now know.

Aconite said:

Getting permission nearly always involves your being an established writer whose agent gets you the assignment, and usually the project will be work for hire, meaning you get a lump payment, no royalties.

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Although you don't get royalties, you DO get residuals. I'm speaking here only of television, not movies. I'm not sure how it works in film. I know many a writer that's made a tidy sum from residuals earned from adapting novels.

cleoauthor said:

Although you don't get royalties, you DO get residuals. I'm speaking here only of television, not movies. I'm not sure how it works in film. I know many a writer that's made a tidy sum from residuals earned from adapting novels.

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Ah, it seems we're talking about different things. You're talking about shows/films made from novels. Kelsey was asking about novels based on shows/films.

Television NOvelizations

Aconite said:

Ah, it seems we're talking about different things. You're talking about shows/films made from novels. Kelsey was asking about novels based on shows/films.

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Aconite, you're absolutely correct! I completely misinterpreted the original posting. You'll have to forgive me. I'm a newbie and easily confused, addled and bewildered. Sorry about that.

I have attended several cons over the years that allowed me to speak with a handful of well-known Trek pro-novel authors, including Keith DeCandido and Michael Jan Friedman. At one particular con, there is always a panel about writing these types of novels, and the consensus is that each particular show/movie/game has different rules.

The reason (I'm told) that the majority of the BuffyTVS novels are written by two authors is because of their ability to meet a deadline. When the novel series first began, assignments were handed out to roughly half a dozen authors. Only those two (Christie Goldman is one of them, I believe?) were able to hand in the manuscript on time. So they get the assignments.

Trek novels are very different, because the book lines are HUGE. I am told that the best way to break into this fandom is by submitting to the "Strange New Worlds" anthology. Many current pro-writers got their start here. Authors are either approached by Pocket Books (the publisher of the Trek lines) and asked to submit an outline for approval, or the author submits their own idea. Either way, Pocket Books editors have the final say in what is accepted.

But there are dozens of other novel lines out there that I'm not familiar with, and they may have different submission processes. The surest way to know for certain is to find out who publishes books for the show you are interested in, and have your agent query them. Because I seriously doubt anyone will consider an unagented submission for a well-established book line.

-Kelly

Jo, thanks for the link. It's a weird story, since a novelist usually sells the film rights to their book, not all rights. I suppose he might have sold off the rights to a film sequel with those characters, and so he renamed the characters in his novel so he would retain the film rights to The Homecoming, but generally the story sounds a bit fishy.

But thank you very much.

Through mutual friends I know some people who write Buffy novels, Star Wars comics and other such things. I also know people who write for popular YA book series that say they are all written by one author when they are not.

These people are professional freelancers. All they do is work-for-hire. They don't write a book in the Buffy universe and then write their own novels. They do this kind of work professionally and they have extensive contacts and extensive resumes. It seems to be largely a 'who you know' kind of industry.

So if you want to write a Buffy novel, you need a resume (more than talent) and contacts wouldn't hurt. But you can't just write one and submit it to someone. It doesn't work that way.

zeprosnepsid said:

They don't write a book in the Buffy universe and then write their own novels.

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Well, some do. I know one writer who did two Angel novels, and has written quite a few novels in other genres too.

Books

zeprosnepsid said:

These people are professional freelancers. All they do is work-for-hire. They don't write a book in the Buffy universe and then write their own novels. They do this kind of work professionally and they have extensive contacts and extensive resumes. It seems to be largely a 'who you know' kind of industry.

.

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Actually, a great many writers write their own novel, plus tie in novels. In fact, such contracts for tie in novels are usually given to writers who have already had novels published on their own.

The easiest way to get such contracts isn't "who you know," it's having already proven you can write a good, publishable novel.

Jo Scott said:

They must be signed by the company owning the show I believe. The characters are a copyright product of them. When Earl Hamner wrote The Homecoming and Spencers Mountain he sold them and copyrighted, then he had spencers mountain into a movie..where warner brothers copyrighted the characters of the movie. When the waltons came out he wanted to use the original characters but could not. They were under contract and it would breach the contract. He was the original writer and this happened to him.

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Even present-day veteran novelists have had this happen. James Patterson (or, rather, his agent) inadvertently signed over the Alex Cross character of one of his novel series, meaning that the film company that owns the character can make further films about Alex Cross without Patterson's input or, worse, without paying royalties.

Jamesaritchie said:

Actually, a great many writers write their own novel, plus tie in novels. In fact, such contracts for tie in novels are usually given to writers who have already had novels published on their own.

The easiest way to get such contracts isn't "who you know," it's having already proven you can write a good, publishable novel.

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I thought I made it pretty clear that I was speaking of the experiences of the several people I know who do this kind of work, not everyone who does it. They all get more work based on who they know and they all only do this work for hire kind of thing.

Have you known people who have gotten these contracts through talent alone? I'm just talking from my experience. There is a lot of schmoozing in this kind of industry. I met all these people through schmoozing dinners and lunches in the first place.

But saying that all you need is proof you can publish a novel is the same as what I said that you need a resume (resume = proof).

I've written some tie-in novels.

They've all been on assignment ... the editor called me and said, "Could you write a [name of show] novel?" To which the answer is "Yes, when do you want it?" because the money is pretty good. So the editor then says, "How about a week from Thursday?"

You get what's called a "Bible," which contains the background to the show, what you must have, what you may have, and what you must not have. You may or may not be given an outline, or some general guidance on what sort of thing they want, or who the main character is to be.

So you write the thing.

They're kinda fun to do.


But the basic answer is: You don't call them, they call you. They have specific needs, and specific deadlines. Meet both and you can have all of this sort of work you want.

My next published work will be a Star Trek novella that comes out in May.

I've also two novels based on Midway's "Gauntlet Dark Legacy", and a short story based on the Incredible Hulk for Marvel Comics.

I was actually approached to do the Hulk story based on my work as an independent comic book writer. The Hulk story, and my newest comic led to me being offered the chance to pitch the Gauntlet story and then the Gauntlet novels and my work on the Hulk led to the Star Trek work.

I do get a nice advance and royalties based on sales. Yes, it is work-for-hire, but it's still fun to play in other people's sandboxes.

zeprosnepsid said:

I thought I made it pretty clear that I was speaking of the experiences of the several people I know who do this kind of work, not everyone who does it. They all get more work based on who they know and they all only do this work for hire kind of thing.

Have you known people who have gotten these contracts through talent alone? I'm just talking from my experience. There is a lot of schmoozing in this kind of industry. I met all these people through schmoozing dinners and lunches in the first place.

But saying that all you need is proof you can publish a novel is the same as what I said that you need a resume (resume = proof).

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I know several writers who do tie in novels, and every one of them was a previously published writer on their own before getting such an assignment. As Jame M says, you don't call them, they call you, and they have no reason to call you unless they first know you can write publishable fiction.

You hear lots of stories from lots of people. Some are true, many are just smoke. But it's pretty easy to look around and get a list of all the writers who do tie in novels, and equally easy to look at their publishing hostory. I'm sure there are exceptions, but I've never known a single writer who landed a tie-in assignment who wasn't already a published writer in some way.

Schmoozing is fine, but who you know doesn't teach you how to write a novel, and the tie-in business has a lot of money riding on it. They want writers who have already proven they can write well.

But, yes, I've known a few writers who landed such gigs solely on the basis of talent. Someone in charge reads one of their novels, or sees something else they've done, and calls their agent. Simple as that.

I'm not saying schmoozing doesn;t help, but I am saying that writer who do tie-in novels are almost always writers in their own right, and do have a writing life outside of writing tie-in novels. Tie-in novels are almost always a secondary line, not the primary one.

And I didn't say all you needed was proof, I said almost all writers who do tie-in novels have already published novels on their own. Big difference.

While we're all talking about writing with characters and situations created by someone else...

Anybody know if there's any truth to the various rumors that some of the writers who "get the call" to write a tie-in novel based on TV or movies are tapped because someone liked their fanfic?

Maryn, who wrote fanfic long ago (and never got called, sniff!)

Maryn said:

Anybody know if there's any truth to the various rumors that some of the writers who "get the call" to write a tie-in novel based on TV or movies are tapped because someone liked their fanfic?

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I'm just guessing here, but I'd say that if they did, it would be unofficial and never verified. The generally accepted wisdom among the copyright holding companies--and mind you, Jaws has a whole series of posts on the legal aspects of this on his site--is that fanfic violates copyright, and to maintain your copyright you have to protect it from violation, so if you officially knew about the fanfic you'd have to send letters to the authors telling them to stop using your copyrighted material. Hiring one of the authors on the basis of the fanfic you can't (supposedly) officially know exists would be tricky.

Aconite said:

I'm just guessing here, but I'd say that if they did, it would be unofficial and never verified. The generally accepted wisdom among the copyright holding companies--and mind you, Jaws has a whole series of posts on the legal aspects of this on his site--is that fanfic violates copyright, and to maintain your copyright you have to protect it from violation, so if you officially knew about the fanfic you'd have to send letters to the authors telling them to stop using your copyrighted material. Hiring one of the authors on the basis of the fanfic you can't (supposedly) officially know exists would be tricky.

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*sigh*

another dream, shot dead lol.

Maryn said:

Anybody know if there's any truth to the various rumors that some of the writers who "get the call" to write a tie-in novel based on TV or movies are tapped because someone liked their fanfic?

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Actually, it has happened. I know a fanfic writer who made a pitch on a tie-in novel and it got published. That may have been her only pro sale.

My non-fiction TV tie-in book was the result of a fan project.

It does happen, but it's the exception rather than the rule.