Category: Musings

Musings

Weekly Musing: The Martian – Book vs. Movie

DH Hanni

Previously I’ve touched upon books adapted into either movies or TV series and which one is better. Today I’d like to focus on probably the first time I’ve ever seen a movie adapted from a book that actually held up to the book.

Last week I saw The Martian adapted from one of my favorite books I read last year, The Martian by Andy Weir. The movie apparently managed to achieve something I actually thought was damn near impossible. It is about as faithful to the book in pretty much every single area.

So how did this happen? Was it due to the stellar cast? The well-known sci-fi director Ridley Scott? Was it the screenplay? Let’s answer those questions in order.

The cast was great. I’ll admit I was hesitant about Matt Damon staring as Mark Watney. I felt he was a little bit old to play the role as in my mind I picture Watney about my age (mid 30s) and not Matt Damon’s age. However, he did capture Watney’s vulnerable sarcastic personality very well. I did buy Matt Damon as a botanist and someone who could science the shit out of things. The rest of the cast was very good as well but at the core of not only the movie, but the book too, this is about Mark Watney and that is the most important role. Had that not been done correctly, the movie would have fallen apart.

The director is Ridley Scott and he did an awesome job presenting the Mars as warm, foreboding, isolated, and hostile. Space as well as the Hermes space station looked wonderful as well. But since Ridley Scott is a well-known sci-fi director, I expected him to be able to handle something like this. I loved how the log entries were adapted from the bog into Watney logging his experiences by video recording himself. Also, since the outpost on Mars was already rigged with cameras to monitor the astronauts, this allows the viewer to see and experience what he’s going through.

Honestly the reason why this adaption worked so well is due to the source material as well as the screenplay. Drew Goddard, who created Netflix’s Daredevil series (which is an awesome series), maintained the overall integrity of Andy Weir’s book. The screenwriter didn’t gut Watney’s character even if many of his “fucks” aren’t in the film. Silly ratings system.

Since the book is about Watney, the screenwriter needs to be able to accurately capture all of his sarcasm and doubts about survival yet not giving up on life. Like the book’s author, Goddard gets what the main character is. I think sometimes that is why a lot of movie and TV series adaptions fall apart is the screenwriter does not stay true to a character.

Goddard also doesn’t stray from the seemingly insurmountable challenges NASA faces trying to figure out a way to communicate with Watney as well as getting him home, dead or alive. Nor is the crew Watney was apart of ignored. At first they face believing Watney is dead then discovering he is alive and then how do they rescue him.

Because the book itself doesn’t suffer from excess, the adaption really didn’t need to cut anything to make it work for a movie audience. Even the science behind not only Watney’s survival, but how Earth plans to bring him home, is explained in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the audience. Since the movie has the added ability of showing the audience, it makes the scientific explanation easier than when I read it. I did find reading the science was fairly easy for my liberal arts degree mind to digest and understand. There is a lot of complex science going on and too often movies dumb it down a lot to the point people who know better are upset because it’s not plausible.

Of course nothing is perfect and the movie did have a very few minor things I had grips with but honestly, they are so small, they aren’t worth listing. The only thing I will say is the movie added to the ending. Essentially it had an epilogue which isn’t in the book. It felt like it was put in there because the studio wasn’t satisfied with the book’s ending, which the movie still maintains, and wanted to wrap things up a little neater for the audience. Personally I didn’t need it.

The Martian adaption shows that it is possible to stay faithful to a book without making drastic changes which is what frequently screws up the story and angers fans. I’m not saying every book adapted into a movie or TV show has to stay to the source material. Often that is not feasible and what works in one medium does not translate well to the screen. It’s okay to cut or modify those sometimes. I’ve often felt fans who were disappointed something was not 100% faithful to the source material should just stick to reading the books(s) and their own head canon. With The Martian, though, book readers can be satisfied with it.

Musings

Weekly Musing: Step Aside Sucktember

DH Hanni

Ahhh, September has come and gone. With its passing, thank goodness, it means it’s time for another update on how revisions are going for my WIP. For some reason only the fickle writing gods know, there appears to be this pattern where every other month my progress on this novel has sucked.

I started September with so much hope. After all I was on a roll after a horrendous start back in July. I was certain I would be able to keep my momentum going. Since my brain was fatigued, I went ahead and took a few days off as it allowed me to sorta shake off one character before I dived into the other main character. It helped to take a small vacation spending a few days with friends at a lake house that we rented for the weekend. I rarely take vacations and while I did bring my laptop, I only touched my laptop once or twice and that was to check emails and whatnot.

While I came back from vacation incredibly tired, I passed that off to the feeling you sometimes get of needing a vacation from vacation. Physically I wasn’t quite there but at least mentally I was ready to go.

That’s when September turned into Sucktember. Apparently I came back with some kind of horrible cold/flu/plague that made me miserable for a week and a half. Oh, there were a couple of days I did write a chapter or two, but I’ll be shocked if during the next round of revisions those chapters are coherent. They seemed liked they might have made sense at the time I typed them up. Other than those two days, I spent the rest of the time curled up in a ball shivering and sweating through all the PJs I own while my cat, and the husband, watched over me.

Naturally being sick and having gone on vacation put me way behind my own self-imposed schedule. It also killed any momentum I had from August. This made me quite grumpy and I put a lot of pressure on myself to get caught up. A sense of panic set in counting up how long it will take me to finish crept inside my addled brain. After all, my male character started off with about 21 chapters that needed to be revised. This has since gone up to 25 chapters I need to complete in order quasi-adequately tell his part of the novel.

My goal has been to average about a chapter a day. Obviously some ideas that were originally crammed into one chapter have been spread out which means I have to draft new material. Also, I have more than one mega chapter which need to be chopped into smaller, more easily to digest chapters.

In addition to forcing me to stick to a schedule, a-chapter-a-day gives me wiggle room since real life happens. For whatever reason, people want me to be around them so this allows me the freedom to spend time with friends and family. Also with it being football season (Go Wolfpack and Niners), my weekends wind up being taken up with chunks of time yelling at the TV.

This approached worked fairly well when I was working with my female lead. My male lead, though, requires a lot more research since he goes around with swords and represents more of the political and historical component of the story. It doesn’t help that research is often conflicting so decisions have to be made for the sake of the story and characters as to what to go with. So aiming for a chapter-a-day pace probably wasn’t realistic and I knew this going into September. It’s why I set the goal for me to be done by November 1st as I want to participate in NaNoWriMo and it took me about four months to do the rough draft.

Yet while I was just wishing for Sucktember to end, when it did, I realized I had made more progress than originally thought. I got 11 chapters done. Better than the 4 in July and there were no excuses for that pathetic output. Had I not done a thumbnail sketch of my male lead’s story, as well as briefly jotting down key things like what kind of weapons and armor he and his brother need, I think I wouldn’t have been able to get even those 11 chapters done.

I say a grateful goodbye to September and am optimistic about October. It’s the home stretch for the novel. Already a tentative structure of how to interweave each character’s chapters to make one complete story is bouncing around in my mind. October is also going to be better because I get to revise the multiple battle scenes I’ve written. I honestly enjoyed writing those scenes the most and can’t wait to improve upon them. Death to September! Long live October!

Musings

Weekly Musing: Need Not Apply

DH Hanni

Something I’ve frequently heard is that writing teaches people to try new things, pushes us out of our comfort zone, and to experience the world. Since I’ve been doing this for a few years now, I must say I don’t think this is true. At least not for me. The older I get the more I’m willing to try new things, but within reason and within my comfort zone; however, I don’t view these experiences as fodder for my writing. Somehow I think if I did it would take away from enjoying the experience. I equate it to tucking away my cell phone whenever I go anywhere new. I occasionally take pictures if I remember and feel inclined, but I would rather just absorb the place and the experience.

I understand the sentiment behind getting out and trying new things as a writer. Not only does it get us out of the house and around other people, new places and experiences help our understanding of the world. What I disagree with is the notion I am supposed to immediately catalogue those new feelings and experiences. Or to only live life so that I can use it later for a story. Why not just live life for the sake of living life?

This brings me to another rule or philosophy I hear frequently but disagree with. A piece of advice I see is, as a writer, we should eavesdrop on conversations because it could be a gold mine. Hmmmm, um, how about no. I’m not saying I don’t sometimes just sit there and listen to other people’s conversations. I do and think it’s natural for humans to do. When I do target my hearing to spy upon people, it’s usually because I’m staring into space while thinking. I’m fascinated by how people speak; their accents, emphasis upon certain words, turn of phrases, the speed and cadence, all of it is interesting.

I’m not so much drawn in by what people are discussing as that feels like an invasion of privacy even if the conversation is taking place in public. For this reason I absolutely cannot bring myself to jot down or commit to memory what people say. Not to sound snobby or self-righteous, it feels very unoriginal to me to mine other people’s conversations for story ideas. Granted, some people have some very compelling and unique stories which would make for great tales.

Which leads me to another piece of advice I try to stay away from and that is base characters off of people you know. A funny phrase I see is something to the effect of don’t annoy, anger, or interrupt a writer because you may wind up in their story, usually as a dead body. I guess this bothers me because what if the person reads the story and recognizes himself or herself?

I’m not suggesting we as writers try to be PC because that annoys me to no end. People are going to be offended no matter what. What I’m suggesting is know your audience. Some people are okay with being included, regardless of how they are portrayed.

I suppose one solution is to give the person a heads up before publication of said story. I don’t think it’s helpful to let the person know when you are drafting and later send the story out for publication. After all, if it doesn’t get accepted, what’s the point?

Another solution is to pick people who are dead or people whom you don’t mind rankling their feathers. Or cherry-pick characteristics Victor Frankenstein-style and mash them altogether. Or stick to physical characteristics, which is something I did for a minor character in my WIP. I did that since this person suggested I have a character with a certain name. As an ode to that person I made the character look like him but that’s where it starts and stops.

I can’t fully express why these suggestions bug me so much. They aren’t the only pieces of writerly advice that I disagree with it, but these are the ones which I’ve always found annoying. Maybe it’s because I have this contradictory natural tendency to only follow rules and advice which make sense to me. Perhaps I’m making it even harder for myself by not pulling from real life. Honestly, though, the characters in my mind shape themselves and their unique experiences shape them just as any “real” person.