Q: You say you wrestled with the title of your book, “THE NOVELIZERS.” How so?
A: Because “Novelizers” can be a misleading word. It often suggests only those who adapt scripts into prose. But my book isn’t only about the history and authors of adaptations—it’s as much about the history and authors (who are occasionally the same authors) of original novels set in the borrowed universes of established franchises—especially TV series. And, of course, writing an original is an entirely different task than writing an adaptation. They both require artistry, craft, understanding the underlying property, and getting the tone right. There’s some toolkit overlap, but they’re different. Unfortunately, there’s no simple term for “one who writes an original.” And “novelizer” has become such a common colloquial catch-all for both…that for the title, I finally thought, Oh, what the hell, and gave in to the term simply being catchy, concise and familiar. However, the book always makes the distinction—and devotes several chapters specifically to each category.
Q: Can you further particularize the difference between a novelization and an original tie-in novel?
A: Sure. Typically, a novelization transposes a dramatic work—play, screenplay, teleplay—into novelistic prose. But transposition is a very loose word because—and this is among the points most central to my book—there are as many ways to adapt a script into a novel as vice versa. It depends upon many factors, but the primary ones are, as with any adaptive work, the sensibility and artistry of the writer doing the adapting.
By contrast, as I’ve said, an original novel borrows the characters and concepts of an established storytelling universe to create an all-new tale. Ideally, a tale with the aesthetic of a scripted episode—that feels authentic to its universe. But when it’s done right (as it so often is), the magic of prose allows that “episode” to explore characters, themes, and ambiance in novelistic depth…offer more complex plotting…and do it all with the unlimited budget of the imagination.
But whether the task is adapting or “originalizing,” I contend that good tie-in writing is literature as legitimate as any other—that it’s as important a category of US and UK letters as any—and that the writers of it are long overdue their proper appreciation. Not just academic appreciation…but appreciation in a volume that celebrates them enthusiastically, with a vividness that matches the excitement of their books.
Q: You’ve spent the last 40-plus years of your life working in the musical theatre and spending most of that time as a composer-lyricist and lyricist-librettist. For many years, you have also written often equally in-depth reviews on a well-read website (Aisle Say) for people interested in (or working in) the theatre. So, after these decades of writing for and about the theatre—why this subject? Why this book? And why now?
A: This subject because these kinds of books have fired my imagination and fueled my creative life since I discovered them as a grade school kid—and realized what a fantastic gateway they were to some substantial writers whom I might never have come across otherwise. And I mean writers of all types: pulpsmiths, literati, bestselling brand names, genre specialists, journalists, moonlighting dramatists from stage and screen…Many of whom had as much influence on my voice as the greats of musical theatre. If you’ll allow me poker-speak to make the point: For versatility, I see Stephen Sondheim and raise Robert W. Krepps. For heart, I see Bock & Harnick and raise Robert Grossbach. For New York sophistication, I see Frank Loesser and raise Linda Stewart. For tunes you can’t get out of your head, I see Jerry Herman and raise the unmistakable stylings of Michael Avallone and Walter Wager. I could go on and on (as in the book, I do).
And it has always pissed me off that the books of these brilliant wordsmiths have so often been looked down upon—even dismissed—as hackwork when they’re anything but. (Certainly, you can find tie-in hackwork—but proportionately, no more or less than in any other writing category. The good ones far outweigh the bad.) And so I’ve always risen to defend tie-ins—especially the ones that, during my
formative years, seared themselves into my soul. And to defend the astonishing authors who wrote the best of them because they clearly cared about the work they were doing.
Plus, I had my own adventure as a tie-in writer. I’m skipping over a ton of discursive anecdotal backstory, but…In the early ’90s, I read a press-release-type article about Pocket Books’ plan to release a series of eight novels based on the combo cop/science-fiction TV series Alien Nation, which I adored—a book series that would encompass three novelizations of unfilmed teleplays and five original novels. Despite high ratings, the TV series had been canceled prematurely by a then-new executive at Fox after only one season—but the Pocket editor, Kevin Ryan (then head of their dedicated Star Trek department), thought Alien Nation was “too good to let die.” (And he was right.) So, I wrote three chapters and an outline for one of the original slots. Which, ironically—this informs the background I alluded to before—was also the de facto novelization of a story I’d worked on to pitch to the actual show…and I made the sale. And Alien Nation #6: Passing Fancy hit the stands in ‘94, just as the Alien Nation TV movies—which no one had predicted when the TV show was canceled—started to air, so the timing could not have been better. It stayed available in bookstores for about five years.
The actual writing happened in the Fall of ‘92. I’d never written prose fiction for publication before, so it took me a few days to find my mojo…which was one scene per day. Long scene, short scene, it didn’t matter; my day’s work ended at the doublespace. It took about six weeks and was one of the most exhilarating writing experiences I’ve ever had. Passing Fancy got a couple of good reviews—which Kevin thought was an unusual tribute. He said that, as a general circumstance, “no one reviews the sixth book in a tie-in series based on a canceled TV show.”
But, as importantly, Passing Fancy was my entry—my de facto membership card—to the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW), which was co-founded and initially led by two significant cats with some serious skin in the game, who had written many dozens of tie-ns between them: Award-winning NY Times bestselling novelist Lee Goldberg (who had also been a teleplay scripter and TV series showrunner); and Edgar Award-winning crime and mystery novelist Max Allan Collins. Via participating in the IAMTW’s email discussions and Facebook posts, I quickly became known as their answer man about tie-ins from the late ‘50s through the ‘90s. Max even dubbed me “historian general.”
Not long after my being so branded—around 2007—Lee solicited contributions from members about professional tie-in writing for an anthology of essays he’d be editing called Tied In. Most of the pieces centered on personal experiences and viewpoints. But I decided to approach the task historically—and dive into a part of the history I loved most—and delivered a lively essay (if I do say so myself) about original TV tie-ins from the ‘50s through the ’70s. Lee was so taken with the essay that he began a ten-year-long campaign to get me to write the definitive book on tie-in writing. Significantly, that essay, mildly revised, is now Chapter 7 of THE NOVELIZERS and is the seed whence everything else sprang.
Q: Ten years? What made you resist for a whole decade?
A: Well, that brings us to “why now?” At first, the history of tie-in writing seemed too niche a subject despite my passion for it. Yet, over the course of that decade, I slowly amassed several individual essays, variously published, that I’d been asked to write—in one case, volunteered to write—on the subject.
Whereupon Ben Ohmart, publisher of Bear Manor, also a member of various book groups Lee and I were in—who had been tracking my posts and comments—flat-out said that if I wanted to write the definitive book about tie-ins and their authors, he wanted to publish it. And I thought, Well, I’ve already done a substantial amount of work that could form the nucleus of a book, so as long as I can devise a thematic spine and a structure for it…okay, why not?
And this was buttressed by another development—one that had only been in its nascent stages ten years previously: The fact that ebooks (legit ones and fan conversions) have made so much of the classic stuff available anew, currently. And that development presages the potential to bring back more…and more! The opportunity to write THE NOVELIZERS sat well within my happy zone to begin with—but having a healthy catalog of those books available to today’s readers sealed the deal for me. The timing and the universe were in sync for it. And, of course, so was I.
Q: When did you catch the tie-in bug? How and with what book? I’m curious to know if you still have it.
A: The tie-in bug initially bit me via TV-based originals in the mid-late 1960s. (And yes, I still have most of them, and most are still in mint condition.) The Addams Family (1965) by Jack Sharkey may have been the first; then the Get Smart! series of nine (1965–1969) by William Johnston; my enthusiasm for which overlapped with the I Spy series of seven (1965–1968, my favorite of all time, still) by Walter Wager as “John Tiger.”
I’m not sure I can remember the first script adaptations I loved—but many authors who wrote original TV novels also novelized screenplays. I probably started reading their adaptations first because those authors were familiar favorites. Among them were the aforementioned William Johnston (of the Get Smart originals), Michael Avallone (of Man/Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Mannix and Hawaii Five-O originals), and Lou Cameron (who wrote an original based on the Private Eye series, The Outsider). But as soon as I made that crossover, the train was roaring out of the station—if there was a tie-in, original or adaptive, most of the time I wanted to own and read it, so I quickly made the acquaintance of many other authors.
Indeed, the hunger was always as much about getting more of these authors’ voices in my matrix as it was about having books based on media properties. In writing THE NOVELIZERS, I got back in touch with that early hunger—with what it meant to me to make discovery upon discovery at that sponge-brain age. When I sent the first complete MS of THE NOVELIZERS to Lee Goldberg, he gave me the loveliest blurb, saying I’d “written the definitive book on the subject, one that’s as entertaining (and surprisingly, unabashedly personal) as it is deeply informative.” That expression of personal passion was entirely intentional—and foundational to the theme and structure I mentioned earlier, the core that would pull all the sub-topics and essays together.
Not incidentally, I got to honor a number of my heroes and influences in the book via:
Q: Common ask-the-author question whose answer is seemingly very specific to each writer. Do you have a readership (or a particular kind of reader) in mind when you write?
A: Hmmmm. Let me work that one backward from the punch line: I consciously want THE NOVELIZERS to be for everybody, not just those interested in the subject. I saw writing it as an opportunity to shed an enthusiastic, celebratory, intimate, candid—and deeply human—light on a significant aspect of popular culture that had never received that kind of attention.
But to answer your question about whether I ever have a target audience in mind. Yes and no. It depends on the project. My musical theatre stuff is not to be read, per se; it is of course, ultimately meant to be performed and experienced communally by a live audience. But it still has to communicate—whether it’s the stuff I wrote for Theatreworks, which specializes in shows for younger audiences, or the quote/unquote “adult” material, like the two musicals I wrote with composer Alan Menken—which were The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (based on Mordecai Richler’s novel), and the two speculative fiction one-acts that comprise Weird Romance (libretto co-written by Alan Brennert). Musicals are very complex, and there’s too much to particularize in this Q&A about how they’re built (or should be)—but the bottom line is that, as an author, you not only have to keep the audience interested…but also concentrating.
And it’s the same with prose. Daniel, you were maybe the first to read an early draft of THE NOVELIZERS. In a sense, you and a few others I call my “Cadre of Merciless First Readers” were akin to
the workshop, preview or out-of-town audience that might attend a musical in development. When you cited places where you were “checking out”—losing the sense of enthusiasm—I took it very seriously—especially because, as a veteran theatrical practitioner yourself, you could articulate precisely why you felt that way in terms drawn from that mutual vocabulary.
In fact, you gave me one of the most valuable notes I received; because it shifted a paradigm for me. In my fervor to legitimize tie-in writing and writers, I had drafted an intro so frontloaded with data that the book was bogging down at the top. Your key and most bracing comment was, “That’s all back-of-the-book stuff.”
Whereupon I realized that what I had written as my intro should be repurposed as my conclusion. And it was liberating! Embracing the notion that I didn’t have to lay out everything all at once permitted me to—as musical theatre director Tommy Tune used to say about “routining” a production number to a big finish—“deal it out slow.” Because knowing where I would finish let me draw a straight line backward to the simple thesis of my beginning. Which was—which is—that there’s over a century of this stuff…that the history is fascinating…that the authors are colorful and dynamic…that their books are frikkin’ great—and that if you stick with me, I’ll prove it! And “all” I had to do was follow that straight line forward toward my destination.
All of which returns me to the punch line. This book is for everyone. You, Daniel, had no particular prior interest in the genre or its history—notwithstanding particular tie-ins you liked growing up—and it was my mission to keep even a reader like YOU as engaged as the reader who comes to THE NOVELIZERS loving tie-ins as much as I do.
As I say in the wrap-up to my book’s intro (called “The Teaser”):
“If you already share my affection, welcome, fellow traveler. It’s what brought you here, and I promise the ride will be satisfying, informative, and a great deal of fun.
If you don’t yet share the affection, but you’ve come because you’re curious or tolerantly willing to suspend your skepticism as we walk alongside one another, brace yourself for some magic. Because by the time I’m done, you may well become a fellow traveler too.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & INTERVIEWER:
DAVID SPENCER (Author) is an award-winning musical dramatist, author, critic and musical theatre teacher whose work has been produced in the US, Canada and England. His most well-known credits as lyricist-librettist are two musicals in collaboration with composer Alan Menken: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, based on the novel by Mordecai Richler (original cast album on Ghostlight Records) and Weird Romance (co-librettist: Alan Brennert; original cast album digital-on-demand from Columbia Masterworks). He made his professional debut writing the acclaimed colloquial English-language adaptation of La Bohème for the Public Theatre, and as composer-lyricist, wrote scores and orchestrations for Theatreworks/USA‘s young audience versions of The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables (librettist-director for both: Rob Barron). His published books are The Musical Theatre Writer’s Survival Guide (Heinemann), the acting edition of Weird Romance (Samuel French)—and pulpsmith proud, Passing Fancy, an original novel based on the TV series Alien Nation (Pocket Books). He recently completed a draft of his first straight play, Spirit Run (story by Spencer and Jerry James). David is an ex-of icio steering committee and faculty member of the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, where he taught for over 25 years, and has also taught at HB Studio, Workshop Studio Theater in New York, and Goldsmith‘s College and BML in London.
DANIEL MARCUS (Interviewer): “David and I met doing La Bohème for Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre in 1984; he has written his conversational take on it, and me acting what he wrote. Within about five minutes at the first rehearsal, we each knew that the other ‘got it’ as far as how we saw writing and performing, particularly a shared love for 1776 and Hill Street Blues—and we have been agreeing and disagreeing about what ‘it’ is for the ensuing four decades, including his writing for many NY shows and my acting in many NY shows…and that ongoing argument about what matters is everything. Because what we share most of all is the lifelong certainty that these things do matter. For example—this book.”