Ten small wins

Micro-aggressions happen all the time. Everyday. Even by people you think are your allies. For example: Black woman says:  I am so upset about the violence against the Black community. White LGBTQIA woman responds: What about the LGBTQIA community? What about violence against us? This is a micro-aggression. This is an invalidation of the Black Woman’s statement even though the White woman is right about violence in the LGBTQIA community. However, by co-opting the conversation, by making it about her own marginalization at that immediate moment, she has asserted her white privilege and any chance for a conversation ends abruptly. To be a good ally, we must learn to listen and support each other when people who are hurting are talking. Your time to talk will come soon enough, but don’t take it at the expense of others. Don’t let your privilege co-opt a conversation on race. I will give you a more personal example. I grew up during the race riots between the Korean American and Black community in NYC. My parents owned a store and we lived in the apartment above it. It was a scary time. At school I got into an argument with a Black classmate. She said it was incredibly hard being Black and having to deal with racism. In my young, resentful and admittedly self-centered mind, I didn’t like what she said. So I responded – “Well Korean Americans get hate and racism from both the Black and White communities.” That was a blatant micro-aggression. I invalidated her by pushing my marginalization over hers. And I was completely wrong. But at that time, I was unaware of my privilege. In my mind, my marginalization – being Asian – was just as bad as being Black. I was so wrong. Now I know that I have a privilege and if I I could go back in time, I would apologize to her. But I can’t and so the only thing I can do is keep learning and try my best to do better. I am Asian American, straight, cis-gender, educated, middle class. And even though I am a woman of color with invisible disabilities, I am also deeply aware of my privilege, because I am a woman of color who is not Black or Brown. I am also a woman with disabilities that are not visible. While these marginalizations make my life extremely difficult, I still have privilege and I must constantly remind myself to never forget that. It is not easy, and it is not supposed to be. But you check your privilege because it is the right thing to do. To be a good ally. Recently, I have noticed a troubling trend among white allies who, perhaps unknowingly, talk over and invalidate WOC by playing their own individual marginalization card. And in general, I’ve noted that it always comes on the heels of Black Women talking about race and intersectionality. This troubles me deeply because it causes resentment. It also bothers me when other WOC (especially other Asian women) aren’t as supportive of Black Women as they should be. I saw this happen in an online group, a good friend of mine (who is Black) tried to speak on race and found her whole discussion derailed in a heavy pile on by white marginalized feminists who co-opted the conversation. It was so frustrating that I posted the Huffington post video on White Feminism with this statement, “I think this video should be mandatory viewing for everyone especially because sometimes I think white feminists who are also LGBTQIA+ or disabled forget that intersectionality applies to WOC also, and that no matter what your marginalization is you have never experienced not being white. And if that statement makes you mad, you need to think about why.“

What I received back was a whole lot of angry Knee Jerk reactions. And what I mean by that is the “How dare she try to tell me that my marginalization is not as important as hers!” “How dare she try to police diversity!” “How dare she not check her privilege!” “How dare how dare how dare…” I call this a Knee Jerk reaction because these are not all bad people. These are people who are invested in the diversity movement themselves. So they are not the enemy. And yet they responded with a knee jerk reaction to being called out on having white privilege. But instead of getting so angry, accusing me of being a bully, demanding that I be banned and reported (for what, asserting my opinion?), and trying to silence me, they should have done exactly what I asked in that last sentence. They needed to think about why it made them so uncomfortable. They needed to reflect on their own privilege. What they did instead, was focus on their own marginalization as if it somehow negates their white privilege. The problem is that nothing negates white privilege. The poorest, most marginalized white person in the country will still not have the racist issues that the Black community faces. They will not be poisoned knowingly by their government. They will not live in fear that the police will kill their young children and never be punished. They do not have to worry about having the highest incarceration numbers in the land, simply because of the color of their skin. They do not have to worry about the school to prison pipeline because of inadequate resources in public schools. But because these issues do not actually affect white feminist’s personal lives, it is easy to focus solely on their own individual problems. After the responses so vividly proved my point, I left the group because I cannot stay where people believe that silencing the voices of POC instead of promoting open discourse is ever acceptable. Of course, this is not the first time I have been silenced and made to feel unwelcome by white feminists. Truth is this is commonplace for WOC. But it hurts more when it is done by people who say they are our allies.

I know that I will receive hate mail and harassment, but on this I feel too strongly to stay quiet. Because I stand in solidarity with the Black community. And we all need to speak out when wrong is wrong. The thing is, if a white person’s response to someone talking about White Privilege is to say “I’m marginalized too!” then they don’t get it. Because that is, essentially, how privilege works. It wants to take over the conversation and invalidate other people’s struggles. And if your response to that is “why is race more important?” I want to point you to one of my new favorite blogs -Reading While White. They address this very issue as follows:

This is a great explanation because it doesn’t say race is the most important issue, what it does is make clear is that race is the most all encompassing. That it crosses into all identities, all marginalizations. Intersectionality means that POC also exist in the LGBTQIA and disabilities communities. It affects all races, not just white people. But white privilege, even within those communities, wants to dominate. Unpacking your privilege is a hard thing. It is not easy. Nobody wants to think of themselves as being in the wrong, they’d rather think of themselves as being wronged. So you stay secure in your self-righteous indignation of “How dare yous” instead of thinking about how systemic racism and your own privilege has seeped so firmly into all aspects of your life that you can’t even see it. In order to be a good ally and make a difference in the fight for ALL OF US, we must recognize our own privileges and make a public stand to fight for what is right. But we cannot do that if our white allies don’t recognize what white privilege is and how deeply entrenched it is in our world. So I challenge white allies to really do some serious and probably very uncomfortable  self-reflection. When POC ask you to check your privilege, do you get mad and immediately demand that they check theirs? When POC talk about their experiences do you roll your eyes and snidely comment about how it’s not always about race? When someone says something racist, do you just stand there looking awkward and ignore it? When the status quo is racist, do you just accept it? When people talk about taking action, do you just nod your head in agreement and do nothing? When POC speak on oppression, do you respond with your own tale of oppression? 

In order to be a good ally, it is important to know when to speak up and when to shut up and just listen. And if you aren’t sure what to do, all you have to do is ask. How can I be a good ally to you? How can I support you? 

In conclusion, I will leave you with Daniel Jose Older’s The 5 Stages of Confronting Your Own Privilege. Here’s hoping that we can all get past number 1.

Dear asdfjackalope,

I suppose one might accidentally stumble their way into a life-changing novel. However, I think it only does writers a disservice to pretend that writing is not a concrete skill that must be practiced, studied, and failed at before success. I think it is utterly disingenuous to imagine that something truly amazing will come out of your head without any forethought. Is it impossible? No. But for most people? Yeah. I do believe that. It’s a huge reason why later novels are often better than early novels — we get better at realizing what we personally need to know before we actually begin to put words on paper and so we spend more time revising to make that clear instead of revising to figure out what we’re even trying to say.

I was a portrait artist before I was an author, and for years I studied the techniques of painters I loved. John Singer Sargent, one of my absolute favorites, believed in the raw power of the unrevised line. He felt that a single brush stroke placed correctly would always be better than a line painted over and corrected. If he got something wrong, he would often throw out the canvas and begin again before going on. His paintings — his masterpieces — were completed in just hours, an assembly of wild, dynamic brushstrokes. But the punchline is that he was still a planner, even though he looked like he painted by the seat of his pants. The people who sat for his paintings wrote accounts of their sessions: how they would come to sessions and sit patiently while he stared at a blank canvas, doing nothing. They would come to the next session and sit patiently as he stared at the blank canvas, doing nothing. Days and weeks of this. Finally, they said, he would let out a wild shout and plunge at the canvas, completing it in a mad dash. Planning doesn’t always look the same for masterpieces — in fact, it usually doesn’t. But a masterpiece is built on a foundation of some kind.

And there’s nothing wrong in writing to just write. I’m working on a project with my friend tessagratton that we are writing together in just that way. But it will not be The Raven Cycle*. I have not stared at the canvas for long enough beforehand.

The real upshot, the most basic upshot, is that the work is gonna come into it either way. Either in the planning beforehand or in the revision afterward. Personally, I’m with Sargent. I think the stronger work will always come with the purposeful and unrevised line. The line I’ve thought out beforehand. The stronger novel comes from having both a sense of purpose beforehand and while revising. I just don’t think it will ever be as stunning if you retrofit the entire thing. 

Is that a yes? That’s a yes. I’m unfair and judgmental. This surprises no one. I’m 35% sorry.

urs,

Stiefvater

So this is something I’ve been thinking about writing for a long time. At least a year. Maybe longer. Probably longer. And I’ve decided to write this now because John Green’s PAPER TOWNS opens this weekend, and I’m extremely excited for John and about the movie. Also because the “John Green Hollywood experience” has been on my mind a lot lately.

It never ceases to amaze me how much the book-to-film process both captures the public’s fascination and confuses the heck out of people.

If you write a book – any book – you will hear every day that “you should make a movie out of your book!”

The truth is, most authors dearly want a movie based on their books.

Sometimes because we love movies, but usually because we love money. And there is no greater way of increasing book sales and overall brand awareness than a movie being made and then advertised around the world.

I’ve gotten this question so many times that several years ago I wrote this post that describes how the book-to-film process works. Sure, it’s a few years old now, but it’s just as true today as it was then. So if you’re confused or just interested to see how and why books get turned into films, go read that first.

If there is one thing that authors hear more than “you should make your book into a movie” it is “you should make sure that, if your book becomes a movie, they don’t ruin it.”

Setting aside the fact that no film adaptation has ever changed one word of a novel–that the novel is and will always be the same– today I’m going to try to address a far more delicate topic: not how movies are made, but how GOOD movies are made.

Disclaimer: everything is relative

The first thing that makes this difficult, of course, is that “good” is a relative term. There are movies that I hated that other people loved. And vice versa.

Another factor is that sometimes movies are good because they stayed true to the book. Sometimes they’re bad for that same reason. Sometimes the result is a movie that isn’t true to the book but is good anyway—it’s just a different kind of good than the book is.

Newsflash: Books and movies are different

Overall, the first thing that everyone needs to know and remember and remind themselves of daily is that BOOKS AND MOVIES ARE DIFFERENT CREATIVE MEDIUMS.

Someone (I don’t know who) once said that “making a movie out of a book is like making a song out of a painting”. It’s not exactly that. But it’s pretty darn close.

So they’re going to be different.

- Books are longer and can cover more ground. - Books can go into a character’s head. - Books have unlimited budgets.

And what is, in my opinion, the biggest difference of all:

- Books only have to please two people: the author and the editor.

But because movies are so incredibly expensive (THE FAULT IN OUR STARS was considered a bargain with a pricetag of $12 million), there are a lot of people keeping tabs on that money. So there are a lot of people you have to please. And that makes the process more difficult. It just does.

Now, not a lot of readers get that. And, furthermore, not all authors get that. But most of us do.

I know that watching a movie won’t be like reading the audiobook—I’m not going to be able to open to page one and read along. That would make for a terrible movie.

But I think that when Hollywood adaptations go off the rails it is because this point – this “books and films are by their very definition different” point – gets misconstrued.

Because if there is one thing that anyone who pays attention to film adaptations will tell you, it’s that not all changes are equal.

Baking soda is not baking powder

I love to cook and, especially, to bake. I was raised by perhaps the World’s Best Cook. (It’s true. Everybody says so.)

And growing up out in the country thirty miles from the nearest Wal-Mart my mother taught me early on that you’re not always going to have what you need in the pantry.

If a cookie recipe calls for pecans and all you have is walnuts? Fine! If it calls for M&Ms and you’ve got chocolate chips? Well, that might work.

But only a fool would substitute baking soda for baking powder.

Why? Because that changes the chemistry and will throw the whole thing off whack and out of balance.

Good book-to-film adaptations know the difference between Baking Soda Changes and Walnut Changes. They know better than to mess with the chemistry.

I’ve probably discussed this with at least fifty authors.  (I wouldn’t be surprised if the number is closer to 100.) And I’ve worked with some of the smartest people in Hollywood. And without a doubt the hardest part of adapting a novel is watching out for the Baking Soda Changes. (Not that anyone else uses that term. Yet.)

What is a Baking Soda Change?

This is where it gets hard, folks.

I wish I could say that the chemistry of a story is based entirely on, for example, character, and any change to anything about a character will be a Baking Soda Change.

Except… that’s not true.

It’s not a secret that when HEIST SOCIETY was under option at Warner Brothers they intended to age the characters up from their teens into their early twenties. (Read a full post on that topic here.)

In my opinion, for those characters and that story, that was a Walnut Change.

Why? Because Kat was always an old soul inside a teenager’s body. Her character arc wasn’t going to be affected by that change. If anything, it might have been a little more poignant, because I remember being 22 or 23 and having everyone still treat me like a kid – sometimes still feeling like a kid. But I knew that I wasn’t, and so I was straddling two worlds in that way.

Now, am I saying that I think aging characters up is always a Walnut Change? NO. No. N-O.

I mean, seriously, I do not think that. At all.

In fact, in most cases I do think it’s probably a Baking Soda change, especially the younger the characters are in the book.

After all, a sixteen-year-old is in many ways far more similar to the person they are going to be at twenty-one than the person they were at eleven. Plus, oftentimes the plots of the books don’t make sense if a tween is involved vs. a teen vs. a twenty-something.

For example, I can forgive eleven-year-old Harry Potter for going after Professor Quirrell and not telling a teacher what was up far more easily than I could forgive a sixteen-year-old Harry for making that same call.

I guess the key question is this: “Will this change impact other aspects of the story?”

Will this change the chemistry?

“We found a great young actress for Hermione but she doesn’t need braces.” —Walnut Change

“We decided to set Hogwarts in Ireland instead of Scotland.” –Walnut Change (an unnecessary change, but a Walnut Change nonetheless)

“We decided to give Harry a spunky kid brother because there was a kid brother in Jurassic World and everyone loves a kid brother.” –Baking Soda Change

Why Baking Soda Changes Happen

In most instances, people don’t know they’re making a Baking Soda change. And no one – I do mean no one – sets out to make a bad movie.

I think that mostly they are honest mistakes made by well-intentioned people who just don’t foresee the consequences.

There is a domino effect to Baking Soda Changes. That is their defining factor. Baking Soda Changes multiply and carry on, and people often don’t see it until it’s too late.

This is why I think the first rule of book-to-film adaptations should be simple: first, do no harm.

One of the most sought-after screenwriting teams in Hollywood right now is Michael Weber & Scott Neustadter who did the adaptations of Fault and Paper Towns. Now, I don’t know them—have never met them. But I’m going to guess that this rule is pretty important to them (and also the producers and studio execs who are giving them notes on John’s projects), and that is why those adaptations are incredibly good. Not just true to the book—but good.

Make no mistake, there are a lot of cooks in a movie’s kitchen. Everyone gives notes. Everyone wants to see their idea make it onto the screen. And that makes for a lot of potential places where the chemistry can get way out of whack.

So Why Do Authors Let This Happen?!

Power.

Clearly, all of the examples here are ludicrous because no one was ever going to mess with Harry Potter. Why? Because it was Harry-Freaking-Potter.

It had the largest fandom the world had ever known, and that meant two things.

– We don’t want to tick them off. – Millions of people are obsessed with this. Something here might be working.

But no book franchise will ever have power like that again. Few even come close.

Those who do – those mega franchises like Twilight, Hunger Games, and the John Green novels – result in film adaptations that are likely to follow the books fairly closely because studios are afraid of what will happen if they don’t. But at any given time there are maybe ten authors on the planet with that kind of power.

So what about authors/books that don’t have that kind of power?

Some will be fortunate enough to work with people who want to hear what the creator has to say, to get feedback from the people who know that readers are essentially a focus group that has been going on for years and sometimes include millions of fans.

Some will not be that fortunate.

All an author can do is carefully choose who we get into bed with and hope that they really, truly get the story and the characters and the world and how all of these things work with each other – that they understand the book’s chemistry.

After all, books and films are different.