The Writing Box

Book to Film Adaptations in 2012

2012-01-08T20:14:00.001Z

Once upon a time book fans dreaded the movie franchise; knowing that their favourite book would likely be slaughtered, pulled to pieces, destroyed and misrepresented on the big screen. Screenwriters turned stories around completely in order to make them more 'cinematic'. But book to film adaptations are different now. Directors work hard to stay true to the original text, often managing to create movies that are almost exactly as you imagined it when you read it.

So, what do we have to look forward to in 2012? Here is just a taste of the huge number of book to film adaptations coming this year:

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (from the book by Jonathan Safran Foer)

Adapted for screen by Eric Roth

Starring Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock

After his father dies in the World Trade Center on September 11, nine-year-old amateur inventor and pacifist, Oskar, searches New York City for the lock that matches a mysterious key he finds in his father's bedroom.

The Woman in Black (from the book by Susan Hill

Adapted for screen by Jane Goldman

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Janet McTeer and Ciarán Hinds

This gothic horror follows Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer, as he travels to a remote village where he discovers the vengeful ghost of a scorned woman is terrorizing the locals.

The Hunger Games (from the book by Suzanne Collins)

Adapted for screen by Billy Ray and Gary Ross
Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth

Set in a future where the Capitol selects a boy and girl from the twelve districts to fight to the death on live television, Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her younger sister's place for the latest match.

The Hobbit (from the book by JRR Tolkien)
Adapted for screen by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro
Starring Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen and Richard Armitage

Peter Jackson returns to direct this first installment of the book in which Bilbo Baggins journeys to the Lonely Mountain with a group of dwarves to reclaim a treasure taken from them by the dragon Smaug.

Other upcoming book to film adaptations include Dr Seuss' The Lorax, The Life of Pi (Yann Martel), Odd Thomas (Dean R. Koontz), The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath), The Tiger (John Vaillant) and World War Z (Max Brooks).

TV Book Club Reading List Announced

2012-01-06T19:08:00.001Z

The TV Book Club, returning to Channel 4 on 29th January, has announced the ten books that will be covered in the series. Viewers are encouraged to read along with the show, individually or as a group, and submit reviews of the featured books. The ten books, and the dates of the corresponding shows, are:

29th January

Before I go to Sleep by S J Watson

A psychological thriller about a woman suffering from amnesia. Each day she wakes with no knowledge of who she is and the novel follows her as she tries to reconstruct her memories from a journal she has been keeping.

5th February

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

The Sisters brothers are hired to murder Hermann Warm, a prospector. But when they find him, they discover he has developed a chemical formula for finding gold, and decide to join his prospecting operation instead.

12th February

The Somnambulist by Essie Fox

A Victorian gothic mystery that takes the reader from London to a desolate Herefordshire mansion as 17-year old Phoebe Turner embarks on a journey to unlock the darkest of family secrets.

19th February

Into The Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes

Catherine meets Lee who seems perfect, but there is a dark side to him which forces her to plan a meticulous escape. Four years later she dares to believe she might be safe, until one phone call changes everything.

26th February

Rules Of Civility by Amor Towles

Katey Kontent learns many things in New York in 1938, including that riches can turn to rags in the trip of a heartbeat, and that chance encounters can be fated, and the word 'yes' can be a poison.

4th March

Girl Reading by Katie Ward

Seven portraits. Seven artists. Seven girls and women reading. Each chapter takes the reader into a perfectly imagined tale of how each portrait came to be, and the connections between them.

11th March

The Report by Jessica Francis Kane

1943, and an air-raid siren wails out over the East End of London. But at the tube station entrance, something goes badly wrong, the crowd panics, and 173 people are crushed to death. Years later, the case is reopened, and the dark truth comes to light.

18 March

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

The Fang family create art, and controversy. The two children escape, but as their lives fall apart, they are forced to return home where their parents have been planning their most ambitious project yet. And they have no choice but to participate.

25th March

Half Of The Human Race by Anthony Quinn

London 1911, and the streets ring to the cries of suffragist women marching for the vote. This is a book about men and women and their difficulties in understanding each other at a turning-point in history.

1st April

You Deserve Nothing by Alexander Maksik

Set in an international high school in Paris, the story is told in three voices: Will, a charismatic young teacher, Gilad, a student who has grown up behind compound walls, and Marie, the beautiful, vulnerable senior with whom Will is having an illicit affair.

What do you think of the list? Which books have you read? Which are you looking forward to reading?

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Adapted for Stage

2012-01-03T16:30:00.000Z

CS Lewis' classic novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has been adapted for stage and will open in London this summer. Alongside the live action, the play will include video installations and puppetry.

The stage version is being directed by Olivier award-winning Rupert Goold, known for his acclaimed productions of Macbeth, King Lear and Oliver!

Goold said "What I hope to evoke is the power of faith and the danger of tyranny in a rougher, more elemental telling of the story". He claims that the book left a 'huge impression' on him as a child.

The play opens in a temporary big-top tent in Kensington Gardens in May and is set to run through to September.

New Year Honours List 2012

2011-12-31T07:48:00.001Z

The New Year Honours list has been announced, and this year, honours in the Arts and Media sector make up seven per cent of the total.

Penelope Lively, award winning writer of fiction for both adults and children, has been awarded a DBE. Her first novel for adults, The Road to Lichfield (1977) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She was shortlisted again in 1984 with According to Mark, and won the prize in 1987 with Moon Tiger. Among her books for children are The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (1973), for which she received the Carnegie Medal and A Stitch in Time (1976) which won her the Whitbread Award for best children's book.

Poet and critic Professor Geoffrey Hill receives a knighthood. His poetry collections include King Log (1968) and Tenebrae (1978). In 1978, London's National Theatre staged his 'version for the English stage' of Brand by Henrik Ibsen, written in rhyming verse.

Welsh poet and playwright Dr Dannie Abse receives a CBE. He has won a number of awards for his poetry, including the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award in 2009.

Lady Rachel Billington, author and vice-president of English PEN, which supports freedom of expression and persecuted writers worldwide, is awarded an OBE. She has written both adult and children's fiction, including her bestseller A Woman's Age. She has also written television plays, screenplays and journalism.

Others recognised for services to literature are Clive James; author, poet and broadcaster, author Dr Maggie Gee, Alex Brychta; illustrator of children's books, Secretary of the Royal Society of Literature Magdalen Fergusson and writer Ernest Thompson.

Is Book Buying Led by Price and Convenience?

2011-12-18T21:06:00.001Z

While chain bookstores (the few we have left these days) are still selling the lion’s share of books (30.3%), the convenience and opportunity for better prices are leading people to their computers with 26.1% of book sales happening online.

Supermarkets have quickly become our one-stop shops for pretty much everything we need, and they make up 13.6% of book sales; allowing people to make impulse book purchases while doing their weekly shop.

Bargain bookshops are picking up 8.1% and mail order book clubs account for 6.1% of book sales.

This leaves our much beloved but too often neglected local bookshops trailing with just 4.5% of all book sales. Unable to compete on price or shop location, our local bookshops are having a hard time of it. But with libraries forced to close or cut back their hours, local bookshops are the literary life-blood of many communities, and they deserve to be supported. With knowledgable staff who truly love books, events to promote local authors and that wonderful smell of hundreds of books crammed into a small space, they offer a unique book buying experience.

Next time you buy yourself a book, think about where your money is going and, more importantly, where it isn’t.

Figures source: Books & Consumers 2011, BML Bowker/Kantar Worldpanel 2011

Always a Pleasure, Never a Chore?

2011-07-24T18:51:00.000+01:00

"The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all." Rose Tremain

I come across a lot of writers who love the editing process. It's where they get to polish everything, to make their story and their characters shine. They enjoy seeing their novel beginning to take on real shape, cutting out the excess, adding the final touches of colour. Improving, sharpening, purifying. They enjoy the calmness of editing in contrast to the trepidation of laying their story out for the first time.

"In the morning, after hard work, I took a comma out of one sentence…. In the afternoon I put it back again." Oscar Wilde

And then there are writers like me; writers who are in love with the excitement of a new idea, of not knowing where they're headed. Writers who would far rather play around with a brand new idea or character than redrafting something they've finished. Editing becomes a chore, and is easily set aside in preference for any other kind of distraction.

If you fall into the latter category of writer, there are some things that you can do to make editing seem like less of a chore:

Take a break. When you've finished the first draft put it away in a drawer for a month. But don't just leave it there forever. Mark on your calendar when you have to get it out again and stick to it.
Set yourself goals. Edit 5 pages a day, or 2 chapters in a week. Just take it a page at a time.
Don't spend every minute of the day on it. Take breaks and work on that new exciting new project now and again.
Find the excitement again; add in a new character, write an entire new chapter, or even design a book cover.
Read it out loud. Reading aloud will help you pick up on clumsy sentence structure, repetition and spelling and grammar mistakes.

Is editing a pleasure or a chore for you? Do you have any great tips?

The Long and The Short Of It

2011-07-22T17:12:00.001+01:00

With many aspiring authors going down the self-publishing and small press route, it is ever more important for them to have a good understanding of marketing, networking and self promotion. Without the sizeable marketing budgets of the large publishing houses, many writers are left to do the lion's share of the marketing themselves, and there are many small presses and e-book publishers who prefer writers who have a proven understanding of social networking.

The web is flooded with social networking platforms with more coming online every day, and it is worth your while knowing about them all. I'm going to very quickly cover the basics of three social networking platforms and some of the pros and cons of each of them: Blogger, Tumblr. and Twitter.

Blogger is Google's blogging platform and has been around since 1999. You can create and customise the layout and design of your blog with very little knowledge of the web. It's easy for people to follow you and there is already a vast and well established network of writers on Blogger with whom you can network, share your writing and share advice. A blog allows you to write extensive posts, all of which can be commented on so that you can interact directly with your readers. Blogger's new extension also allows you to create static pages, making Blogger all the more usable as an alternative to having a website. It also comes with detailed inbuilt stats.

However, as with all social network platforms, you are not in charge of the hosting. If Google should decide to shut down Blogger, or if they suspend it for maintenance, there's not much you can do about it. And while you can customise the designs, without a solid knowledge of HTML, the designs do have their limitations. There are people who will claim that a blog on Blogger looks 'unprofessional', but a solid standing on any of the social networks is becoming a selling point for writers, and you can support your blog with a website of your own if you feel that will increase your air of professionalism. Also, getting people to read your blog can be a struggle; people have busy lives and, more often than not, they have their own blogs to write and not a lot of time to read long posts.

Tumblr. is a relatively new kid on the block founded in 2007, a year after Twitter. It is a micro-blogging site, advertising itself as being "to weblogs what text messages are to email - short, to the point, and direct." Posts are quickly created with a choice of pre-determined post types: Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio, Video. There are a huge amount of blog designs to choose from (most are free, or you can pay for premium designs), but you will need to be very web savvy to create your own design. You can also grab yourself a button for your browser's bookmark toolbar to quickly post things that you find on the net, and sync accounts to automatically post your new Tumblr. posts to your Facebook and Twitter profiles.

Tumblr. is probably less well known than other social networking sites and seems to lack the direct interaction of either Blogger or Twitter. People can 'like' or 're-blog' your posts, but comments can only be left by people you follow, or those who have followed you for 2 weeks or more. You won't find the celebrities here like you do on Twitter, and you won't get the sense of community you can from Blogger, but you can get a lot of instant inspiration all in one place.

Twitter restricts your posts, or 'tweets' to just 140 characters including spaces and punctuation. It might sound horrendous for a writer to be so restricted, but it certainly does push you to be more creative. Think of it as flash fiction; as an excellent lesson in editing and making every word count. 140 characters makes it quick and easy to keep updated; you can easily sync it with your mobile to update while you're on the move, which is why it is the social network of choice for many celebrities who want to keep in touch with their followers but don't have a lot of time. Twitter is packed full of an entire range of literary interest tweeters from authors and publishers to literary magazines seeking submissions and local new writing theatres.

Twitter can take a while to get into, and a while to work out how to make the most of it, but there are hundreds of sites filled with advice and tips that you can read. Also, because of the 140 character restriction, you'll come across a lot of abbreviations and jargon that can seem like a foreign language at first. But you will get the hang of it very quickly. And you will become quickly addicted. The short tweets make you feel like you're not wasting a lot of time, but you can easily twitter away hours in a day. If you include certain buzz words in your tweet (like if you're talking about your iPhone) you will get bombarded with spam, but you can easily block those accounts and report them as spam.

Each social networking site has its good and bad points, and the best way is to just try them out: you can always delete your account if you don't get along with them. But if you really want to promote yourself as a writer, it's good to know about the different options open to you, whether you use them or not.

The Future of Speculative Fiction: A Chat with Angry Robot Editor Lee Harris

2011-07-13T10:43:00.006+01:00

Ahead of Alt.Fiction's 'Other Worlds 2' event this Saturday at Nottingham Central Library, they hosted a live online chat session with some of the best talent in science fiction, fantasy and horror. I chatted with Angry Robot editor Lee Harris to find out how well speculative fiction might fare in the current and future publishing climate.

Angeline: Does speculative fiction have a strong future in traditional publishing, or will such genres see a move to self publishing?
Lee: SpecFic has a very strong future in traditional publishing - if we didn't believe that to be the case, we wouldn't have launched in the US less than a year ago.
However... 'Traditional' publishers will need to adapt to the new landscapes, but as those landscapes are still in a process of flux, it's going to be interesting to see how trad publishing changes, and how quickly.
After all, with 3million+ eBooks self-published in the last year, it's difficult for a self-published author to get attention. Traditional publishers don't experience that problem *as much*

Angeline: I'm just wondering with booksellers closing, they might concentrate on what sells most, forcing publishers to abandon niche genres
Lee: Well, I think niche is the way forward. Specialisation is a good thing. And some of the biggest success stories of recent years have been niche authors - JK Rowling, Dan Brown, etc.
Some booksellers *will* abandon some lines, of course, but traditional publishers (by this, I mean the ones with traditional *practices*, not necessarily the ones who publish paper) will continue to publish great books.

Mslexia Magazine Issue 50 Review

2011-07-11T07:55:00.000+01:00

Mslexia is the magazine 'for women who write'; published quarterly with each issue packed with articles, interviews and advice, as well as the usual New Writing section and the invaluable Directory of competitions and submission opportunities.

Mslexia has recently undergone a huge design overhaul with a new logo and a complete shift in the design, paper and binding of the magazine itself. The redesign has been controversial among readers, splitting them between those who much prefer it and those who would like a return to the previous design.

Issue 50 is guest edited by Elsbeth Lindner, who has worked in publishing for over 30 years and said of her appointment "how could I resist the invitation to guest-edit an issue of this magazine, devoted to the twin peaks of my existence, women and words?"

Guest editer Lindner provides the magazine with its first feature article 'Boutique Books' looking at the world of small publishing which is thriving in the shadow of the large publishers. It's an absolutely fascinating insight, and a perfect article for today's publishing climate. In contrast to this, Liz Thomson, co-founder of www.bookbrunch.co.uk, offers a fascinating and eye opening insight into 'The Price of Fame' and the huge amounts of cash publishers spend on premium shelf space for their books.

This issue's interview is with award winning author Leila Aboulela, a woman whose culture shock between her homeland of Sudan and her new home of Scotland inspired her to enrol on a creative writing class. It's a touching and honest interview about using life experiences to inspire novels, and it can't fail but to inspire readers to put pen to paper.

Along with the rebranding of Mslexia has come a wider range of submission opportunities including 'A Week of Tweets' and the new 'Rant and Rave' section. Such new sections have brought a less formal edge to the magazine, another move that has been controversial with readers, with some feeling it edges Mslexia into the realm of women's weeklies. Whether or not there are more changes as the new style gently settles into place, Mslexia remains strong as a magazine in the forefront of the literary world, bringing readers all the latest news and expertly selecting their articles to reflect current issues in literature and publishing. It is a safe haven for women writers who often feel that publishing remains a very patriarchal domain, offering inspiration, advice support and a feeling of belonging to something very special.

www.mslexia.co.uk

Why July Just Isn't November

2011-07-06T19:27:00.007+01:00

July and August has brought an odd phenomenon this year; thousands of writers locking themselves indoors, staying out of the sunshine and writing into the small hours of the morning. These writers are becoming withered and pale while their friends are looking tanned and healthy. And why? Because the writers are busy camping.

Camp NaNoWriMo is the summer version of November's National Novel Writing Month, allowing people to write in July or August or both. If you've never taken part in NaNoWriMo before, the idea is this: crazy writers all over the world commit to attempt the seemingly impossible; to write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November. I've completed it twice now and, believe me, you really do have to be a little insane to do it (and willing to give up any hint of a social life). NaNoWriMo is tough, and takes up a lot of your time and needs a lot of commitment, but there is one vital ingredient that will really help you get through it successfully - Writing Buddies. The NaNoWriMo site gives you a page with all of your friends listed with their word counts. It adds a real competitive edge as you write like crazy to get ahead of your buddies.

November's NaNoWriMo is a fastpaced, caffeine-induced, sleep-deprived rollercoaster ride of adrenaline. July's Camp NaNoWriMo however, not so much.

On a dark, damp November evening the only things you have trying to pry your attention away from your novel is tv and a warm bed. In the middle of the summer there's a whole world of distractions in the light evenings; barbeques, beach parties, beer gardens, festivals, long walks. Besides that, some of the essential motivators are also missing. There's no Writing Buddies, no forums, and you can only view other people's stats by typing the url in directly. Camp NaNoWriMo still has the motivator of proving you can do it, but somehow July just isn't November.

Distractionless Writing: Dark Room

2011-07-04T10:45:00.000+01:00

We've all done it; sat down at our desks, opened our laptops, made a cup of coffee, with all the good intentions in the world for a good, solid writing session. And then it's the dreaded F-word: Facebook. Or Twitter. Or YouTube, or whatever your particular distraction of choice is.

The only online distraction that I can get away with mooching around guilt-free is Blogger because I can convince myself it's writing-related, or research, or as long as I'm blogging I'm still actually writing. But, let's face it, really what we need is to be locked into a lead-lined bomb shelter - no internet, no phone, no distractions.

But if you don't have a World War 2 bunker in your back garden, there are still options for distractionless writing. I've recently started using Dark Room and I love it. Dark Room is a word processing programme which takes up the entire screen; so no start menu, no easy flicking to your internet browser, no distractions (except Tweetdeck, nothing can stop the power of that distraction!)

Dark Room is no frills word processing; you can change the colours to whatever you like, adjust the margins and you have the vital word count, but you won't be wasting time around playing with layout, or fonts, or other formatting distractions. It uses all the usual keyboard shortcuts (including CTRL / to bring up your word count) so there's no excuse for hitting that ESC button to escape from the full screen view.

Overall, this is a great little product for writers. It's no frills, no distractions and, best of all, completely free. Download it here: download.cnet.com/Dark-Room/3000-2079_4-10562359.html

Commercial and Creative Writing: Unhappy Bedfellows?

2011-07-03T20:33:00.001+01:00

It may seem like commercial writing and creative writing should sit at opposite ends of a long table, probably pretending not to hear when the other one asks them to pass the salt.

Many writers freelance as copywriters or proofreaders to pay the bills, but how does this effect their ability, time and motivation to work on their novel or their poetry collection? It can be a difficult balancing job, and can result in a feeling of creative frustration, but you can utilise many of skills that you need for commercial writing for not only assisting your creative writing, but also improving your entire writing life.

Deadlines - Deadlines can often be difficult things for writers; most of you will know that feeling when you have a deadline looming and all you can do is stare, uninspired, at a blank page. But if you're making your income from writing, if you don't hit that deadline, you don't get paid. Commercial writers need to be good at time management and creating their own motivation; truly invaluable skills for any writer.
Planning - Not only planning what you're going to write but also, as mentioned above, planning your day. Getting into a writing routine can help to bring your creativity into rhythm, as can setting out goals you want to achieve that day.
Research - There are all sorts of things you will need to research for a story. Whether you need to research an entire period in history, the layout of a city, or the rules of baseball or the incubation period of malaria. Even if you are a fantasy novelist, you may need to research mythology, religion or herbal remedies. Good research makes a story that much more believable.
Editing - Commercial writers often work to tight word count limits forcing them to be economical in their word usage and ruthless in their editing. Not only is this a very useful skill for writing short stories, but also for avoiding the urge many writers have to pack their work with every adjective they can think of. More often than not, less really is more.

That's the biggest transferrable skills that you can bring into your creative writing, among the others are people skills, business sense and marketing skills. These days it isn't enough to be a brilliant writer; you also need to be able to market yourself and your work, and that means networking, building relationships and being able to sell yourself. (But that's for another blog post)

Welcome to The Writing Box

2011-07-03T18:48:00.001+01:00

So, here we are, this is The Writing Box. But what is it exactly? I am a creative writer and journalist, you can read my creative writing blog at www.angelinetrevena.blogspot.com. I've been blogging there since 2009 and have used it to recommend a lot of resources to my fellow writers, and I thought it would be nice to gather those recommendations and reviews all together in one place.

The Writing Box will be an outlet for the journalistic side of my writing and where I can pass on knowledge, tips and reviews.

I'll be opening up spaces for guest bloggers and interviews with writers so that other people can offer their opinion, because mine is only one opinion (however great I think it might be!) So, that's pretty much it. If you have an idea for a guest post, or would like to be interviewed then get in touch via the Contact Page.