The ultimate step in the publishing process

Roger Smith, screenwriter turned thriller writer riffs on being adapted.

I had an interesting experience recently: in less than a week two movie producers sent me drafts of screenplays based on my books Mixed Blood and Wake Up Dead. Reading these screenplays left me feeling slightly dislocated, the way I imagine you’d feel the first time you met your spouse’s identical twin. “I know you,” you’d think, “or do I?”

Now these screenplays, written by professionals in the U.S. movie industry – people at the top of their game – were both amazingly respectful of their source material (my dark and bloody South African thrillers) but a movie ain’t a book, and things were different from the novels. Of course. Characters disappeared and new ones replaced them. The plots I had sweated over were shaped to the demands of ninety minutes of cinema time, where audience attention spans – influenced by the staccato pace of commercials, music videos and video games – have shrunk.

I’m no stranger to this. Before I started writing novels I was a screenwriter and as much as I loved books when I was given one to adapt I was as ruthless as a backyard sawbones. I would hack away flab to get to the essence of plot and character. I would cannibalise three scenes in a book to make one in the screenplay. I would insert scenes of my own into the body of the screenplay and dare it to reject me. So I’m amazed at how faithful the adaptations of my books are, and I’m relieved to have left the screenwriting to others.

I’m always in awe of authors who adapt their own books. They’re either powerful enough to refuse to change a single hair on their little darlings’ heads, or they’re tough enough to – in the immortal words of William Goldman – kill their babies. Being neither a blockbuster author nor a baby killer, I’m pleased to be watching the process of my books becoming movies from afar.

I found reading these screenplays fascinating, especially since I know only too well that they’re just blueprints. Hopefully both will go into production and actors (Samuel L. Jackson is attached to play Mixed Blood’s Disaster Zondi) will breathe life in the characters – and things will change even more. Stars have a way of shaping material to their whim. Perhaps the directors, fighting time, budgets, the elements and (who knows?) their own demons, will gaily rip pages from the screenplay to get the movies wrapped on schedule and under budget. And I can only imagine that the cutting room floors will be littered with (metaphorical) dead babies by the time the post-production is complete.

I look forward to watching these movies with a box of popcorn in my hand, and when the lights dim to see the magic words “based on a novel by Roger Smith.” I’ll expect to be entertained but I won’t expect to see slavish transpositions of my books to the screen. My novels will live on on the bookshelves, or – increasingly – on eReaders. And that is how it should be.

Roger Smith was born in Johannesburg and now lives in Cape Town. His debut thriller, Mixed Blood (2009), was published in six countries and won the Deutscher Krimi Preis (German Crime Prize). His second book, Wake Up Dead (2010), was a 10 best pick of the Philadelphia Enquirer, Times (South Africa) and KrimiWelt (Germany) and was nominated for the German Krimi-Blitz Reader’s Award. Mixed Blood and Wake Up Dead were nominated for Spinetingler Magazine New Voice Awards in the U.S. His third book, Dust Devils, was published internationally in 2011, with Capture to follow in 2012.