Books versus TV, Narrative Voice versus Scripted Scenes Longmire, Outlander

by Mara Purl

Every author wants their novels to be made into a film or a television series. Right? 

So let’s take a look at how these two worlds of “series”—both the readable and the viewable kind—connect, overlap, or compete. Some people discover a great series first on TV, then want to dig deeper by reading the original books. Some don’t want to see the adaptation on a screen until they’ve delved into the books, sometimes referred to by producers as “source material.” 

Here we’ll take a look at works by Diana Gabaldon (the Outlander series), and Craig Johnson (the Longmire series).

I. VOICE

Any author who sits down to write fiction has to choose whether to write in first or in third person. (Rarely, someone writes in the second person, but it’s very hard to sustain the “you” throughout a lengthy tale.) Neither first nor third are right or wrong. They’re both excellent, so it depends on whether you want your reader to know only what the “I” of the story knows (first person) or to know beyond what all the characters know (third person), which sometimes means your protagonist is in the dark, but your reader is not. In fact, the third person is often called the “unlimited” POV (Point of View.)

In the mystery genre, there are famous examples of the first-person-Seamus wise-cracking his (or her) way from crime scene to back ally to police blotter to aha moments. It can be an engrossing experience to be inside the head of the protagonist, peeping out through his or her eyes, seeing the world from someone else’s perspective. Peter Lewis wrote an excellence blog called The Five Best First-Person Crime Novels.

He mentions among others, Double Indemnity which started as a book and became the iconic film starring Barbara Stanwyck and FredMacMurray.

The Longmire books are written in first person. We climb inside Walt Longmire’s head and stay there as he rides roughshod in his Rum 1500 Laramie Longhorn truck from headquarters to the Rez, and wherever in Wyoming he needs to roam. We therefore have to gather important details about his attitude, fears, likes, and irritations from how he reacts to others, and how they react to him. The author know his character exceptionally well, but it takes us longer to know him than it might if we could see him from the outside. Walt thus becomes more accessible by listening to Longmire audios, beautifully narrated and performed by George Guidall; and Longmire leaps off the page and onto the screen in the television series, as described below. The audiobooks are, of course, in first-person. The television series, however, has no narrator, and is told in the traditional third-person style. Though many of the scenes include Walt, many do not, so we viewers get to know things Walt doesn’t know and has to figure out.

The Outlander books are also written in first person. We’re with Claire Randall when she inadvertently falls through the Stonehenge-style ring of stones and time-travels backwards by 200 years. Given the extreme disorientation this would produce, it’s probably the only authentic way to tell at least this part of the story, and it works well. Later in the series, Gabaldon is forced to write some segments in third person, since it becomes important to the story to show things Claire doesn’t know. The default first-person is retained in the television series, insofar as we hear intermittent pieces of voice-over narration. These occur just often enough to remind us that this is primarily Claire’s story, and though I’m not usually a fan of voice-over, here it’s handled very well.

II. CHARACTERS

What words of wisdom might Johnson or Gabaldon have for us about developing these characters?

1 – Dimensions. About his protagonist, Walt Longmire, Johnson points out that he’s given Walt a context that not only allows for, but requires multi-dimensions. He’s not out to solve one crime per episode, or per book; he’s a sheriff, so “He’s dealing with so many things that are going on in his county.” This is a great idea for lifting a crime-protagonist out of being driven by one storyline. You might enjoy the interview of Craig by bookseller Scott Montgomery on the Crime Reads blog.

Gabaldon began her story when the notion of a kilt-clad Scotsman captured her fancy. But when she introduced her female character Claire, “she took over,” the author declared. Bossy and determined, and with a modern edge to her voice, the female protagonist seemed to have come not from 17^th century Scotland, but from an earlier era when women could express more overt power. When might that have been? Well, during WWII when the men were away in battle, women took over the jobs at home. And some of them joined the men at the front: Army nurses. So now Claire had a mandate with the determination to match. When she herself travels back to that earlier century, she takes her power, attitude, and skills with her, which places her, by turns, in positions of peril or power. The character is quite irresistible, for readers, for producers, and for actors, especially the one who landed the part and performs it so perfectly, Caitriona Balfe.

The author has a terrific post on her website: My Writing Process

2 – Setting. Johnson set his protagonist in as remote a setting as he could, while keeping him in the Lower 48. Because he’s in the “least populated county in the least populated state” he doesn’t have the usual access to technology, teams, or rapid response. Longmire and his bare-bones crew have to cover hundreds of miles a day to keep up with multiple situations. This gives the protagonist a hand-hewn self-reliance he must live up to, or wither and die.

To read more about this aspect of his writing, visit his interview on the Stories About America blog.

Gabaldon has several settings, both chronologically and geographically. These settings—some civilized some not; some bristling with untamed nature and some swishing with silks and velvets—serve to offer the extreme challenges her characters must face, even though some of the settings may be sumptuous in appearance. Though we do learn fascinating historical details, they are present to serve the advancement of the characters, more than to teach us the lessons of history.

III. VISUALIZATION

A hallmark of good fiction is the journey inward. Authors with mastery of narrative voice can reveal the inner workings of a character’s thoughts using one of several techniques. In the case of first-person style we can hear a character talking to herself about what she sees, how she feels, what she fears. In the case of third-person narrative, we can get the interplay of the character’s feelings and thoughts against the context they’re currently navigating. But how can this kind of prose, which can truly sing itself off the page and into the reader’s psyche, be translated into visuals that neither confuse nor obscure the points being made? 

One great example from Outlander is the brutal assault scene through which protagonist Claire must survive. In the television series, the filmmakers show us a surreal out-of-body experience. This is a hauntingly accurate way to handle one of toughest issues on the planet. Diso ciation is naturally occurring survival technique reported by most survivors of sexual assault. But instead of the camera staying on the suffering facial expressions of the actress, we go with her into an altered reality scenario that shows she is mentally in another time, another place, mentally absent from her attackers.

IV. STRUCTURE

Every building needs a set of blueprints. Every trip needs a road map. Whatever your metaphor, structure is going to be important, whether you’re writing for a narrative voice or screenplay format.

It’s useful to have an in-depth conversation with yourself about your ultimate goal. And conversely, it’s also useful to ask yourself a question about how you see your story—then tune in to the first, most immediate form that pops into your mind. When you think of your story, what do you see? A beautiful progression of pages that flesh out a detailed tale? A richly colored scene on a screen? 

A story can be born when you’re walking along the beach, looking out the window of a plane, or waking from a dream. Or it can be born when you overhear a conversation, stumble across an intriguing bit of history, or hear a family anecdote. However it comes to you, let it resonate in both your head and heart, then get going with it. If it starts as chapters, great; if it starts as scenes; great. Let it unfold.

An abundance of advice is available for how to structure a novel. In fact one good, basic post can be found on the Writers Online UK website.

Author Caroline Leavitt wrote a good post about the subject: How to Structure a Novel Before You Write it.

And another good article on The Writer blog is here: How to Find Your Novel’s Structure

Structure for scripts is far more strict than it is for novels. The first restriction is length. Standard page count for a film script is 120 pages. There is no actual word count limitation for novels, though to be named a novel, a work must be at least 40,000 words in length. [For specific length definitions for novels, novellas, novelettes, and more, see my previous post for Anne R. Allen’s blog.]

Within the 120-page screenplay, there are further recommended waypoints generally mapped out as clearly as a race course: plot point; confrontation or midpoint; resolution. There are two excellent sources of information about this. The most basic if Syd Field’s classic text Screenplay. First published in 1979, the book is still a “bible” for screenwriters. Though he passed on in 2013, his website is well maintained and includes excellent interviews on the subject too. 

Another excellent source of advice about Screen writing can be found by exploring books by Linda Seger. Linda virtually created the script consulting business and over a 49-year career worked with over 1,000 clients in Hollywood and beyond. Among her books are Making a Good Script Great and The Art of Adaptation. Her work can be found at her website: Linda Seger.

How does the structure compare from books to screen among the authors we’re considering?

Longmire

I had the pleasure of meeting Craig Johnson at a couple of book events where we were panelists, and also of dining as part of a four-couple dinner. Like CJ Box, Craig is wildly successful and has encyclopedic knowledge of his subject and a passion for extensive research as evidenced in his work. Craig is also a raconteur who can take over a dinner party or an authors’ panel with the classic entertainer’s skill. His books are something of a slow burn. As you read, you can feel his brand burning into your thoughts. In fact, his stories burned themselves into his psyche until he was shamed into writing them down, as he explains it.

The television series, though, reorganized the story, shifting so many plot points that it became impossible to keep the two in synch. And where the books’ narrative seems plot driven, the television episodes were transformed by the spectacular talents of the cast. Robert Taylor embodies Sheriff Longmire to such an extent that the plot seems to be coiled inside him ready to spring the moment he’s contacted by his best friend Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips), or his assistant deputy Vic Moretti (Katee Sackhoff) or his daughter Cady Longmire (Cassidy Freeman) or nemesis #1 (Gerald McRaney) or nemesis #2 Graham Greene or Nemesis #3 (A. Martinez). So although the storyline diverges from the books, we don’t care, because we can’t get enough of these characters who seem at once both true to life, and larger than life. Though the screenwriters are gifted, there’s no doubt that what Johnson provided as “source material” was a solid crafting of character that sings in the bone. 

Outlander 

The premise of Gabaldon’s stunning series is unaltered, which means that the series’ core holds its integrity across platforms as well as across time—a key feature of Outlander. The experience of reading the books is something like walking into a chambered nautilus. The spiral spins you through a vortex of time with its paradoxes while delivering the reader to a sense that the connection between the two protagonists is so soulful that its inexorable, and that their fates were always interwoven. The story seems to have no beginning, nor any end, as it circles back to this essential connection that is both romantic and heroic partnership.

But the experience of watching the series is more linear, more . . . serial. Like a beautifully wrought soap opera, it becomes a domestic drama that marches through some of history’s most fascinating chapters, showing us what these events look like up-close-and-personal, but doing so through the kitchen—or the bedroom—window. The tension of hoping that, somehow, Jaimie and Claire always manage to find one another again, and continue living the life they were meant to live is a taught elastic pulling us forward through the episodes.

When asked if there were any moments from the books she wished she had seen on screen, Gabaldon replied: “Oh yes, there’s always lots of those. But they have very limited time compared to what I have with the books. They can basically use about 10 percent of any given book. .” I think they’ve done really a very good job overall of picking and choosing what things they can use and you know squeezing in bits and details and small scenes from other parts of the story. To read more of this interview, you might enjoy this post: Outlander series vs. book: What huge changes were made? 

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What about you scriveners? Have you ever had a book turned into a movie or TV series? Was the experience what you expected? Do your characters and settings lend themselves to the screen? Does Mara’s post cause you to reconsider elements of voice, visualization and structure?

On a personal note. (From Ruth.)

Unfortunately, Anne’s health issues are continuing so I am steering the blog this week. We both thank you for your kind concern and good wishes, and want to update you on her current status.

Anne has had a fall and is currently in the hospital. Her sister, Elizabeth, is with her and wants to assure everyone that she is safe and being well cared for. We appreciate your kindness and will let you know what’s happening as the situation develops.

I know we are all looking forward to her return to health—and to the blog.