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difference in writing mechanism from Brandon and movie producers


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I remember a discussion, years ago, when someone was afraid brandon would have a bad time and release a truly bad book. and the answer was that it's basically impossible; brandon does not write alone, but he has a team of editors, alpha and beta readers. so brandon may have a bad month and write a bad book, but then his editors would point out the problems with it, and the alpha readers would point out the problems with it, and brandon would go back and fix the book. or maybe put it aside, apparently it's what happened to apocalypse guard. this system ensures that brandon will keep writing quality fiction.

 

I recalled that discussion as I considered the movie business. Granted, I am not a great expert here, but I keep hearing of long-running franchises being ruined by bad plotting. game of thrones is the first example coming to mind, but I've seen scathing reviews on the jurassick park franchise, and a simple look at the tvtropes page "seasonal rot" will produce dozens of examples.

and most of those examples are really stupid. like, glaring plot holes or nonsensical stuff. the kind of problems that any editor or alpha reader would immediately signal as "wait, this doesn't make any sense". well, ok, I can see that there can be no alpha watchers because if you have them then you already made the movie, and then it would be too expensive to go hire the actors again to change scenes and fix problems. But surely they can get editing on the script. And with editing on the script, they could at least ensure they don't make anything too dumb.

Why, then, this does not seem to be the case?

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A few reasons immediately pop to mind:

1. What sounds good on paper and is good in person doesn't actually look good when everything is said and done. That means that some changes can't get fixed until it's too late. (The reverse is also true.*) A book rarely has this problem. 

2. Execs will force directors and writers to make changes that they (the directors and writers) know is bad, but the execs think will sell or will please shareholders. Aka "Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen." Again, books rarely have this problem. (Outside of some stuff with a publisher on occasions.)  

3. Depending on the problem, there isn't time for the writer(s) to look back and fix a problem. A lot of writers and directors are working on an INCREDIBLY strict schedule. Between making sure all of the sets can be built, the VFX studios have enough time to do their thing, the actors can be there for principal photography AND reshoots, staying on budget, making sure that all of the Producers and EPs (and execs) are happy, and making a good film, there's rarely enough time to sleep or think, let alone review a script. Heck, it's not unheard of to go into principle-photography with a half-finished script because there simply wasn't time to finish the script. Television has even more problems, since shows often don't know if they're being renewed until towards the end of their current season, and sometimes not even until after the season airs. That means you have to act like everything is going to end on a big finale that wraps up everyone's arc, but you need to leave room for sequels. It's hard. (Granted, this wasn't the problem with Game of Thrones, but it is a problem with most other shows.) Books have similar problems, but it's rarely to this extreme. 

4. Film people often (and sometimes accurately) look down on their audience. Novelists do too sometimes, but this is far rarer. 

5. A rotating cast of workers. Usually, there's only one or two authors per book series. There are DOZENS of writers per show - they have things called "writers' rooms" for a reason - and it's not always consistent. Imagine you're a newly hired writer for a show. Do you have time between the crazy work hours, constant stress of making sure every actor has a cameo/screentime and a line and an arc, and the constantly changing demands of those above you, to watch every episode of the show that you're working on beforehand? 

6. Burnout. This is a thing, and delays for shows and movies aren't as accessible or creator-friendly, when compared to books. That is to say, delaying a movie release date or a television show premiere most likely has to do with airtime and views than it does the creators or writers. 

7. Edits are made, but they make the film or show worse, not better. 

 

 

*IIRC, Brandon's favorite episode of WoT is episode 6, but that was before he saw it filmed and completed. He liked the script the best, but that doesn't mean the episode was the best. Contrasting, Brandon HATED The Thing With Perrin in Episode 1. For all of my non-reading friends, that was the moment they were hooked. Brandon didn't like a certain attempted stabbing in Episode 3 (or was it Episode 4?), which to me was one of the best moments of the characters. My point here is that Brandon read the scripts and thought one thing, while we can see the results of that script and think another. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

IMO the whole Jurassic Park franchise works because every character is dumb, but the first film worked because this was the first time they'd done it, and you can chalk it up to hubris. Every subsequent just gets dumber and dumber because of how many times it's gone wrong before. So I guess writing yourself into a corner is a far harder issue to fix when you have millions of dollars and hundreds of people who have put time and effort into what doesn't seem to be working.

As for GOT, I've heard that the showrunners had various reasons for wanting to move on, so they rushed it (which comes down to a human element of valuing our personal time and effort in the limited time we have alive, and that has only gotten worse since Covid). I felt that certain developments in season 8 could have been perfectly fine had they been built up over the 10 season run that GRRM and HBO supposedly wanted. Also, there are inherent risks in adapting a story that isn't finished yet, especially if there's a gulf in the respective creator's storytelling abilities.

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