By tonyleehealey on Wednesday, September 25, 2002 - 02:41 pm:

Alan, what do you think of novelisations? Does writing something on a subject matter that has already been created and mapped out for you, restrict you or allow you just to plow straioght ahead with it without having to worry about the characters, the settings, etc. Am I making sense? NO... Do you find it more enjoyable, creatively, to do your own novel, instead of a novelisation? I think I would. What I like doing with my short stories is getting a character in my head, a possible situation or scenario, and going with it. Something odd or supernatural normally results, but I find that form of writing highly enjoyable. So does writing a novelisation constrict you? TLH And Alan, why dont you write the novelisation for Ep III. I know I seem to go on about the Star Wars books a lot, but you really gave A New Hope a lot when you 'shadow' wrote that. So why not again? You'd definitley do a helluva lot better than that Salvador fella. Oops let myself slip... Chapter Three done. Finito. I'm getting there. The wheels are turning; dusty and creaking as they do, but they ARE...

By adf on Friday, September 26, 2003 - 02:51 pm:

Who does SW novelizations is up to Lucasfilm. But it would be fun to do #3 because I did #4, and could tie them together (hopefully) seamlessly. We'll see what the powers-that-be decide. It's always more enjoyable to do your own original work. But I put as strong an effort into my novelizations as I do into my novels. Rembrandt didn't slack off when he had to paint all those rich, fat burghers.

By blaze588 on Monday, September 29, 2003 - 05:43 pm:

Mr.Foster, when Hollywood asks you do a novelisation how do you feel writing in other persons universe. Is it strange to write about other charactors and ideas on how their universe works? Just curious on how you think and write when it is not your universe. thanks William

By adf on Tuesday, September 30, 2003 - 10:45 am:

blaze; When you go with friends to see a film, don't you all "rewrite" it? Criticize scenes that don't make sense, wonder about poor characterizations, redo obviously bad special effects? Talk about what you'd like to see more of? That's what I do when I'm doing a novelization...sitting in that theater, fixing the obvious mistakes and expanding on the good stuff.

By blaze588 on Tuesday, September 30, 2003 - 04:36 pm:

Mr.Foster, you hit the nail with the hammer. I'm an IMAX projectionist for a year, but I have done 35mm for about 6 years. In my 6 years I have seen plenty of crap Hollywood has done and wonder how can they make this. My faith has fallen. With the knowledge knowing that you are there to fix mistakes, I have better faith. I am excited about Riddick.

By Kame_Sennin on Friday, May 07, 2004 - 11:23 am:

Though I own about 12 of his Tie-ins I've only read the 3 Aliens novels. I liked "Alien 3" I felt you did a pretty good job considering what you had to work with. (can you tell I didn't care for the movie) I found it funny that the name of the planet never stay constant. Furry 161, 191, 196 (??), lol go figure. "Aliens" couldn't have been better. It even had what was added later as "deleted scenes" in the movie. "Alien" was the one that I had, well I don't know what to call it. I didn't have a problem with it.... I guess I was just shocked. When you read a tie-in you expect it to relate to the subject... but the story was about 80% different from the movie. It was as if you were given an early script to work with and either wrote WELL before the final changes were made.... or FOX just didn't care to tell you. I found myself thinking (and at times voicing) "what?! this isn't the way it happened..." "Huh? .... wait a second, hahaha no way!" I couldn't believe it. It was like experencing the story all over again, but with everything happing differently and with new surprises. I was SO different I loved it even more. It has to be my most memerable Foster novel yet. One question though. Was it ever re-written to tie-in more with the movie? I have a first edition paper back and was curious. another thing I found funny was that the Roman Numerall chapters are wrong. it goes IX, X, IX, XII. It's the same with my first edition of Midworld. :D

By adf on Friday, May 07, 2004 - 11:44 am:

Kame; No, ALIEN was never rewritten. Bear in mind when you read it that Fox never showed me a picture of the Alien itself. Made writing about it more than a little difficult. As to the errors with Chapter numberings, you can lay that one at the feet of lazy (or incompetent) proofreaders and editors.

By Kame_Sennin on Friday, May 07, 2004 - 11:17 pm:

I figured you were just working with an earlier script...... but to have not even seen a picture of the Alien. Wow! that makes sense when I look back om it. You had given the Face-hugger a lidless eye and I remember reading in one part (when Brett was being taken) you had writen it to seem like the Alien had big eyes as well. oh, well. It's a shame that it wasn't/isn't redone to fit the movie better. It's still good reguardless not to mention intertaining in its diffenrences. I figured as much with the chapters. Better to have those then aweful gramatical mistakes or missed up film.

By jeff the sith on Friday, September 03, 2004 - 01:06 pm:

Often, your novelisations are moer interesting than the movies. "The Last Starfighter" book was a fantastic SF story. Ashame that the movie was made at the earliest of stages in CGI and was a B movie. "Shadowkeep" was also great. I like novelisations because the give you background into thoughts and motivations of characters that do not always transfer to film. I also like the idea that they are not written from final scripts and often contain scenes that did not make the edit or were changed. Out of the many novelisations I've read, ADF does the best job of making a good book (as opposed to a movie tie-in for profit). I am curious about his non-SF novelisations of "Pale Rider" and "Luana". Why the departure from SF? Please, do tell.

By adf on Saturday, September 04, 2004 - 10:19 am:

Jeff; I'm a writer. A story-teller. While I prefer SF/F, a good story is a good story, and I enjoy them all. One of my very favorite writers was the Brazilian Jorge Amado, who I consider Brazil's equivalent of John Steinbeck. Wonderful stories and characters, and not a bit of it SF. If I'm offered a novelization of a non-SF/F story, much depends on what I think I can do with it. Pale Rider was easy to work with. Luana was an immense challenge.

By BrenBart on Tuesday, July 05, 2005 - 11:03 am:

ADF - Are there any tv/movie universes you haven't worked in for which you'd like to write a novelization?

By Minion on Saturday, July 09, 2005 - 10:40 am:

I personally love ADF's movie books. Alien was the book that introduced me to Alan's work, and to novels in general. Too many authors repeat the script word for word, adding no additional dialogue or background information, and take only the shooting script (read to book of Ghostbusters, it is literally the script). Alan adds great detail and fills in the blanks, which means the story is much more complete. I have to say one of my favourite pieces of writing ever, is from the book of the movie "Dark Star". The very last section as Dolittle rides the ladder like a surf board is amazing. This is from a film tie in that Alan wrote, taking a simple scene and turning it into something quite different and beautifully memoriable.

By JSG on Thursday, April 17, 2008 - 09:12 pm:

Alan I really enjoy your books and this awesome site. I have a question on novelizations. I have read many of yours over the years and recently bought The Chronicles of Riddick. Reading it got me to wondering how novelizations are done. The beginning scene in your book where Toomb's and his crew chase Riddick on the ice planet is very different from the movie where the chase is in the merc ship. Other incidents and lines differ as well. So I was wondering a couple of things. Where do you get the story to write it up? Do you get a script and use that? Do you have freedom to alter the story a little? Do you write the book before the movie? How do differences like the above example come about? Thank you so much for your wonderful books and great correspondence with your legions of fans.