by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Movies and TV have a different internal logic than a novel because you have the opportunity to show things on the screen while with a novel you have to show it on the page — and explain it.
Anyway, Jessica Alba has a movie coming out called Trigger Warning that is making me nervous. It’s very, very different from the novel I’m developing, but close enough that I worry it will steal a creative march on me. And, yet, from what I can understand of it, I don’t have TOO much to worry about.
My novel is far more elaborate and ambitious than Trigger Warning. And, yet, given how the world really works, I could see it sucking up all the wind for my project. All I can say is should the worst happen, I’m far enough long in this project that I can — having licked my wounds — use the development I’ve done to think up a new plot. (How much I have to change will depend greatly on how close the production is to what I’m doing.)
Another way to look at it is, maybe I’m fitting the modern conventions of the genre I’m trying to compete in? Or, at least, that’s one way to make myself feel good, to rationalize my unexpected defeat from unexpected source.
But it all definitely gives me reason to work as fast I can to produce something, anything, that I can try to sell. No one — not even me — can predict the future.
