Novelizations are easier in that the whole plot is laid out for you, scene by scene. You’ve got a movie script in front of you and your job is to turn it into prose. It’s very rare that this is anything more than a purely mechanical task, which explains why knowledgeable readers shun those paperbacks that carry notices indicating they were based upon a screenplay. They’re almost invariably lifeless.
The fact that the books sell so well all the same indicates too how few readers are all that knowledgeable, or all that sensitive to writing quality. Sad to say.
Some writers are better at novelizations than others. A pro who can turn out solid acceptable novelizations regularly can count on a decent steady income. A handful have acquired reputations; Leonore Fleischer, for one, is able to demand high advances and preferential royalty rates because of her reputation for delivering a quality product.
Writing books in somebody else’s series is just what it sounds like. I couldn’t say how many people have launched literary careers by being Nick Carter for a couple of books. Here again, the work is thankless and ill-paying, but it’s a way to learn your craft while you get paid for it, and that’s not the worst thing that ever happened to a writer.
You wouldn’t want to spend a career writing this sort of swill, but one book does not a career make. As to whether this sort of hack work is lower than you care to stoop, that’s for you to decide.
If you figure it’ll make you blind, you can always quit when you need glasses.
A second novel, whatever sort you choose, is the best thing to do after you’ve done your first novel. You’ll learn from it, even as you have learned from the first. You’ll be able to see your own increased facility. You’ll be doing the best thing possible to cure the post-novel blahs. And, once you’ve finished it, you’ll have two manuscripts out to market. While this may bring rejections at double your usual rate, so too will it more than double your chances of eventual acceptance.
Finally, there’s one more argument for writing a second novel. If you don’t, how can reviewers complain that it doesn’t fulfill the promise of your first novel?
Has this helped any?
I wonder, looking over what I’ve written, whether I’ve done what I set out to do. I’m often similarly uncertain when I write the last words of a novel, skip a few spaces, and type “The End” in the center of the page. Does the story hold up? Are the characters interesting? Is the book I’ve written the book I wanted to write in the first place? It never quite is, perhaps because one’s reach exceeds one’s grasp, but is it at least a good book?
Maybe you’ll get something out of it. I don’t know. In the final analysis, you can no more learn the gentle art of novel writing from a book than you can learn how to ride a bicycle. The only way you really learn is by doing it yourself, and you may fall off a lot before you get the hang of it.
I wish you luck.
I won’t read your manuscript, or recommend an agent, or put you in touch with a publisher. I’ll answer letters — if I can make the time, and if you enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope. But that’s as much as I’ll do. You have to do the rest yourself. That, I’m afraid is how it works in this business.
I hope you write your novel. I hope you write a lot of them, and that they’re very good books indeed. Not because I would presume to regard your work as a sort of literary grandchild of mine — let’s face it, you’d write it whether or not you read this book.
But simply because, while there are far too many books in this world, there are far too few good ones.
And I don’t ever want to run out of things to read.