I'm screencapping the Spider-Man trilogy in HD over the next few days. I thought I'd share some fun observations here as I went along!
According to the Spider-Man novelization, this girl is Liz Allan.
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You know you're an overly obsessed #DoctorWho fan when you see headlines about a "Target letter" and you think... "ooh, did they announce more novelizations of some of the recent stories?!??"
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Hi, I’m currently trying to plot out/write a novelization fanfic of the mmorpg, Wizard101. Any advice on how I can convert mmo quests into a written format that doesn’t make readers want to gouge their eyes out with the nearest available piece of silverware? Also advice in general about adapting a video game to a written story format?
Well you can read a Halo novelization and uh well okay maybe don't do that.*
For real, the first thing to think about is both the limitations and opportunities of transcribing a flexible visual medium into a a novelized format. The video game has the advantage of letting you enter a scene, see and interact with things. It also has the advantage of multiple dialogue options. You, on the other hand, with have to select a path and stick with it, but what that gives you in return is more power over the experience you want your readers to have.
Description is important - but be selective.
You shouldn't rely on your reader's to know what Baldur's Room** looks like, but you also can't spend three pages describing it. What gives us the most telling view? The worn out furniture, the sword hanging near the door? What do we need to know about Baldur and the future plot from it - and is there something in the room you need to describe for plot importance later?
A dragon flying overhead may be super cool in a video game, but if your character looks up and shrugs at it, you only have to mention it once or twice (unless we fight that dragon later - then be sure it's in the background as a lead-up to that fight). "The sun is green in this world" is a neat factoid - but we don't need to see it more than once if it's not plot relevant.
Pick the most effective path with character interactions.
In the game, your quests probably have a number of dialogue choices - but a lot of those choices may be fake, because the game needs to make you take a certain path. You don't have to bother with those false conversations - the most effective interactions will reveal both plot and character, so focus on the strongest options for conversations.
On that note, some interactions may not be worth the effort they take. If there are twenty townsfolk to talk to, and only five of them will give you information to continue the quest, you may need to regulate those other fifteen to very short interactions or background characters. There's no harm in engaging with those characters, especially for fellow fans, but don't let them yank you off course from telling a story.
Detail is good, but you can't include it all.
You may need to collect, uh, twenty toadstools to obtain a key in the game (again I'm making this up, I'm bad at video games). Do you need to cover this (and other) side-quests while writing up the main quest? Well... eh? You may feel it's an important part of the game to capture, and that's fair. But if it repeats twenty times with only slight variation, you may be better served by only including one or two instances, and summarizing (or skipping) the rest.
The main thing to remember is in writing down these quests, you are trying to tell their story. Some aspects of the freedom of video games will have to be discarded for the sake of a better story. However, you will get a more engaging and readable story out of it, and if your intent is to preserve these quests in writing, that will better serve your goal. Good luck!
*I have never read a Halo novelization, so this is entirely an unsubstantiated and likely unfair statement. Apologies, Halo novelization authors.
**I'm just making this up. Wikipedia is not helping me figure out Wizard101.
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Saw this link to an account on the Internet Archive digitizing horror movie novelizations and adult novels and YA books primarily based on the Big Three slasher franchises (Michael, Jason and Freddy), though there are other horror film series and one-offs in there as well.
Might be worth a look if you’re curious: https://archive.org/details/@sokywocky
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