T.D. Donnelly
Year of the Rabbit
A MILLION dollar bounty.
A THOUSAND operatives dying to collect.
ONE hunted man, with a score to settle.
The Writer’s Dossier 8/13/2024 – The big T.D. Donnelly interview
It’s safer for Hollywood to say “No.”
DOSSIER: You’ve adapted classic works from Ray Bradbury, Clive Cussler, Stan Lee, and Robert E. Howard into screenplays for over 25 years now. What was it about the idea of writing a full-length novel that made you jump into writing something like YEAR OF THE RABBIT?
DONNELLY: I guess there’s two ways I could answer you. I’ll start with the simple answer. In 2023 the Writers Guild, of which I’m a member, went on strike. It was six months long and it was brutal. Now, during the strike I was forbidden from writing scripts for any guild signatory, which is pretty much all of Hollywood. What I was NOT forbidden from doing was writing something entirely different. So, for the first time in my professional life I didn’t have some kind of deadline for a film, tv, or game project. Suddenly I COULD write a novel, and I jumped at the chance.
Which I guess leads to the second answer. I’ve always wanted to write novels. I likely have more novels in my brain than I’ll ever have time to write. See, in Hollywood, they buy 10 to 20 scripts for every project they end up making. That means I have a ton of stories, stories I slaved over for months or even years, often some of the favorite things I ever wrote, but for weird reasons never made it to the screen. Reasons like: “the entire development team loves it, but our boss didn’t get it,” “fantastic writing, but we don’t do westerns anymore,” “Charlize Theron just attached to a script at Paramount that feels a little similar.” (and that other project? It’s NEVER that similar) But that’s how it goes in the screenwriting business. If people say yes, they’re on the hook for millions of dollars, and in the case of the kind of stuff I write, hundreds of millions. Saying no is a lot safer.
So I’ve got these stories. Not ideas. Fully realized stories, that maybe six people in the world have ever read. And most of them I’ve got the rights to. I’d love to have more people get a chance to hear these stories.
In the case of Year of the Rabbit, I had this idea for a classic man-on-the-run thriller about a professional interrogator. I’ve never seen a spy thriller where the hero was an interrogator, someone who spends their lives telling truth from lies. Which, when you think about it, is a great skill set for someone trying to stay alive long enough to uncover a mystery. I also knew I wanted this story to be a two-hander. It wasn’t just about the interrogator, but also about his ex-wife, a freelance assassin, who the interrogator unknowingly has put in the crosshairs. And by putting both of them on the run, it kind of forces them together, and forces them to deal with a whole lot of baggage from the past if only so they don’t end up killing each other.
I did start it as a script about eight years ago, but it was one of those rare screenplays that I ended up abandoning, because I realized the story had such a strong inner character journey for the hero, Malcolm Chaucer, that it really had to be a novel, so readers could get inside Malcolm’s mind.
Writing novels is liberating
DOSSIER: You’ve worked with fellow writer Joshua Oppenheimer for years, coming up with screenplays for movies such as Sahara (staring Matthew McConaughey) and Conan the Barbarian (2011). What are the two most important things you have to consider when writing an adaptation from something originally written by Clive Cussler and the like?
DONNELLY: What I WANT to say is that story is story. If you can write screenplays, you can write novels and vice versa. You just have to learn the specific challenges of that particular medium. And that’s all true…to a point.
That said, screenplays have a LOT more restrictions on how you can tell your story than a novel does. It’s been such a freeing experience to write in the novel form!
Clive Cussler’s Sahara, for example, was around 190k words. The screenplay weighed in at 23k. Nearly all screenplays have to come in around there, because that comes to around two hours of screen time. And when the films you write average between 100 million and 200 million dollars to make, you don’t really have the luxury of writing four hour epics that only get three showings a day.
So the challenge of adapting Sahara is how do I approximate the ‘story world’ of 190k words when I’ve only got 23k to work with? So yeah, novels are long form poetry. Screenwriting is haiku. So the first thing to consider is how well do you know this story? Because to pull that off? To make a movie that feels like a Clive Cussler novel? You’ve got to know that story backwards and forwards. And more than that…
You’ve got to LOVE it. That’s not to say you can’t view the story with a critical eye. You have to, in fact. But you’ve really got to love what you’re working on, because it will show. Josh and I have turned down adaptation jobs because while we knew exactly how to adapt the book, we just didn’t love it enough to fully do it justice. The second thing to consider is how you’re going to EXTERNALIZE internal character states. IN screenplays you are only able to see and hear what the camera sees and hears. As a screenwriter I have to externalize and express thought and emotion on a very deep level.
Because when I finish a screenplay, it’s highly likely it’s going into the hands of some amazing actors and actresses, world class artists, who are choosing between this story and dozens of others. So how great are your characters? Your scenes? How amazing is your dialogue?
There’s just a different level of pressure on the screenwriting side of the ledger. That doesn’t mean I don’t work just as hard writing novels. I do. But the pressure of novel writing is almost entirely self-generated.
Better than morning coffee
DOSSIER: Do you take your early morning beach walks with the express purpose of clearing your head and coming up with ideas about what you’ll be writing throughout the day, or is more like a middle-aged guy in Crocks & socks swaying a metal detector back and forth hoping to find a 1920s Breitling Chronograph?
DONNELLY: Ha! You’re terrifying me, because from the outside? That might be what I look like. I mean, not Crocks and socks, I walk barefoot in the surf. I love the feel of the cold Pacific washing over my feet and legs. Better than the best cup of coffee in the morning.
That said, I am one of those weirdos on the beach at dawn, but instead of a metal detector, I’ve got a voice recorder and a boom mic. And I’m talking to myself. A lot. I’d estimate about half of everything I write I do by dictation. Sometimes getting very animated dictating assassination scenes, interrogation scenes, and gunfights. Let’s just say people give me a lot of room.
For me, it’s one activity with three purposes. 1. Dictation: I get about double the output of typing, even factoring in correcting the transcription. It feels awesome to get 3,000 words or more down before I even head to my office. 2. Exercise: Sitting is the new smoking. It’ll kill ya if you don’t get up and move around. I do several miles most mornings and I can tell the difference when I miss a few days. And 3. Meditation: The Japanese are onto something with their Forest Bathing. Get out in some green spaces or blue spaces, breathe fresh air. Listen to the wind in the trees or the lapping of waves. I can’t tell you how good that feels to do on a regular basis.
Creating that bespoke project playlist
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (Music, silence, the front seat of your car in front of a Southern California beach?)
DONNELLY: Well, looks like I already covered the dictation part of my writing. For the other half, I have an office I share with my screenwriting partner. It’s my refuge. I’ve got a motorized desk that can shift between standing and sitting and I tend to do a couple hours sitting, then one standing, then repeat the process. As to silence vs sound, I have a big collection of movie soundtracks and one of my favorite procrastination activities at the beginning of a writing project is to put together bespoke playlists for that project.
There’s no perfect score for any story. Almost every movie score has lots of different moods. So what I do is put together 3 to 6 different scores based on the moods of the piece I’m writing, with titles like MOUNTING TENSION, GLOOM AND DOOM, GONNA MESS YOU UP NOW. Things like that.
What guinea pigs want
DOSSIER: When you say that your guinea pigs are demanding, what kind of things are we talking about? You don’t walk them along the beach on a leash, do you? Did you consider YEAR OF THE GUINEA PIG as an alternative title?
DONNELLY: Guinea pigs are prey animals so when they’re out in the open, they’re on high alert. But in my home? They seem to be well aware that I’m a pushover. The moment I walk in the door, their heads pop up and they stare at me making soft little squeaking noise until I come over and give them the attention they feel they deserve.
And once I do that, it’s all over. Because you can’t just pet a guinea pig. They want treats. A bit of carrot, cilantro, or their favorite, lettuce. So yeah, most days they emotionally blackmail me into tripling the household produce budget.
As to Year of the Guinea Pig as a title…hmm. It’s interesting, because most people will think “medical experimentation” when they hear that title. Which is an interesting area, so you never know. The next books in the Malcolm Chaucer series (of which Year of the Rabbit is Book 1) will follow the “Year of” naming convention, and I’ll stick with the Chinese zodiac, at least for a while. I see that having books with similar titles did really well for Sue Grafton, so why not try it?
Malcolm Chaucer’s future is booked
DOSSIER: Do you have any news or announcement you’d like to disclose in your Dossier?
DONNELLY: Are you asking a screenwriter to plug their upcoming works? Let me tell you, screenwriters don’t need any prompting. We’re pitching MACHINES!
I already have a very rough draft of Year of the Serpent, but when I got to The End, I suddenly realized that Year of the Serpent is NOT book 2 of the Malcolm Chaucer thrillers. It’s book 3. So I’m about 20% into the second book in the series, Year of the Horse.
Year of the Horse finds Chaucer and his ex-wife Tempest flying to Paris for a vacation, only for Chaucer to find that Tempest took what she calls “a small job” to pay for the trip.
Well, this small job causes her to cross paths with her mentor, Caleb Moss, better known by his codename: Man O’War. Caleb is the greatest assassin of the modern era, supposedly retired, and he steals her target out from under her nose and kills him. The French Intelligence service apprehends Tempest and Chaucer and lets them know that Man O’War is not only not retired, but he’s on a spree, killing four high-profile targets in the last week.
French offer them a deal: track down Man O’War and stop him, and all charges Tempest would be facing will be dropped. From there, our couple goes on a globe-hopping manhunt while Chaucer slowly discovers what all Man O’War’s targets have in common, and the deadly reason he’s come out of retirement.
If Year of the Rabbit has faint echoes of Six Days of the Condor, then you could say Year of the Horse has faint echoes of The Day of the Jackal.
Oh, also, if any Dossier readers are going to the Author Nation convention in November, I’ll be a speaker there, talking about Deep Character, Hollywood’s secrets to creating un-put-downable characters.
Thanks so much, this was fun!
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