Why A Young Hatter Madigan Animated Series Could Be The Next "Avatar: The Last Airbender"
I don’t know what has happened but in the past five to ten years the popularity of anime has exploded. While you could argue that anime was always massive, it was more of a subculture consisting of those kids who Naruto-ran in P.E. and those who watched anime but didn’t talk about it because they didn’t want to be grouped in with the Naruto-runners. What was once nerd culture is now popular culture. And I’m here for it.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, too; I was always here for it. No, I was not a Naruto runner, but when Cartoon Network switched to Toonami came on, I was locked in. (Specifically, I liked Bleach.) I knew I was about to watch something different from what I had ever seen before. Everything was new and exciting - the art style, world-building, action, and the themes that were being tackled. Before I had seen anime it never occurred to me that cartoon characters could bleed if the artist wanted them to. It was mind-blowing, it still is. When I’m in a creative rut I’ll find an anime series I’ve never seen before because the creativity is so different. It’s like a factory reset for me.
In America, the most popular anime genre is shōnen. Shōnen is manga/anime with a target audience of 12 to 18-year-old boys (girls obviously love it as well because it wouldn’t be as popular without them). Some of the most popular anime shows that have ever existed fall into this genre, Naruto, Dragonball Z, Bleach, Attack on Titan, Full Metal Alchemist, One Piece, and Hunter X Hunter. I want to keep going because I’m afraid I will miss your favorite show and you will leave an angry comment I won’t read but I’ve already mentioned enough shows.
A common trope in anime is taking a known thing, be it a historical event, fictional universe, and/or real or fictional characters, and tailoring them to the author's vision. Take the character Franken Stein from Soul Eater for example. In the show, he is an amalgamation of both Victor Frankenstein and his monster and uses electricity-centric attacks. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is obviously the inspiration yet, in the show, Franken Stein is wholly unique. Taking characters, IPs, or historical events and using them as a jumping-off point to create your own story isn’t uniquely Japanese. A perfect example of that is in Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars series and the Hatter M graphic novels. Frank took Lewis Carroll’s world and characters and created a unique realm. This is why I think The Looking Glass Wars would be perfect for a “Western anime” adaptation. Specifically, an animated series following his Mad Hatter character, the Master Milliner and Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan.
Frank Beddor’s Hatter Madigan is not your tea-sipping, seat-swapping Hatter of old. He is a badass blade-slinging, hat-throwing, supersoldier. His story is perfect for an animated adaptation. In Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars series, Hatter Madigan is introduced as the royal bodyguard for Princess Alyss and her family. The Hatter M graphic novel spinoff series follows Hatter on his wild and action-packed adventures around the world in search of the missing Princess Alyss. This alone is enough for a show but the world of Wonderland that Frank created is so much larger than this. We haven’t even gotten into the Suit families and their political battles, card soldiers, the mysterious and powerful skills of Dark and Light Imagination, creative tinkerers, looking-glass transportation, and the Crystal Continuum. The world that Frank Beddor built is massive, unique, and detailed. To have this world brought to life through animation would blow everyone away.
The show would follow the young Hatter who was orphaned at four after his parents’ disappearance during a Millinery mission, Hatter and his older brother Dalton lived at the Millinery academy for years before Hatter was allowed to attend the school himself. Burdened by the shadows cast by his talented older brother and his parent's reputation, Hatter strives to be the best. Did someone say training arc? The Millinery is the secretive military force of Wonderland, where the best Milliners are tasked with safeguarding the Queen and her family. Hatter is determined to succeed at the academy and make a name for himself in his own right.
What specifically would make this show a “Western anime?” Or for that matter, what even is a “Western anime?” The term itself doesn’t mean that much on its own because a “Western anime” is just a cartoon. But, there is one specific show that I and many others agree is specifically a “Western anime” and not just a cartoon. That show is Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Along with its Japanese-inspired art style, Avatar also did something that not many other Western cartoons aimed at young adults. The show’s themes and stakes were serious. Characters got injured, were in peril, and had to make truly difficult choices. The show had depth, which is much more common in anime compared to Western cartoons. So, while there is no such thing as a “Western anime,” an animated series about Hatter Madigan could sit beside Avatar: The Last Airbender and become a show that people call a “Western anime.”
There are things about the Hatter Madigan series as well as The Looking Glass Wars that are reminiscent of anime already. Starting on the surface, let’s look at the weapons. Specific weapons and tools are a common trope in anime. Gon from Hunter x Hunter has his fishing rod, Mitsuri Kanroji’s whip sword in Demon Slayer, and the Death Note in Death Note. The reason for these cool, unique, and unorthodox weapons in anime is that they allow the viewer to gain a sense of who a character is just by glancing at them. Milliners are known for their signature hats. While stylish, they are sentient, deadly, thrown weapons. Along with their hats, Milliners also utilize many other weapons, from belt buckles with a series of J-shaped sabers to backpacks that seem to provide an unending supply of different blades. A vast majority of these weapons are imbued with magical thread made of caterpillar silk to make them even more powerful.
There is something “weird” about anime. Now, when I say “weird” (and I’m going to say it a few times) I don’t mean that in a bad way. I would argue the “weirdness” is a drawing point for many of the viewers. The “weirdness” is originality. Even when a show is an adaptation, there is always some form of “weirdness” that takes something we all know and turns it on its head. When one takes a step back, it is easy to see that weirdness isn’t unique to anime. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is weird and Frank’s adaptations are weird as well. Again, weirdness is not a bad thing, it just means that it’s something that has not been seen before or is an original take on something familiar. The Hatter animated series would have the perfect amount of weirdness, attracting audiences and keeping them locked in. Weapons imbued with caterpillar thread are weird and awesome. If you want to zoom out more, turning Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland into this amazing sci-fi/fantasy world is weird…and awesome.
Finally, there are the stakes. As I mentioned before, Avatar: The Last Airbender is accepted as a “Western anime” not because of its art style but for its themes. The main character, Aang, is the last Airbender due to the Fire Nation’s genocide of the airbenders. In The Looking Glass Wars trilogy and the Hatter M graphic novel series people get hurt, people die, and characters have to make difficult moral choices. This, of course, would translate to the show. Hatter Madigan is an orphan who grew up in the Wonderland version of Westpoint before attending said school. While I’m sure he would have some happy memories of his childhood, that does not make it a happy childhood. The show, of course, will have its fair share of fun and lighthearted moments, but these will be balanced with the drama. It feels as though in animated shows, it is often forgotten that kids can handle a lot more than just the happy or silly moments.
A Hatter animated show needs to be made. There has been a massive vacuum left by The Last Airbender that has yet to be filled. Given the rise of anime, it’s obvious that people want more and they are going elsewhere to get it. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of the most recognizable and successful IPs in history. People can’t get enough of Alice. So let’s give them what they want.
Meet the Author
Jared Hoffman graduated from the American Film Institute with a degree in screenwriting. A Los Angeles native, his brand of comedy is satire stemming from the many different personalities and egos he has encountered throughout his life. As a lover of all things comedy, Jared is always working out new material and trying to make those around him laugh. His therapist claims this is a coping mechanism, but what does she know?
Watch Julia Stiles' Audition Tape for Wicked the Movie
Casting. One of the most important, frustrating, and frightening parts of the filmmaking process. If you’re an actor, it’s a constant state of vulnerability, being compared and contrasted to scores of other candidates, each being nitpicked on their appearance, experience, and performance. On the production side, you sift through an endless slog of headshots and self-tapes hoping to find that one person who fits exactly the character you have in your head. And the stakes? Just the entire production. The fortunes of movies, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, can be made or lost during casting.
Think of what life would be like if Burt Reynolds had played Michael Corleone in The Godfather instead of Al Pacino, or if Nicolas Cage wielded the Sword of Elendil as Aragon instead of Viggo Mortensen in The Lord of the Ringstrilogy, or if Mel Gibson and not Michael Keaton had donned the cape and cowl in Tim Burton’s Batman? Probably worse in all three timelines but, at the very least, pop culture would be entirely different.
It’s difficult to find the right actor even during the best of times, but when you’re an indie production trying to find a teenager who can pull off childlike, seductive, bratty, calculating, and lethal in a movie where she plays a character who murders her mother and has an affair with her father…it can feel nearly impossible.
That’s where the filmmakers behind the 1998 Sundance smash Wickedfound themselves at the beginning of the search for Ellie Christianson. It was a daunting task upon which rested the film’s prospects for success. Fortunately, there was one fifteen-year-old in New York who felt she just got Ellie. That was Julia Stiles. The teenage thespian began her career at eleven when she joined the experimental La MaMa Theatre Company. She made her TV debut in 1993 with the PBS children’s mystery show Ghostwriter and later guested on Promised Land and Chicago Hope. Stiles’ big screen bow came opposite Claire Danes and Jude Law in the romantic drama I Love You, I Love You Not and she subsequently played Harrison Ford’s daughter in the thriller The Devil’s Own, which also starred Brad Pitt. These early roles provided indispensable experience for the young actor, but she had never carried a movie before.
Below, watch Julia’s audition tape and read producer Frank Beddor and director Michael Steinberg remember the process that led them to the future star of 10 Things I Hate About You and Save the Last Dance.
(The following content has been taken from the “Wicked” Press Kit)
“The only condition Frank and I set in advance of making the picture was that we had to find the right Ellie,” said Steinberg. “I wanted an actress as close as possible to Ellie’s actual age. Ideally, she’s about 13 or 14 and I refused to have her played by a 26-year-old in pigtails.”
“I was very concerned,” remembered Beddor. “We didn’t have the time or the resources to do a national search for an actress to play Ellie. But luck had it that I was helping to produce a short film for acting coach Larry Moss and his DP recommended a young actress. This was the first I had heard of Julia Stiles. But based on this DP’s enthusiasm I sent a copy of the script to her new manager and Fed-Exed a copy to her in New York City.”
“A short time later we received a faxed letter from Julia,” added Steinberg. “It was hand-written and said she had read the script and felt she understood Ellie. She also sent an audition tape of herself with NYC background sounds running lines from the script with her mother. We liked her.”
“I flew her out to LA and she stayed at her manager’s house,” recalled Beddor. “Julia and I started improvising scenes for Michael and we knew - she was Ellie. She also had IT. Her hair and skin, everything about her, but especially her voice. Discovering new talent is one of the pleasures of low-budget filmmaking. I sensed I had an opportunity to help launch one of the world’s rare creatures - a real movie star. I again hired European fashion photographer, Eshel Ezer, who also shot Cameron Diaz for the There’s Something About Mary campaign. This would be Julia’s first professional photo shoot.”
Eshel recalled the shoot, “Flying back to Europe after photographing Julia I remember holding a Polaroid from one of the sets we shot and suddenly feeling overwhelmed with excitement. Looking at the picture I had shot just a couple of days earlier I was thinking about how Julia was just a kid but how strong her presence was and that she could really make it.” Beddor added, “People fell for Julia before seeing the film, this convinced me she could attract a crowd so I put her picture on the poster and her name above the title. I treated her like a star because I believed she would become one.”
Frank was right. Stiles is magnetic as Ellie. Her performance is a highwire act, a blend of strength and vulnerability that gives Ellie depth and lethality in equal measure. Stiles would go on to win Best Actress at the 1998 Karlovy International Film Festival in the Czech Republic and took Sundance by storm, prompting critic Joe Baltake to write that Stiles was “the darling of the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.” The heat generated by Wicked launched Stiles’ career, with lead roles in cult favorites 10 Things I Hate About You and Save the Last Dance complemented by scene-stealing turns in Dexter and the Bourne franchise. And it all started with a self-tape audition by a fifteen-year-old with her mom feeding her lines.
John Drain attended the University of Edinburgh before studying film at DePaul University in Chicago and later earned an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute Conservatory. John focuses on writing mysteries and thrillers featuring characters who are thrown into the deep end of the pool and struggle to just keep their heads above water. His work has been recognized by the Academy Nicholls Fellowship, the Austin Film Festival, ScreenCraft, Cinestory, and the Montreal Independent Film Festival. In a previous life, John created and produced theme park attractions across the globe for a wide variety of audiences. John keeps busy in his spare time with three Dungeons and Dragons campaigns and a seemingly never-ending stack of medieval history books.
All Things Alice: Interview with Mark Saltzman
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have screenwriter and playwright Mark Saltzman join me as my guest! Read on to explore our conversation and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor Thanks for being on the show, Mark Saltzman. I was delighted to come across your musical, somebody else who's been inspired by Alice in Wonderland. It never ceases to amaze me how Alice has become a muse for so many creators. I'm really curious. Why do you think Alice has lasted so long and continues to be reinvented?
Mark Saltzman I have given that a lot of thought. There's a uniqueness about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass that nothing's really eclipsed. There's a looseness and an irrationality to the original books. I think that could only be from Reverend Dodgson, Caroll's intimate knowledge of logic, which allowed him to avoid logic. He knew where it would fall. Most children's stories have a moral and a very clear narrative. A beginning, middle, and end, with a heroine or hero who learns a lesson or something like that. Alice defied all of that. I think it's because of that uniqueness that nothing else has ever come along in the past 150 years that qualifies in the same way or entices kids when they first read it.
Alice has inspired but really, where is the adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that truly, truly succeeds? The adaptation of The Wizard of Oz absolutely supersedes the original but with Alice, from stage productions to Disney to Tim Burton, they have just avoided the whole story completely. Nobody's been able to really wrap their arms around this elusive, mysterious piece of work by Lewis Carroll.
FB That’s a really interesting take because you could never teach writing using that book because there is no beginning, middle, or end. You could never write a TV show, a movie, or a play for that matter, because it's so episodic and there is a randomness to it. But thematically, it's really interesting and really strong, because it's asking “Who am I?”
To your point, there is no adaptation that stands out. There are just really good references like The Matrix. The Matrix did an amazing job. Tim Burton threw it out. You focused on parts of real-life Alice, Lewis Carroll's muse, Alice Liddell. I did the same thing in a different way with The Looking Glass Wars.
Tell us the concept behind your play, Alice, Formally of Wonderland, A Musical Story of the Real Alice. The real Alice inspired Lewis Carroll and met Prince Leopold, Queen Victoria’s youngest son. So you went from there and did this show, which I'm assuming is some sort of romance.
MS Correct. It is a romance. We know there was some sort of relationship, presumably romantic, between Leopold and Alice Liddell and it seemed to have not been chronicled. Out of all the Alice works, somehow that was missed. I just loved this idea. Because for one thing, you knew going in this did not work out. In the Victorian era, if there was a romance, it was not going to end with them skipping down the aisle to be married. “So what did happen?” I wondered. When you're writing historical fiction, you want to always be plausible and factual as much as you can. From what I learned from my research talking to a Lewis Carroll expert at Oxford, it seemed they did get together. There was proof they had a hunting trip together up the Thames which echoed the original Alice in Wonderland boat trip. In the scene in the musical, I figured Alice would certainly reflect on that. Ten years earlier, she took this boat ride with an Oxford don, Lewis Carroll. Within those 10 years, she became this famous figure as the muse of the Wonderland books and now she’s on the boat with Prince Leopold. It also made me think, “Who is this young woman who thinks she is worthy of a prince?” She’s an Oxford professor's daughter who, for all we know, had never been to London.
Then I started thinking about her character, being this beautiful young woman, one of the few young women in an all-boys school, and the daughter of a professor. I felt it doesn't give you the impression of a modest, humble, young lady. I thought, “That would be a fun character to write.” Then I started looking at Leopold the same way. What could he have been like? Here's a prince royal and he wants to go to Oxford, he wants to be educated. He’s not a Playboy Prince. They seem like they really would be interested in each other. Then, what would destroy this? Of course, Victorian society, not to mention Mom.
FB She had a little bit of power back then.
MS She did and she didn’t seem to use it for good very often.
FB Indeed she did not.
MS She’s held in such high esteem, the beloved Queen Victoria. As England was becoming more and more woke and Oxford was trying to redo its past and take down statues of Cecil Rhodes and similar benefactors, Queen Victoria remained untouched. Here she is, the epitome of British imperialism. Who represents it more? I asked an English friend, “Why does she get a free pass? Why aren’t they taking down statues and renaming streets?” He said, “Well, she's Queen Victoria.”
FB I got a little criticism for portraying her as a baddie, along the lines of comparing her to Redd as if they were doppelgangers. People said, “We really love our Queen Victoria so you're gonna rub some people the wrong way.”
MS I could see loving Prince Albert, her husband. The more I read about him and his policies, which were much more progressive, I wonder if the history of the 20th century would have been different had he lived. He was kind of skeptical of the future of colonialism. Charles Dickens is writing here in this era. How much more blatant could the social ills of England be than in Dickens? Did she open a book? Did somebody mention workhouses and child labor to her? It seemed like all of England was aware of it because of Dickens and others. People were so riveted to his work, other than Her Majesty. It's hard to even picture those two in the same room.
FB I'm with you. I've been playing around with it a little bit more in adapting my book series into a TV show. I didn't focus very much on the part of her story that you're focused on. But then when I started to work on the show, I thought, “Oh, let me see. What was she like as a teenager?” I jumped from her at 13 to her at 20 and then I brought her back to Wonderland, not dissimilar to what Tim Burton did, I suppose. But I was wondering what was going on in English society at that time. What was going on with Queen Victoria? What is something that would make Alice feel a bit more modern? I did quite a bit of research and came to the same conclusion. They're really giving her a pass. So, you have a scene on the River Thames with Leopold and Alice?
MS Yes, that's maybe the one thing I can say is absolutely factual. They did take that boat trip.
FB That's very romantic and very intimate.
MS What do they talk about? That's what it comes down to. Once again, you want to make it plausible but still a little surprising. I imagined she would have spoken about the golden afternoon, being on the river with Lewis Carroll. I imagined he would have asked, “What was it like that day?”
FB Do they have a perspective on the books in your musical? Alice is famous because of the book but does Leopold have a take on it that might reflect your take on Alice in Wonderland?
MS Her first take is she loves what it did for her. She loves the fame and she loves the social position. Her dad does not. He thinks it’s too much attention and it's gone to her head. Leopold is so enchanted with Alice herself. He wants to know if the girl in the book is like Alice the real girl. It’s more about the young woman than the literature. But the book gets him curious. She says, “Really none at all. The fictional Alice is in a strange and dangerous land. She never thinks about her family, sister, or parents. She doesn't even miss them. If that happened to me, I would just be destroyed.” She'd be Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. This doesn't cross the fictional Alice’s mind. The girl in the book has a strange emotionality.
That’s another reason why the book is sort of unadaptable. The central character is essentially passive. She's just taking it in, like a camera, and isn’t motivated to get from one place to the other. In Through the Looking-Glass, there's a mission, but in the original, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, she's wandering. Alice happens to make it home but she's in no real rush to get there. She seems happy to be away from her family. Leopold says, “She must have had a mother like me.” That’s their exchange. He's also a little interested in Dodgson and what he was like. Through my research into Dodgson, it seems like he was quite the entrepreneur.
FB He was way ahead of his time in terms of being in control of everything surrounding his work. He picked the artist, the print style, and even the font. I think he might have been the first author to come up with merchandise for a book.
MS How come we don't talk about him the way we're talking about Walt Disney or any other entertainment industry titan? We like to put him in a garret.
FB It’s a very good question. L. Frank Baum. We all know his story.
MS Dodgson was maybe the wealthiest don teaching at Oxford. They don't get paid a lot.
FB He was one of the first people to explore photography. He was very ahead of his time in a lot of ways. But he was never married. He was entrepreneurial but he didn't seem to go out of his way to promote himself, even though he wrote endless letters to all of his friends.
MS He did go out of his way but it was to promote Lewis Carroll, not himself. The characters were on plates and tea towels. There was always an Alice show somewhere. Not to mention, Through the Looking-Glass is an actual sequel. What did he do with his money?
FB That's a good question.
MS Why don't we know that? I feel like there's some English social taboo around this.
FB I don't understand why Charles Dodgson is not recognizable and why you have to say Lewis Carroll right afterward. But to my point, he didn't want any recognition. That's why he had that name he worked on. He came up with a bunch of ideas and it’s some kind of anagram. It creates space between him and the work.
MS But, you can be pretty sure the bank accounts were in the name of Charles Dodgson. But that's what makes me curious. This aspect of him is just ignored. It’s like writing about Walt Disney and saying, “Look at how beautifully he drew,” and that's the end of it. You’re missing the whole point of building an empire and the “Alice Empire” is still with us.
The Dodgson estate isn't making anything off it. But just as a thought experiment, if Alice wasn’t in the public domain, how much would his estate be taking in from the licensing of Alice projects around the world?
FB It’d probably be hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars but, of course, it wouldn't have been so successful if it hadn't been in the public domain. It wouldn't have been successful because it was so episodic. But once it was in the public domain, then you're just riffing off of it. But nevertheless, it's still remarkable. No matter what medium you think about, Alice is everywhere.
I think the idea you put forth is right and I also think a lot of people can see what they want to see. Some people see it as a fairy tale, as it's described, while some people see it as a horror story. I think it was written for adults on some level. They didn’t have all the categories we do now - Children’s, Middle Grade, Young Adult.
MS This really wasn't meant for a huge popular reading public given the satire and references to local Oxford residents. It was meant for the Liddell girls and their family.
FB Your show, Alice, Formerly of Wonderland, is in Santa Barbara but it originated in Wyoming, correct?
MS I used to be affiliated with the Wyoming Theater Festival and when the show was in the workshop stage, I brought it there to put it in front of an audience and see what I had. It was a very skeletal version but I needed to put it on stage because the musical element is acapella singing. Leopold was musical and joined musical groups at Oxford and I love musical theater. I thought, “How am I going to make this musical? I didn't want to do a traditional musical, it would seem like just another Alice musical. I thought, “I can use the Oxford Glee Club as a musical motif through it and Leopold would sing with them. I used some traditional British folk songs, Victorian parlor songs, and standard historical Oxford songs, and I wrote a couple of new ones. With six actors, it wasn't easy to get that big glee club sound but our music arranger, Jack Woodson, is so brilliant. He managed to make it sound like a big chorus. We were very pleased with the musical sound of it and that people consider it a musical even though it's very unorthodox.
FB The glee club is a great idea. I didn't realize Prince Leopold was in the glee club. That's just a natural fit and using music of the time is appropriate. Plus, you don't have to deal with the rights.
MS We used the public domain songs and my own because, as you know, music licensing is one of the most unbearable aspects of making good art.
FB When you say you're putting your show up, this is at the Wyoming Theater Festival so it's public and people are coming to see it, but it's rough. What's in it for the audience? Do they participate? Do they give notes?
MS Generally, I talk with the audience and find out what they think. But I found at that point, at the end of the show, I already knew the audience's reaction. If there's a joke and the audience doesn't laugh, you don't have to ask them. You just bury your head in your hands and now you have to fix it. But you can't find that out sitting in your office at the computer. You really have to have actors.
This show has not had a typical development. We were in Wyoming then I went home and did rewrites and then COVID came. As soon as COVID started to abate, I did another reading here in Studio City at the Whitefire Theater. It’s a black box and I use that for my local experiments. We went in there with a bunch of actors and some UCLA a capella guys. Then I did one more when COVID was basically done. That one I actually solved the problems and then submitted it around and it found its way to Santa Barbara.
FB How are people responding to the music?
MS They seem very surprised. Even though we made no secret that it's a musical, it's a capella. I don't think that’s really processed until you're in the room. Such exciting things have happened because it's a tightrope act. I didn't see any loss of attention during the numbers. In fact, there's more leaning forward because it's such an act of derring-do to sing this much a capella. We had terrific actors who all had a capella experience and knew how to adjust if you feel yourself going off. There's so much nuance involved and so much concentration. Sometimes they even had to dance while they were doing it while with glee, they rarely had to do it. So it was a surprising and pretty unique element.
FB It's a romantic comedy so when you're fine-tuning, you're making sure you're putting those buttons on the jokes. Having seen it now, were people laughing where you needed them to laugh?
MS At this point, all the bad jokes are gone. We also had two previews before opening night. Fortunately, most of the clunkers had been weeded out by then. I am going back up to see it next weekend and from what I hear, as the actors have been relaxing into it more laughs emerge because I think they feel free enough to explore and try different readings. “I'm going to try to get a bigger laugh on this so I'll hit that word harder. I’ll look right at the audience on this word.” They make these discoveries as they realize how to play this particular kind of comedy.
I tried to do that in the English drawing room style. You can't do an Alice story without a tea party. Alice is trapped by her father into having tea with the young Oxford man he has chosen for her. Alice is already in love with Leopold so it's awkward, to say the least. I did that in a drawing room style and the actors got it to go into a different gear. Some of it's pretty broad. I figured one Wonderland character oughta have an appearance and I made that the Caterpillar. He really was the only one with actual useful advice in the novel. Other people were saying the most insane things to Alice but the Caterpillar really was helpful in his haughty way. I thought in her mind Alice, if she needed advice, could imagine herself going to the Caterpillar as a thought experiment. We have Matthew Greenwood, a British actor playing the Caterpillar and doing it in the style of one of the knighted-grade actors.
FB What are the conflicts with Alice? You brought up Queen Victoria. That's pretty clear. Are there other conflicts these two lovers are dealing with?
MS They both have parental conflicts. One of the things that’s also factual is that Queen Victoria was not a fan of Leopold’s desire to go to Oxford. It could have exposed him socially to the “wrong family”. There’s a very funny scene on stage, but it actually happened. There was a negotiation between Leopold and his mother as to how he would live there. Certainly not in student housing, God forbid. He would have to be in a rented house. There was a discussion about who needed to be on the staff. Would there be a doctor in residence? Talk about control over-controlling mothers.
FB The ultimate helicopter parents.
MS Queen Victoria demanded if Leopold had a dinner, she would have to approve the menu and the guests.
FB It was her youngest son. I think he was the fourth-in-line to the throne. So he probably knew he had no chance for the throne and the youngest are usually a little bit more rebellious. He had some health issues as well.
MS That's what made Queen Victoria feel it was valid to have 24-hour medical observation, but Leopold was having none of that. Alice has a conflict with her father, who wants to see her happily married but knows when he finds out about her relationship with Prince Leopold it just can not be. Alice’s father has the cream of England right outside his window, these Oxford guys, and he picked one especially for her, Edward Brocket. This is an invented character but I'm sure there were many such men. I made him the captain of the Christ Church rowing team and a medical student, a perfect guy.
FB Tall, strapping, big shoulders. Okay, I got it.
MS Exactly. Played by tall, strapping Sawyer Patterson. When he walked into the audition I went, “Well, there it is.” As Leopold says, ruefully, Brocket is healthy. Leopold backs off and says, “Go with the healthy personnel and have a long life.” Alice is too insanely in love at that point. But Brocket isn’t a big dumb jock or a hostile Gaston. He's a good guy and he's exactly who she should have had. One of the reasons I made him a jock was eventually the real Alice Liddell married a professional athlete, a cricket player. That probably was on her radar. She married a famous man. She didn't marry the country doctor.
FB That was Reginald Hargreaves.
MS I think she still wanted to maintain her position. She married someone famous in some way so she wouldn't suddenly fade from sight because she married an obscure, even wealthy, son of an Earl from Northumberland or something. I don't think she was married for money. I'm sure she loved him but it was good for her public image. A famous athlete was certainly an attraction.
FB I made the connection between Leopold and Alice having a love story. That was real because they both named their first child after each other. She had a boy she named Leopold and Prince Leopold named his daughter Alice. So I thought, “Okay, that's enough of a connection. There must have been something there. I'm gonna go with that.”
MS When I got to that in my research I thought, “The universe just handed me the end of the play.”
FB Is that the end of the play?
MS The Caterpillar is a kind of wrap-around character. He gives that information and there's occasionally a little gasp in the audience. It hammers home the truth.
FB Beautiful. Very exciting. How long is it running?
MS This is the last week. June 16th is the last show.
FB What's the hope for the next steps?
MS It's six actors and off-Broadway sized. My last show in New York, Romeo and Bernadette, was off-Broadway. It was in a nice little theater on 42nd Street. I'd like to have Alice, Formerly of Wonderland follow that trajectory to Off-Broadway in New York.
FB Fingers crossed.
What was your introduction to Alice in Wonderland? Did you read it as a child or was it the Disney movie?
MS I think I read it before the Disney movie. I was a big reader. Reading the initial books, I don't think was that life-changing because you're reading everything. I remember gravitating to English children's books like Winnie the Pooh when I was really little. But when I was a little older, I found The Annotated Alice, which I'm sure you know. That was a rabbit hole I dove into. I talked to fellow English major nerds about this and it turns out, for a lot of us, that was the first literary criticism we ever encountered. It was the first time we recognized there's more to a book than we may have imagined. It was so easily readable and digestible. Martin Gardner did the notes in the margins.
FB I thought it was brilliant. I think everybody should read it, even if you don't care about knowing everything about Alice, because to your point, it's so consumable and digestible.
MS It gives you the goods. It's not holding back. Rather than reading a magazine article about literary criticism, The Annotated Alice was in these teaspoon-sized bits to take in and be fascinated by. In some way, that put me on a path towards being an English major in college. That book said, “There's more than you imagined here. Let us explain.”
FB Have you thought about your play as a show or movie?
MS I have but if it's not Merchant Ivory making it I’m not sure I’m interested. The depiction of the Victorian period has to be so beautiful. I don't know if that's a Netflix movie. What else are we gonna have?
FB They don't make movies like that anymore. Barely any movies at all.
MS I don't really see how it could find its way into the media universe that way. I wish but we just don't live in that world. Maybe there's some English film company. But first, I want to move it down the theatrical path.
FB Your other show, Romeo and Bernadette, what was that about?
MS That was another fantasy, exploiting an English author.
FB Wonder why they hate us American authors.
MS We try so hard. Romeo and Bernadette started as a movie script that never got made. It’s essentially, at the end of Romeo and Juliet Romeo doesn't drink the poison. He drinks more of Juliet’s sleeping potion and that puts him out. He wakes up hundreds of years later and finds a girl who looks a lot like Juliet but she's an Italian-American girl in Verona on a family vacation. Romeo follows her back to Brooklyn and finds out she's the daughter of a mafia don. He gets involved with the wrong mafia family and the whole thing starts again, except they're happy. It was knocking around, including with some British companies for a movie and it didn't happen. Everybody said to me how good it was and how funny it was. So I made it into a little musical, nine actors, and we played New York with really nice reviews.
FB That sounds like a great idea.
MS We're mixing the cast album right now.
FB Are you musical yourself?
MS I am. I always say this, coming out of college I had an Ivy League English degree and the ability to play piano. What was gonna get me work? I started playing piano in New York for auditions and bars, got my feet on the ground, and started writing. On occasion, I'd work on a show like Sesame Street where I could also write songs in addition to the script writing and Alice has two songs that I wrote. So I tried to keep a toe in the musical world, too. I really love it and listen to a lot of music every day.
FB When you were writing on Sesame Street did you just suggest some music or did they ask you if you could write a song? Or was that just part of a song that you put into a script?
MS I think one of the reasons they hired me in the first place was because they knew I was musical. I was writing songs and sketches for off-Broadway reviews. A Sesame Street actor was in one of them and she brought me over there and said, “He's gonna write for me now. When you were writing a script, often the writers were the lyricists. For Sesame Street, every sketch has to teach something. So if you want to teach that it's good to try new foods, you might do that in the form of a song or you might do an informative sketch. On occasion, I would be paired with a composer but other times a tune was hidden in my head and I would just submit it. Sometimes they’d take it, sometimes they rejected the music and passed it along. But it was a rare opportunity to be writing songs while writing television scripts.
FB It sounds like a great experience and a great gig.
MS It was. It was exhausting though. It was the hardest scriptwriting I've ever done. It had to appeal to preschoolers. It had to appeal to adults. It couldn’t be lame. It had to teach something and it had to be funny. That's a lot in a little sketch.
FB So you’re saying it's difficult to put all that into a little sketch? Or were the powers that be demanding these things have to all work together? Were they difficult or was it just the actual writing and creating that made all those elements gel?
MS Everyone agreed this was the Sesame Street formula. This is what made Sesame Street, the notion that the humor was not going to be lame. It was going to be sharp humor, like any sketch comedy show. If you think about it, if you're writing for Saturday Night Live or any other comedy sketch, it just has to be funny. But with Sesame Street you have to do all those things at once in every single sketch. They'd be tested on kids to see if the sketches actually did teach them. In my time the head writer was focused on television comedy, not education, but over your shoulder was the Harvard School of Education saying, “That's not teaching.” Also remember, this is public television so the wages aren’t going to be like the compensation at a network. So if you're a good comedy writer, what are you doing here at PBS? It was tough to find the right kind of writer and keep them. But if you didn't get paid in wages, you got paid in Emmy Awards.
MS That’s a TV musical musical with songs by Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!) and starring Angela Lansbury. It still seems to be a perennial online. I used to get contacted about people enjoying it. We gave it a progressive slant. I still can't believe we got away with that. Mrs. Claus comes to New York in 1910 and she gets involved with the women's suffrage movement, child labor, and unions. The feminists love us for it. It’s an easy way to teach how difficult it was to vote and how to organize around that. I'm pretty proud of that one. I'm glad it's been living on.
FB Do you see many Broadway shows? Anything you're a fan of that you wish you had written?
MS When I get to New York there's never enough time. The last thing I saw was a production of Sondheim’s show Merrily We Roll Along. I had tremendous affection for it when I was young. It first opened in the eighties and finally, people are making it work and it's a hit now with Daniel Radcliffe. I love that. I also saw Sondheim’s new posthumous show, Here We Are. To be involved in musical theater at all is to be worshiping at the feet of Sondheim. Whatever might be playing of his, I'll make a special effort to go see.
FB Do people come to you about writing a book for an idea? Or do you generate most of your ideas and work on those?
MS It works both ways. I'm trying to think what people in theater have come to me for that has actually been produced. There's so much of it. If I'm doing it myself, I have my steps. I know what to do but it can be very painstaking and slow and I'm not sure collaborators can put up with that. People do come to me and I'd say fifty percent of the projects I want to work on and fifty percent I don’t, whether it’s because I've done something like that before or I just don't see how it's ever gonna get done. But it's always flattering when someone comes to you and invites you to work with them. But I would say the shows I've had produced have all been originated by me.
FB Theater is much like film or television. There are a lot of plays or musicals being developed that we never get to see because it's really difficult to get them up on their feet and for all the elements to come together. One of the things that's really underrated is the book writer. To get that book right to make a musical work is really hard.
MS It's no different from screenwriting or TV writing. It's the same skills. you know, playing songs. But if you find yourself with those skills at an early age, wouldn’t you jump into TV? I did. I needed to make a living,
FB They don't pay very much in theater.
MS As they say, “You can make a killing but you can't make a living.”
FB So if you've done Wicked, you're good.
MS Pretty much. But there’s only one or two shows like that per decade. Yet there are so many other positives about it. But if you're starting out and you do need the paycheck, you really can't do theater. The payoff is after opening unless you were lucky enough to be commissioned, which you won't be at an early age. You could be working for years on a project and then get to opening night and hope for the best that maybe now you’ll get paid. Whereas, in TV and film there is a union, of which I'm a proud member, and the union makes sure, like any union, that you get paid at a specific pay rate. On the other hand, you're selling your copyright. Whereas you own the copyright in theater and you have the final word on casting and the script. That's all up to the playwright.
FB It’s the same with the novelists. Part of my interest in writing was born out of losing copyright and being frustrated and saying, “I'd like to be the author from beginning to end and play in my own sandbox.” Not that those always pay enough to pay the bills and so forth. But creatively, It's so fulfilling.
MS That's it. There are other rewards. The union jobs for money, the theater, and novel jobs for us.
FB If you were a character from Alice in Wonderland who would you be and why?
MS The Annotated Alice is still in my head but it’s the White Knight. There's inventiveness and kindliness about him. The Caterpillar was helpful but had that horrible attitude, which I exploited.
FB And he's stoned a lot.
MS If only. To me, it would take that horrible haughty Oxford edge off him. He seems to me, and I wrote him this way, as the most Oxfordian of any of the characters in Alice in Wonderland. That attitude of “Who are you?” That superiority is so absurd. Whereupon the White Knight is humble and kind but completely inept and not helpful at all. But at least she didn’t end up in an ocean of saltwater or having your head stretched. At least he was kind. I think that the Caterpillar’s attitude is coming over decades from The Annotated Alice. It was pointed out there and I never forgot about it. I also remember there was speculation that the White Knight was the Lewis Carroll self-portrait because you can't imagine him as any of the other characters. The White Knight is slightly ridiculous and that might be how Dodgson felt with his speech impediment, that he was a figure of ridicule. He probably was ridiculed because of the way kids talk about their teachers.
FB Riding in on the horse also puts him above everybody so that's got to feel good.
MS It’s a quiet episode compared to beheadings and croquet. That was always a place in the books where I felt at home.
FB Very good answer. I read in an interview, that somebody asked you if you were an expert on Alice in Wonderland or Lewis Carroll and you said you weren't an expert, but you did so much research. I did the same thing. I went to Oxford and spent six months there and it was so much fun.
MS This is the one place where the show expresses anything I felt, but Prince Leopold has a speech where he says, “Oxford is Wonderland.” That's how I felt. I've been to places in Europe before and nothing was ever like Oxford to me. I just can't compare it to any other place I've been. I would love to spend months there.
FB I've always been a big fan. I love the British Museum and then being in Oxford it does feel like its own Wonderland. There are Wonderland Gardens that look like they are from Oxford. I didn't even realize there were so many people who create Wonderland hedges out of characters.
It’s been a real pleasure speaking with you, Mark. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
What Does Skiing Have to Do With "There's Something About Mary"?
Almost 30 years ago I was on a chairlift with Dylan Sellers, then an executive at Fox, ascending the slopes overlooking the Sundance Film Festival. I started telling Dylan about a screenplay written by my friends, John Strauss and Ed Decter. It was a comedy about a man who hires a private investigator to find his high school dream girl and it was absolutely hysterical. When we got off the lift Dylan said, “Let’s make this movie.” That movie was There’s Something About Mary.
Rereading Christine Dietzel’s piece in Teton Gravity brought back all those wonderful memories of how my skiing career opened a door to the entertainment industry. My success in the skiing world led to work as a stunt skier in films such as “Hotdog! The Movie” and the black comedy “Better Off Dead” starring John Cusack. This led to acting roles and forming relationships with a variety of talented filmmakers. The origins of There’s Something About Mary took place on the slopes (and chairlifts) of Sundance. The thriller I produced, Wicked, garnered rave reviews after its Sundance screening and helped launch the career of our star Julia Stiles.
Christine’s captivating writing made this an enjoyable rabbit hole to revisit. Read the full piece below or click here for the original version.
The Women of Hatter Madigan
Put to rest any delusions or disinformation you may have of the tea-guzzling madman of Alice in Wonderland and prepare to expand your consciousness with the story of the real Mad Hatter and his relentless search for Alyss, the lost Princess of Wonderland. In The Looking Glass Wars, Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan was ordered by Queen Genevieve to take Princess Alyss and leave Wonderland after a bloody palace coup staged by the murderous Redd. But while escaping through the Pool of Tears (the portal from Wonderland to our world), crushing centrifugal force pulled them apart. Hatter finds himself in Paris in 1859, shockingly separated from the child he had been sworn to protect. Crisscrossing the globe for 13 years in search of the princess, Hatter was aided by some of our world’s smartest and bravest women. These characters form the “syndicate” of women around the globe who have met this mysterious, gallant, stoic, otherworldly, and relentless bodyguard. Each vowed to assist him in finding Alyss and serving Light Imagination.
Hatter M - Book 1 – Far from Wonder
Magda Pushikin – An ambitious reporter covering Budapest. Location: Moscow
A glamorous and pushy Russian newswoman determined to track Hatter Madigan and uncover his mission. During her sleuthing, she and Hatter end up joining forces to rescue a group of schoolgirls including Girl 42 – a seemingly deranged and uncontrollable child with an uncanny ability to channel other people’s thoughts, Wonderland, and blue butterflies.
All are imprisoned in a sketchy orphanage run by proponents of Dark Imagination.
Magda forms an unbreakable bond with Hatter and promises to help him with his search for Alyss in any way she can.
Hatter M - Book 2 – Mad with Wonder
Sister Sally - Bible Belt healer in America’s South Location: New Orleans
Hatter learns of this glowing girl and her mission for mankind and believes she may be the lost Alyss. He tracks her down only to see her snatched by a local slave trader/soul stealer (Van de Skulle) with ties to Redd’s Wonderland. Hatter rescues Sister Sally and a strong alliance is formed. She owes Hatter her ‘soul’ and is determined to be a faithful friend for as long as he needs her. Sister Sally’s healing abilities are epic and she has a direct line to God. You know you’ve got a good friend when they’re a friend of Jesus! Amen.
Hatter M - Book 3 – The Nature of Wonder
Philomena Ark – Civil War Intelligence Agent Location: Washington D.C.
Philomena, the fierce, pigtailed, inventor of the ray rifle works in the X-Files-styled Illuminated Forces (I.F.), an investigative branch of intelligence dealing with paranormal events. When vials of Dark Imagination are inhaled by the Confederate army in the final days of the Civil War, the Illuminated Forces are ordered by President Lincoln to find the antidote – Light Imagination. At the same time, Hatter Madigan arrives in Washington D.C. in hopes of discovering the answers to secrets that will lead him to Alyss. Philomena is a hyper-intelligent blend of paranormal investigative genius, romantic teenager, and inventive lab rat. If you need it, Philo can build it. Hatter will rely on her futuristic skill set and loyalty as he navigates the globe.
Realm – Shaman of the White Flower Tribe Location: Secret caves within the Grand Canyon
Hatter discovers Realm and her people after the Illuminated Forces airship piloted by Philomena Ark is blown out of the sky by a hail of burning arrows launched by the White Flower tribe.
Near death, Hatter’s life is saved by Realm in a sweat lodge ceremony that reveals her distant ties to Wonderland’s Queens. Realm and Hatter are drawn together by their exceptional qualities of duty and service to others. Attacked by the United States army, Realm and her tribe are forced into hiding in the Grand Canyon. Hatter assists the tribe in escaping and Realm is forever grateful. Her mystic abilities to astral project, shapeshift and distill the rare substance known as Light Imagination from the scent of her tribe’s namesake White Flower render her a formidable ally.
Hatter M - Book 4 – Zen of Wonder
Nekko - Twelve-year-old Zen Master. Location: Mountain Top Monastery in Japan.
Hatter meets Nekko on the rooftops of San Francisco after she steals his hat and leads him on a chase to her secret dojo. Nekko recognized Hatter as a searcher in need of guidance and, despite his objections, volunteered her services in his quest for enlightenment. When Hatter meets Nekko, she is in her ‘traveling clothes’ of gangly teenage J-pop Zen adventuress. It is written that when you are ready a teacher will appear, but if that teacher is a 12-year-old girl and you are a high-ranking Bladesman you may discover that all you can do is laugh. Hatter and Nekko’s adventure around the ring of fire begins when they track a stolen samurai sword with a Wonderland connection to San Francisco’s 19th-century hip-hop crime madam Missy Tong and her eager protégé, the outspoken Lil’ Dick. In return for her assistance, Hatter acts as Nekko’s bodyguard during her return to a mountain-top Zen monastery in Japan. After Hatter leaves, Nekko shifts back to her essential ‘in-house’ self, the Happy Cat Buddha. Nekko will be available with wisdom and wit, whenever Hatter’s plans become too serious and he needs enlightenment.
Hatter M - Book 5 – Love of Wonder
Agent Jet Seer – DNA Runner for 21st Century Bio Corp Location: Undisclosed
Jet Seer is an agent from a future that needed saving. As a badass time, traveler, she tracked the glow of Imagination throughout history in search of enlightened ones, men, and women whose incredible minds could inspire her timeline – a time where automation, algorithms, and virtual reality have reduced man to a listless and sedentary existence. From Aristotle to Zappa and everyone in between, nothing could stop the incomparable Jet on her quest.
A mix of Egyptian genetics and Lawrence of Arabia style, Jet is discovered by Hatter and Dalton (Hatter’s long-lost brother) in the desert outside Constantinople singlehandedly attacking a slave caravan in search of a mysterious girl. She is a time-traveling DNA runner hired by a mysterious Bio Corp. Hatter realizes they are both seeking Alyss of Wonderland but for very different reasons. The powers in the future have discovered the source of all Imagination, what amounts to the God molecule that once existed in Alyss Heart of Wonderland, known to be lost in our world for 13 years. Enabled by time travel tech, they have sent this time-traveling bounty hunter back to collect it. Agent Seer is committed to her mission until she meets Hatter and realizes there is a higher calling than DNA harvesting. In the service of Light Imagination, she assists Hatter in locating Alyss. They plan to return to Wonderland together but Jet is arrested by time-traveling agents who arrive to escort her back to the 21st century in virtual handcuffs. But Jet Seer is not deterred. She promises Hatter she will be looking out for him from the 21st century and will do everything in her power to help him. Returned to the 21st century, Agent Seer escapes the agents and starts her own time-traveling agency to serve Light Imagination.
One of my readers was very, very upset with me. I was on a tour of British schools promoting The Looking Glass Warsand, though it had been a great success overall, at that moment I was in the crosshairs of a very cross young man who believed I made a grave mistake. Why had I neglected to tell the story of Hatter Madigan’s 13 years searching for Princess Alyss? It was a damn good question, one I didn’t have a ready answer to. But on the plane back to the States, I thought, “Maybe I could do a comic book about those 13 years.” That’s how the Hatter M graphic novel series came into being.
School visits are one of the more rewarding aspects of promoting and talking about my stories. You’re going right to the source. You have to go out to the audience to understand what your world is and how it's affecting them. Having the feedback from kids in terms of what they like, what they feel is working, and what sparks their imagination is really important.
I met Kira Assad (the writer of the article below) when I spoke at an event hosted by Professor James Blasingame at Arizona State University during the promotional tour for Hatter Madigan: Ghost in the H.A.T.B.O.X. Kira told me an amazing story about how The Looking Glass Wars inspired her to study English in college and to write fiction herself. It’s so gratifying and humbling to know that my work has been a looking-glass through which young people fall in love with reading and storytelling. As evidenced by the stern English lad who inspired six graphic novels, sometimes your readers can provide the biggest sparks of imagination.
All Things Alice: Interview With Adrienne Kress, Part 1
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have Adrienne Kress join me as my guest on this episode! Read on to explore our conversation and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor I want to talk about your books and writing. But I didn't realize that you started as a playwright. You started as an actress, as well, so I want to talk about that.
Adrienne Kress I’m also a producer now. So we have that in common. My husband and I produced this very small indie horror movie over COVID.
FB Congratulations on that.
AK Thanks. We wrote it. He directed. I starred in it. We were supposed to go on a honeymoon in 2020 and that didn't happen so we used that money to make a little movie.
FB What does that say about the launch of your marriage?
AK That was how I knew I had met my soulmate.
FB I’m interested in the acting part of it because I started as an actor. I had been doing commercials for ski companies so I caught the bug. You started really young though, as a kid.
AK I did theater school first so I wasn't doing professional gigs until high school. I was studying at art school and doing plays. So it's interesting because with theater acting, even if you're 10-11 years old, there's still all this technique just by virtue of being on stage.
There are definitely habits you learn and then when you get older, and you're suddenly in theater school in England as an adult, they're like, “You need to just relax. You overthinking it. It became less about technique and more about just being in the moment.
FB I found it hard not to try and do what I thought they wanted. The performance versus tapping into my own truth at the moment. Auditioning was very, very scary and daunting. But in terms of the couple of movies I did, I thought, “Oh, if you're just really relaxed, and you start by being yourself and then think about what to bring to it, you find a voice at the moment.” Did you find the same thing? What was your approach?
AK Absolutely. I came to film acting after theater acting. One of the things almost all theater actors will tell you is there's a steep learning curve of doing less, do nothing at all. I found that very challenging, but at the same time, I agree, it's very freeing, with film, to have multiple chances to do some things and multiple takes. You’re also having an intimate moment, just between you and the other person, but there happens to be a camera there. It's very freeing.
But I'm with you on auditions. I think I've gotten to a place now with auditions where I'm just like, “If they want me, they want me.” If they want what I can do and they want what I look like, they will want me. If they wanted someone else then they didn't want me. I know I'm good enough that it's not going to be, “Oh, no, this person is terrible. Why would we work with her?” It's very much centered on what they're looking for on there. I'm a lot more relaxed than I used to be. I used to be so wound up and tried to read their minds. What do they want? Now my attitude is I'm just gonna take advantage of this moment to act because it's not like you get a ton of gigs.
FB I was shocked at how little you have to do in film. It's you. It's just the thoughts that come into your mind, through your eyes, and in your expressions. If you try, you're dead. You're overacting. That was startling to me.
AK It’s completely different and it’s very hard. It’s tough when people will fall down. Sometimes, actors aren't to blame if there's a bad performance in a movie or TV show but nine times out of 10 what that actor is doing is still very, very difficult. It's all the stuff around it, whether it's the lines or whether they were given time with the work before shooting because I don't think people realize how hard it is to do nothing. It's really, really hard.
FB It’s really the thought process. You have to prepare and you have to get in that frame of mind so you're thinking the thoughts that get communicated. Much like writing. You have this idea that you're trying to communicate with a sentence or a paragraph or a Chapter, and you think, “I think I know what I'm feeling and it's just gonna come off the page. Is there any chance this is gonna happen? Probably not.” At least that's how I felt, there's no way they're gonna get this.
AK It’s the best feeling when they do.
FB Both in acting and in writing. When they come back and ask you, “Subtexturally, what was going on for you when you were creating or writing that scene?” And the same thing with acting. It's so effortless, right?
AK Probably in all areas of life, the more effortless the thing looks the more effortful we're not to assume it is. The more impressed we shouldn't be.
FB That's so true. When I was acting, one of my acting coaches said that if you really want to understand the playwright, you have to understand who they are as a person. Read their biographies or learn why they're telling the stories and that will give you hints into the text. Then she had me write the scenes before the scene you're acting as if you were the playwright. That’s what queued me into wanting to write books because I love playwrights and I think the work is remarkable, how so much of it comes through this dialogue. But that experience of writing out the scene before the scene I was acting was what motivated me to start writing.
So I'm curious about you. First, you had English teachers as parents, that seems like a high bar to deal with. It’s in your DNA. Obviously, you started writing. Tell me about writing plays and ultimately how the process of writing a play might inform the actress you are.
AK I love that question. I was always writing things. My dad taught creative writing, so, when I was five, he’d have me do exercises he was doing with his high school students. I was always creating stories and playing make-believe. But when I came to playwriting properly, I had been a drama major for long enough that I'd seen enough scripts that writing plays came from understanding character as an actor. That has also translated into the book writing subsequently, but with writing plays, as you said, they’re generally very dialogue-heavy. That’s really what you have to go off of as an actor and as a director. I think that led to my very, very dialogue-heavy books. Writing dialogue is probably my favorite thing to do in general and specifically in books and then in one of the Bendy books, The Illusion of Living, I literally just put in a short play. So I guess the acting informed the playwriting, which in turn informed the book writing so it does come back to acting for me, being inside the head of the characters and going inside out. I think there are some authors, like your George R.R. Martins or Tolkiens, who might create mythos and world-building and then think about how to tell the story and which characters they need to tell the story. Whereas I generally come from the germ of the character.
FB That makes sense to me as well. Do you say the dialogue? Do you read the dialogue out loud? Do you play the different parts when you're writing a play or prose? Or do you read it to somebody and see how it works or do you just trust it?
AK I can be just going for a walk or something and then start to create a little dialogue in my head. I do a weird sort of humming, which I only realized I did recently. I'm reading not even just dialogue but any words on the page, but I'm not saying the words out loud. So I'm constantly reading out loud, but it's very small. With plays you often workshop and take them out to actor friends. With books, obviously, I have beta readers as you know. My parents, the English teachers.
FB Really? I have two kids and my son is writing essays for college and I’m like, “Hey, do you want me to read your essay?” He goes, “Oh, no, I'm good dad.” Really? You don't want me to take a look at it? I'm a writer.
AK He can take advantage of it.
FB He came around. But I have to be very careful in terms of walking him through any ideas or changes. If I'm too forceful he shuts down. My daughter doesn't show me anything unless she's under a deadline and she's stuck. How were your parents?
AK They're very good high school English teachers and I’m an only child so I was it. They would go, “Oh, this is an interesting idea. Hey, Adrienne, have you heard of it?” Not just when it comes to writing, there was always a lesson to something or an educational component growing up. Having them look over my schoolwork growing up, it's just the next step.
FB You felt they fostered your work and your homework and your creativity, and you didn't really bump up against them because they were good teachers.
AK They're good at being harsh, which is the point. The good thing about my parents when it comes to this is they're very honest. They've always been very good at being that teacherly, “Okay, so I'm not sure this bit works and I'll tell you why.” But they were also so supportive of all my creative endeavors and very proud and impressed by me, which is nice. It also meant that I had confidence in what I was doing. Even though it always hurts, whether it’s editors or your parents, to hear this isn't quite working or they didn't like this bit. That will always be like a dagger. I also had the confidence that generally, my work was good so I kept moving forward. Also since my first book, Alex, I'll say, “No, I disagree. I want to keep going with this.” I've also always had that relationship. It's not, “We're the parents, therefore we're right and you're wrong.” It's always been a conversation.
FB So you’re equals when it comes to the creative process.
AK Maybe when I was a little younger, I probably couldn't have fought but now yes and it's great. So I have my parents and I also have my agent. She's wonderful. Not all agents necessarily edit and they don't necessarily want to, but she's very good. We’ve been together for close to 15 years. She knows my work inside and out and I really respect her thoughts. Again, it's the same vibe as with my parents.
FB That's what a good editor does. My editor made a point of saying, “This is your book. I love everything that you're doing. Now, I'm going to send you a couple of suggestions.” So after softening me up, then the suggestions come and it’s page after page.
AK I think it's called the sandwich method. Praise at the beginning, then you give your critique and then you end with praise. I've definitely had editors use that on me, as well.
FB What was the first thing that you wrote that was really satisfying and gave you that start of confidence? Was there a moment when you said, “I think I want to do this and I can do this?”
AK I have no clue when but my mom and my dad, specifically with his creative writing, started teaching me creative writing. But, from birth, it feels like I've had competence in my storytelling ability. Writing stories in English class in elementary school was always my thing and I always got really good grades. I had all the validation in the world. I did a book with a friend. She and I were both known for our creative writing and it was so popular that the principal got a copy of it. So I've always had that validation. Then throughout high school, I was doing creative writing classes. But in my last year of high school, I wrote a play for a playwriting class. It was probably one of the first one-act plays, a properly structured play that I wrote was chosen for a student-run one-act play festival. All the producers, directors, writers, actors, crew, everybody were students. One of my friends was chosen to be a director and he chose my play and I was cast in the first play of three. So I was there every night and I would sit at the back of the audience for the third play, which was mine, and listen to it being performed.
It’s what we were talking about earlier when you write something and you hope to get an effect. When people laughed at the jokes right on cue as if they were being directed to, I thought, “Is this a better feeling than acting?” I still don't have the answer, but it was really up there. So I became really interested in playwriting at that one, not so much novel writing. Then I went through drama school for university and in my last year of theater school at the University of Toronto I did another playwriting class and it was taught by this incredible Canadian playwright, Janet Sears, whom I'd studied already. It was this great intimate, seven-person class that you submitted writing samples for to get in. The way she structured it was amazing. The class all bonded and we got on great. The assignment was a one-act play and we had these tutorials halfway through the term, as we were in the middle of writing, and we were just chatting and I was saying, “I'm not sure this might be two acts. I don't know.” And she said, “With you, Adrienne if you want to just make this one act for a two-act play, I'll let you do this. Because I think you're really good at this and I know how much you like acting but I hope you keep writing as well.”
I’m paraphrasing but I just remember the moment. Up until that tutorial session my attitude was, “Yeah, I love to write creatively and I guess I'm good at it. But don't we all like to write creatively?” I guess it was the first time a true professional had called me out as having some sort of skill that was at a certain level that I wasn't aware of myself.
FB Those are really clear moments because of the way that you were describing coming out of the womb almost with a notebook and your dad saying, “Let's get to it,” it was just part of who you are. But we all need that validation or that really clear moment where you see the audience responding as if somebody said, “Hey, by the way, the writer is in the audience. So make sure you laugh at these five places.” Then of course you have a professional validate your work.
AK It was everything. I turned my focus to playwriting after that. I went to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and did a yearlong classical acting-specific program. After that, I tried to write some plays to direct and produce but I kept having trouble. So I decided to write a kidlet novel because I really love reading kidlit novels and it was a way to refresh my brain and completely cleanse the palate. It took a year. I’d never actually written more of a novel than 18 pages. So I kept writing and writing and writing and that ended up being my first published novel, Alex and the Ironic Gentleman. So what was supposed to be an interlude sent my career and everything about my life in a completely unexpected direction, which was being a writer of novels.
It sounds so much like actors who accidentally become actors and get the lead in something because they looked right. I never want to give that impression as an author that I just sort of tripped into it. I think telling the history of coming out of the womb and learning how to write, it's been in there the whole time. But it really was a sudden change of trajectory because everything in my head at that point was theater - write a play, direct a play, act in a play. Then Alex came along.
FB Were you writing plays about young adults at the time?
AK No, my plays were entirely about adults. They were sort of absurdist with some shocking moments of violence in them. But I was really into absurd things and I actually did the absurdity thing in Alex and the Ironic Gentleman. It was a very classic children's adventure, episodic adventure, very inspired by Alice in Wonderland. She has her main throughline of trying to go home but then she meets all these weird individuals and has these mini-adventures with them. I really structured the second act of Alex on Alice in Wonderland. Act One was more Roald Dahl-y and then Act Three was very Pirate-y, Peter Pan or Treasure Island. But I had gone from writing total adult stuff to even completely skipping young adult and going straight to middle grade.
FB You said you read a lot of kids' stories growing up or as an adult to relax. Can you share some of those stories with us and what is it about those stories for you?
AK I can talk about kidlit forever. I'm what's called a reluctant reader, which is a term that wasn't around when I was a kid, which is unfortunate because it's tricky to be the daughter of two English teachers and not really want to read. My parents had to do everything to convince me to pick up books but when I did pick one up, I was a voracious reader. I'd read it in a day and then I'd have to read everything by that author because I trusted that I would like that author. But even as an adult, I'm sort of that same way. If I read an adult book, I'm still like, “I don't know, man, I don't think I'm gonna like it.”
But growing up some of the first books that my parents really pushed on me were the Beverly Cleary Ramona books. They’re very entertaining and they're a really easy and fun read. My dad also really loved the adventure books by Enid Blyton. Some elements don't fully stand the test of time but I really glommed onto the adventure part of it. Then as I got a little older I got into Judy Blume. At the same time, my dad would also read to me every night, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Hobbit, and all The Lord of the Rings, and he did all the voices.
My dad also introduced me to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when I was probably 12-13, which changed everything in my brain and really introduced the notion of absurdity and that kind of humor. That’s probably been one of my greater influences. But as I got older, young adult didn't exist as an actual named category but some books featured older protagonists that weren't adults. But you ended up jumping to adult and there were some adult books I enjoyed. I enjoyed Michael Crichton and Agatha Christie. I enjoyed books that had really forward-moving stories. But a lot of adult books I found were depressing and the arcs that the characters go on, by the end, you're like, “Oh, that's sad.”
In my last year of high school, we had an English assignment where we could compare any two books, so I chose Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. I really dug into those and as I was writing it, I realized what I liked. The idea with these kids' books is you're still dealing with big issues and strong emotions. Anyone who thinks there aren't big issues in kidlit hasn’t read any kidlit. They're just being snobs. The emotions are the saturated colors. They're not quite as messy. I like the saturated feelings and regardless of how dark it gets, and some of them get very dark, they always end on a hopeful note. As cynical as I can get with the world, I am, at the core, very optimistic. I believe in hope. So that's why I love reading those books. I kept reading them after high school, like A Series of Unfortunate Events, which sounds like it shouldn't have hope, but I was reading all of them.
FB I was reading the first book, The Bad Beginning, at a fancy resort, and I was by the pool and this woman was sitting next to me and she goes, “What are you reading? Isn't that for, like, elementary kids?” And I said, “No, it's not actually. It's amazing. You should check it out.” But she gave me so much judgment that I was self-conscious after that. I didn't know people across the pool were going to be judging my book. But A Series of Unfortunate Events is a dark story and just brilliantly told. The whole thing that he uses with vocabulary and spelling and spelling out this is what that means, it’s so perfect for kids, but adults can also read it and go, “That's so clever.”
AK I think the best kids' books and kids' media are written and created on two levels. There’s the level of the audience it’s intended for, let's say the eight to 12 audience. But also, especially with books versus a Pixar film, kids' books are one of the last places where we still read out loud, where we still have an oral tradition. We don't do it so much with adult books. I think the way audiobooks have taken off shows how much we love them. But that communal experience of somebody telling a story is rarer and rarer the older you get. When I write kidlit, I keep in mind that there's going to be a teacher or a parent or somebody reading this to kids. I have some parent easter eggs in there, some jokes that probably the kids won't get yet. But also when the kids come back to it when they’re 10-11 or even in their 20s, they're like, “Oh, I didn't get that joke at the time.” I think there's always that nuance and depth.
But even if there weren't any adult jokes, there's just some great stuff in it. If you like the book, the book is meant for you. That's how I feel about this idea of gatekeeping ages. I actually have a more controversial opinion, which is with adult books and kids. There can be some stuff in an adult book that is intense and maybe certain kids shouldn't read it, but there are other kids who are ready for it. As long as you're having a conversation with them, and as long as you're having a parent or teachers talking with the kids and working through possibly more complicated issues, I actually think that's okay.
FB What Pixar does so brilliantly is that it works for kids and adults. They have that four quadrant thing they talk about in marketing, which is why Harry Potter, became the book that was in the young adult section but all adults started reading it. Then it's okay to read this stuff. But nevertheless, you brought up Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, both of which, on the surface, are kids' books, but adults started reading them before any kids probably did, certainly with Alice in Wonderland.
AK That’s the other thing. We, in retrospect, recategorize things. For people categorizing The Outsiders as Y.A., I guess it is. I don't know. But the young adult genre didn't exist (when it was published). I understand the need to find places to shelve things and I think that's important. At the same time, new adult is becoming a marketing category and there's been a lot of conversation about how we've lost the category between middle grade and young adult. By putting labels on things, we can exclude things. I think that's just something we know, in general. There’s a benefit to knowing and understanding what a category means and using that in a positive way but at the same time there are people I know who are trying to be published who have books where the characters are 13-14, or even up to 15, and we have the eight to 12 category. Even though 12 and up is the category for young adults, they want characters that are 16 plus. Because of the need to categorize, there is a wealth of books and writers that are being ignored because we don't know where to put them on the shelf.
FB When The Looking Glass Wars was turned down by everybody in the States, my problem was that the lead character started as seven, the next time we see her she's 12, and then she's 18. It was after Harry Potter and everybody said, “Well, I don't know where this fits, and who did you write it for?” I didn't know that there were categories. The categories were just coming into shape.
I think the middle-grade genre or categorizing middle grade is smart because after doing a lot of school visits, those six-, seven-, and eight-year-olds are looking for somebody to aspire to who's not a teenager. So if you have a 13-year-old character, that's pretty spot on. And they do the lion's share of the reading. They have more time.
AK Yes. So you have teachers and librarians who are reading to them and introducing them to these books. We don't have that as much in high school and we certainly don't get opportunities as adults. I'm not a parent myself, but when people become parents, they get that opportunity again, and they get excited. “We get to go to the library and have somebody read to us.” We should have adult reading time because it's something that's in our DNA. We want to sit around the fire and tell stories.
FB So share with us your theory on Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, because both of these stories have been around a long time. I'm curious when you wrote your paper if you have a theory on why these stories in particular have lasted so long.
AK I had this theory that we were dealing with two main characters, and I'm making Wendy the main character in Peter Pan, who have two completely opposite goals. Wendy’s scared of growing up, but in the end realizes she has to grow up. Whereas I think Alice is feeling frustrated by the grownups and she wants to find a place to belong as a kid. So one character is trying to figure out how to grow up in a way that pleases her and the other one is like, “No, no, I don't want to grow up so fast. I want to stall growing up.” Even though weirdly, Wendy does want to start growing up at the beginning.
But that question of growing up is one of the big reasons they both appeal. Because we've all had our own relationship with growing up. Some people are desperate to get older. I just wanted to be a kid. Teenagers scared me. They scared me when I was a teenager. They still scare me. I respect the heck out of them but they scare me. I liked being a kid and this goes back to the books I like to read. I didn't want to read angsty teen stuff. I didn't want to really read romances. I just wanted to read plot-driven adventures. That's all I wanted. I definitely had desperate friends. “When can I wear makeup? When can I have a boyfriend? When can I be independent?” I think that's very relatable in both Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.
Then on top of that, they’re so specific. I've been talking to a lot of kids lately about writing and I feel like the more specific you make a character, the more universal it becomes. You have these incredible specific characters like Captain Hook and the Queen of Hearts. These very meticulously wrought characters have very specific aesthetic features and personality traits that just spark so much imagination. On top of that, for Alice, people have always played make-believe with their cards and their chess boards, tapping into a very basic form of make-believe. Which you also get with pirates and mermaids. You get a lot of classic make-believe stuff that was also particularly popular, I assume, at the time of the original Peter Pan play. It was stuff that kids of that time enjoyed playing so that made it also relatable.
I think there are so many universal themes in both of them and then the specificity of the characters and how enjoyable they are contributes to both stories’ staying power. It’s so fun.
Take Your Writing to Wonderland: 7 Tips From Bestselling Authors
Writing is often a daunting proposition. Whether it’s a novel, screenplay, blog article, or even just an email, staring at that blank page can be paralyzing. Self-doubt can be demoralizing. Sometimes, it’s surprising that people can finish anything at all. How do published authors work through the pitfalls of writers to finish (and rewrite) their books?
That’s where we’re here to help. Through Frank’s years of doing comic cons, and introducing the world to The Looking Glass Wars, he’s been on numerous panels where writing is a main topic of discussion. The following article was constructed from his appearance on a panel at the 2015 Salt Lake Comic-Con (Link to Video when published), where he was part of an all-star lineup featuring some of the biggest names in Y.A. and Middle-Grade sci-fi/fantasy. These writers dished out indispensable writing advice that will help you fill up your blank page and take your writing to the next level.
“I want you to go out and I want you to find your favorite book, the book that made you want to become a writer. Get a fresh copy of that book because you're going to destroy it. Go through the book the way a writer would read it. You’re going to highlight every single scene that you love. Then get your pen and start breaking that scene apart. Ask yourself, why does this work? What did my very favorite author do right? As soon as you can break that book apart and understand why it’s your favorite and understand what that author did right, you are going to know exactly what you want to put into your own writing to make yourself better.”
Jennifer Nielson is the prolific scribe of 17 novels, so it’s safe to say she knows what she’s talking about. Her debut, The New York Times Bestselling YA fantasy novel The False Prince, is the first book of the Ascendance Series, which follows an orphan who is trained to impersonate a missing prince. She has also written six YA historical fiction books, including A Night Divided, about a family that is separated by the Berlin Wall.
“I wrote my book, I picked up an agent very quickly, and we sold it very quickly. I think it was all because I was convinced this was a book that would never sell. I wrote it thinking, I'm just gonna write what I think would be funny for me to read to my kids, and my kids would like it and I would think it's entertaining. I didn't think about the industry. I didn't think about what was popular. I wasn't trying to emulate anything. I was actually just going to write a book and then get that out of my head. Then I knew I could write a book and then I was going to write a book that could actually get published. I think in the end, that served me the best because I wasn't true to anything other than my own voice and what I wanted to do, and it seemed to work out well.”
Platte F Clark is the author of the middle-grade comedic fantasy Bad Unicorn trilogy. Called “deviously enjoyable” by Publisher’s Weekly, the series follows Max Spencer and his band of misfit friends as they’re hunted by a homicidal unicorn.
“My first novel, I had no experience with middle grade. I didn't know anything about it, I was just writing. The protagonist starts off at seven, and then she's 11, and then she's 19. That was a big problem in selling the book but the book got published and people still read it and love it. Sometimes going in, ignorance is bliss. In my case, that happens a lot. But my advice is a little trick that I have when I'm writing and I'm into it and I have a really good scene. I don't ever finish it. I put it down at the end of the day. So that the next morning when I start writing again, I know exactly what I'm going to start writing because I'm already in it. I know what I'm finishing and it just seems to set the whole day.”
It’s probably pretty safe to assume that, if you’re reading this, you know who Frank Beddor is. But let’s recap just to be safe. Frank is a former world champion skier who also produced the hit comedy There’s Something About Mary. His New York Times Bestselling trilogy, The Looking Glass Wars, exposes the true story of Wonderland and chronicles Alyss Heart, heir to the throne of Wonderland, as she fights to regain her crown from her evil aunt, Queen Redd. Beddor has added to the Wonderverse over the years with the Hatter M graphic novel series and the middle-grade novel, Hatter Madigan: Ghost in the H.A.T.B.O.X.
“I spent a lot of time stressing and worrying about getting my best ideas on paper. It wasn't until I finally said, “You know what? I'm spending too much time on finding my best ideas. What effect can make my worst ideas work?” So, I started going to my worst ideas, the ones that just seemed the dumbest and stupid, and I went with them and I grew and I pushed it and I thought, “How creative can I be?” Those best ideas that I had were not as good as those worst ideas because of all the care and all the energy that I put into them. It sometimes takes stepping away from waiting for that perfect idea to show up in that moment of brilliance, and kind of just forcing yourself to be brilliant with some of the bad ideas that you already have.”
Michael Jensen is the author of Woven, a fantasy novel about a young ghost who teams with a spoiled princess to unravel the mystery of his murder and find an ancient needle with the magical power to mend that which has been torn. Publisher’s Weekly called Woven a “charming quest tale” while Kirkus Reviews deemed it a “sure bet for high-fantasy fans”.
“I always say whatever ideas scare you the most, whichever idea feels like it's gonna be the hardest to write, that's usually the one. In fact, both of my series were ones where I thought, ‘I don't know if I'm good enough to write that book.’
The note that I seem to give most often when I’m critiquing new middle-grade work is that the writer tends to forget that the kids need to be the hero of the story. I don't just mean having a kid as the main character. I mean that you’re reading the book and things are going along, and then you get to the climax and the kid’s solution is they go to an adult, and the adult fixes things for them, and that’s the end of the story. But it's middle grade, the kid is supposed to be the hero. How different would it have been if Dumbledore was the one who always stepped in and saved things, instead of letting Harry be the hero? I've even seen that in Y.A. drafts but it’s especially common when I'm reading middle-grade drafts. I see that a lot with newer writers. It's like that adult sense steps in, and it's not that they've dumbed down the writing or anything like that, but when they're trying to figure out how to solve the plot, they rely on adults more than their kid characters. Really, really remember that you're writing for kids. Let the kids be the hero of the story.”
Shannon Messenger is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Keeper of the Lost Cities series, which follows a twelve-year-old Telepath who is forced to leave her earthly home and move to the Lost Cities, where fantasy creatures of all races live. Messenger has also written the Sky Fall series, in which a seventeen-year-old wind spirit falls in love with his bodyguard and battles an evil rival.
“The best advice I could give to any writer, whether it's middle grade, Y.A., whatever you're writing, is to finish what you start. No one ever really writes a great book. You write a book that you then fix to make as good as you possibly can. I see so many people who are stuck in the middle of a draft, or redrafting or rewriting something and not actually finishing it. You need to finish so that you and your readers, or an editor or an agent have a sense of the entire story that you're trying to tell. Then you have something that you can actually shape. Sometimes that shaping is small, sometimes it's going to be huge.
I was six books into the Imaginarium Geographica series and one of my best editors at Simon & Schuster said, “There's something that isn't working for this, and here's how I think we should fix it. What do you think?” And I said, “You are absolutely right.” The solution was, what was originally the prologue in that book became the epilogue and I removed a major character who was in every single chapter. I had to rewrite the entire book. It was excruciating, very excruciating. All along the way you're giving up lines because now there are conversations that are gone and you can't repurpose those, you can't just replace it with another character, because he's built into the story you're telling. My editor was right. We could have pushed it out. I could have been a prima donna and said, “Well, this is the sixth book and you got what you're getting and I'm going to Disneyland.” But she was right and the book was better because we made those changes. Because of those changes, the seventh book in the series, The First Dragon, was the one that was most technically flawless. I had seven lines in my editor's letter for that book and a note that said, “Apparently, after seven books, you've got this down.” That's all I got.”
James A. Owen is best known as the author of The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series, which features fictionalized versions of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams who find themselves in possession of a book that holds maps to the worlds of our literary heritage. Owen is also the creator of the comic book series Starchild.
“When I get an editorial letter, I read it and then I take 48 hours off because I'm so depressed. I just watch movies and sit around and mope. Then usually after that 48 hours, I start to realize it's not as bad as I first felt. Every time you just start thinking, “This is going to be the one where you get, ‘Wow, this book’s actually perfect. I don't have any changes for you.’
I am terrible at writing advice. It's hard for me to articulate how I write books. But one thing that always stands out to me is, and it might be obvious but, it is all about the characters. Face up and make your characters the most important thing that you throw all your devotion into. Every book I've ever loved is because I fell in love with and made a connection with the characters. I felt anxious to just even hear them have regular conversations. I just felt like it was there. I grew to care for them and love them. If you just have these really shallow characters and they're all exactly the same, when they have an action scene and they die, you'd be like, “I don't care. I hope this guy dies. He's boring as heck.” Just setting cannot overcome weak characters. Action and suspense cannot overcome weak characters. The most beautiful prose ever written by a human cannot overcome weak characters. So really, really focus on your characters as you write your books and make people care about them.”
With over 21 million books sold, James Dashner is the author of The Maze Runner novels, a Y.A. dystopian science fiction series set in a world devastated by a succession of solar flares and coronal mass ejections. The books spawned a popular film trilogy that grossed nearly $1 billion at the box office. Dashner’s other work includes Y.A. sci-fi series The 13th Reality and The Mortality Doctrine. The Godhead Complex, the seventh book in The Maze Runner series, was released in November 2023.
Meet The Author:
An itinerant storyteller, John Drain attended the University of Edinburgh before studying film at DePaul University in Chicago and later earned an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute Conservatory. John focuses on writing mysteries and thrillers featuring characters who are thrown into the deep end of the pool and struggle to just keep their heads above water. His work has been recognized by the Academy Nicholls Fellowship, the Austin Film Festival, ScreenCraft, Cinestory, and the Montreal Independent Film Festival. In a previous life, John created and produced theme park attractions across the globe for a wide variety of audiences. John keeps busy in his spare time with three Dungeons and Dragons campaigns and a seemingly never-ending stack of medieval history books.
Alice in Wonderland: A Timeless Journey Through Generations & Pop Culture
Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" has, since its publication in 1865, remained an enduring touchstone in the cultural imagination. Far more than a children's story, Alice's tumble down the rabbit hole has been reimagined, repurposed, and reinterpreted by countless artists, filmmakers, musicians, and even political thinkers.
The very fact that the tale of a young girl's journey through a fantastical world filled with bizarre characters can morph into a reflection of various generational ethos and societal issues is a testament to its universality. This blog explores how "Alice in Wonderland" has represented different generations and flourished in the ever-changing realm of pop culture.
The Victorians and the Original Alice
For the Victorians, Alice's journey resonated with the socio-political transformations of the era. The Industrial Revolution had altered the landscape, and Alice's navigation of Wonderland could be seen as a reflection of the tumultuous changes and the loss of innocence of the time. This generation saw in Alice a challenge to established norms, where strict societal rules were juxtaposed against the absurdities of Wonderland.
Alice and the Nostalgic Innocence of the '50s in a Swiftly Changing World
In the 1950s, an era often viewed with a sepia-toned sentimentality as a period of post-war optimism, prosperity, and quintessential values, Alice from Wonderland emerged as an emblem of the decade's unblemished innocence. With her classic pinafore dress, wide-eyed wonderment, and the unjaded curiosity of youth, she encapsulated the idealized child of the '50s—a symbol of purity and simplicity amidst the shadows of a world reshaped by war. Her adventures, and misadventures, in Wonderland echoed the harmless explorations of a generation who, despite the protective bubble of post-war euphoria, had to confront a rapidly evolving landscape.
The character of the White Rabbit, perpetually anxious and always seemingly a step behind time, becomes a particularly poignant allegory for this era. His frantic proclamation, "I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!" could easily symbolize the generation's attempt to keep pace with a swiftly changing post-World War II society. There was a palpable rush, a need to rebuild, and perhaps, in shielding Alice's innocence, a desire to protect the youth from the brutalities and horrors of war that had just passed.
However, as Alice delves deeper into Wonderland, the question arises: Were they already "late" with the looming specter of the Cold War? Were they inadvertently plunging into another rabbit hole of geopolitical tensions and nuclear anxieties? Alice, in all her innocence, becomes a reflection not just of individual childhood, but of a generation teetering on the edge of newfound peace and emerging global threats.
The Counter-Culture Movement and the Psychedelic 60s & 70s
Alice's trip to Wonderland began to symbolize a different kind of trip altogether. The 1960s saw the rise of the counterculture movement, with its advocacy for peace, love, and psychedelic exploration. Songs like Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" directly drew from Alice's narrative, equating her explorations with the mind-expanding properties of psychedelic drugs. This generation viewed Alice's journey as a metaphor for breaking free from societal constraints and seeking deeper truths, often aided by hallucinogenic experiences.
The 80's: Nostalgia Takes Hold
The 1980s, saw a resurgence of interest in classic tales, as the post-War generation sought solace in nostalgia. Disney's animated adaptation from 1951 found renewed popularity, and various merchandise, from clothing to toys featuring Alice and her Wonderland friends, began to flood the market. For this generation, Alice represented a return to a simpler time, a reprieve from the fast-paced world of technological advancements.
The 90s and Alice's Tech-Laden Wonderland
In the 1990s, as technology burgeoned with the advent of personal computers and the early Internet, "Alice in Wonderland" was interpreted anew.
Our evolving relationship with technology saw Alice not just as a nostalgic figure, but as a guide through the increasingly complex digital realm. The 'rabbit hole' came to represent the vast, intricate web of the internet, a world with its own set of rules, mirroring Wonderland's surrealism. Films like "The Matrix" played with this concept — drawing parallels between Neo's red pill and Alice's descent, both awakening to a reality (or lack thereof) hidden behind the veneer of the everyday.
The underlying anxiety of the '90s tech surge was palpable: as we plunged deeper into the digital age, would the flood of information strip away our comforting illusions, much like Alice's realizations in Wonderland? The fear wasn't just of technology itself but of the potential revelations it might bring.
21st Century: Alice in the Digital Age
The digital era, characterized by the rapid evolution of technology and the Internet's prevalence, has presented its unique take on Alice. Video games like "American McGee's Alice" offer a darker, more twisted version of Wonderland, echoing the complexities of the modern world. Simultaneously, movies like Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" (2010) blend nostalgia with contemporary CGI wizardry, catering to both old fans and a new generation experiencing the tale for the first time.
Online platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram see creators taking inspiration from Alice to craft content that ranges from makeup tutorials to social commentaries, reinforcing Alice's adaptability and relevance in the digital age.
In recent years, as global challenges have intensified—from political upheavals to environmental crises—the line between the fantastical world of Wonderland and our reality has blurred. A dystopian vision of Wonderland has emerged, one that mirrors our societal anxieties.
Shows like "Alice in Borderland" highlight a distorted, perilous version of Wonderland, where the stakes are life and death, reflecting the existential threats many feel in today's unpredictable world. This new portrayal taps into the collective consciousness that grapples with a future filled with uncertainties. The twisted landscapes and characters of Wonderland are no longer just the whimsical concoctions of Carroll's mind; they have become eerily reflective of our present-day society. Alice's navigation through this challenging realm serves as an allegory for our collective attempt to find clarity, hope, and resilience in an increasingly complex and oftentimes bewildering world.
The Looking Glass Wars: Dystopian Wonderland as a Reflection of Our Reality
In my own work, "The Looking Glass Wars", Wonderland is not the idyllic escape presented in the Lewis Carroll original but a reflection of our tumultuous world. The White Rabbit, reimagined as Bibwit Harte, serves not merely as a herald of oddities but as a mentor and guide through the intricate mazes of warfare reminiscent of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, coups echoing the January 6th Capitol attack, and the perplexing realms of current politics.
The juxtaposition of light and dark imagination in this retelling mirrors the dualities we face in our world: hope versus despair, unity versus division, and truth versus delusion. It's a powerful reminder that imagination isn't a preserve of the innocent but a tool, accessible and moldable, by both the benevolent dreamer and the nefarious schemer. Thus, cultivating and understanding one's imagination becomes not just a flight of fancy, but a requisite for personal and collective survival.
In my retelling, Wonderland and our world aren't separate, but intertwined through a two-sided rabbit hole - a portal where realities bleed into one another. No longer do characters need to 'fall' into Wonderland; they can pull its eccentricities and wonders into our realm, creating a hybridized world. It plays with the premise that Wonderland isn't mere fiction but a tangible, intertwined reality. The tale suggests that Carroll didn't invent Wonderland; he merely misunderstood its essence.
Today, echoes of my Wonderland can be witnessed in our reality. Its inhabitants aren't confined to pages but are vividly present on TikTok, tweeting their peculiarities on Twitter, or snarling at awestruck fans at Comic-Con. They wander among us, with a defiant proclamation: "Wonderland is real!" It's not just a fantasy. It's a eye-opener, the truth needs to come out.
What is it about Alice's tale that makes it so adaptable and relevant across generations? Perhaps it's the blend of whimsy and depth, the mix of absurd humor and poignant reflection. Maybe it's the universally relatable theme of a young person trying to make sense of a nonsensical world.
No matter the reason, "Alice in Wonderland" has showcased a unique ability to represent different generations, evolving in tandem with societal shifts and cultural trends. As long as, society continues to change and grow, Alice's journey, in its myriad forms, will remain an essential part of our cultural tapestry, echoing our collective experiences, dreams, fears, and hopes.
Why Stories Last? The Cultural Impact of Storytelling
Recently I was a guest on the podcast Legendarium with Craig Hanks—and he prompted the question “Why do stories last?” We had a wonderful conversation, which inspired this blog. Check out my conversation with Craig!
Stories endure because they are the timeless bridges connecting us across generations, cultures, and experiences. Great stories resonate because they echo the universal truths and emotions that bind humanity together. Through tales, we navigate shared dreams, fears, and aspirations, creating a collective tapestry of understanding and connection.
These recurring themes act as a shared touchstone, reinforcing values, beliefs, and societal norms that shape culture. By revisiting these motifs, communities strengthen their collective identity and perpetuate the core principles that unite us. Understood completely or not, becomes folklore…creating a suspended debrief; a new reality for a new generation…borrowing from the past and making them their own…a form of branded history.
It’s based upon the uniquely human capacity to classify experiences, symbolically and then to share them…the process through which an older generation induces and compels a younger generation. Cultural myth holds a paramount place in storytelling because it embodies a society's deepest values, hopes, and understanding of the world and its origins.
These myths offer a lens through which communities interpret their past, navigate their present, and envision their future; they provide a shared framework that binds individuals together, allowing them to derive meaning, purpose, and a sense of belonging.
By incorporating these myths into stories, authors tap into universal truths and emotions, creating narratives that resonate deeply with readers, even transcending the original cultural context to appeal to broader audiences. Furthermore, these myths often serve as archetypes, forming the backbone for countless narratives and ensuring the continuity of cultural wisdom and tradition across generations.
The importance of realism amid such heightened realities in worlds of fantasy, (J.R.R. Tolkien most famously) makes characters, specifically heroes and their powers, when stripped away, real to an audience that wants to believe that these people really do exist. This transformation is a blurring of ‘reality’ fantasy.
"Lord of the Rings," endures thanks to being a timeless exploration of universal themes: the battle between good and evil, the corrupting nature of power, the value of friendship and sacrifice. Hanging its hat on the enduring hope that even in the darkest times, light can prevail.
Tolkien's richly constructed Middle-earth, lovingly crafted over a lifetime with its own histories, languages, and cultures, provides an immersive escape for readers, yet simultaneously holds a mirror to our own world. It is a reflection of both the beauty and its flaws of our true reality. The characters' struggles with duty and destiny are deeply relatable, reminding readers of the strength and resilience of the human (and hobbit) spirit.
As modern society grapples with complex issues like environmental degradation and the erosion of community, Tolkien's emphasis on the sanctity of nature and the importance of unity and fellowship becomes even more affecting. The saga, in essence, is a testament to the idea that even the smallest individual can make a profound difference-- a message just as valuable today as the day it was penned. It shall remain relevant in any era to come.
"Alice in Wonderland," still resonates because it delves into the fluidity of reality, identity, and logic, themes that are ever-relevant in our constantly evolving world. Carroll's whimsical narrative allows readers to question and challenge the conventions and norms of society, echoing the universal journey of self-discovery and the quest for understanding in an often perplexing world.
Alice's adventures, filled with bizarre characters and absurd scenarios, mirror the unpredictable and sometimes chaotic nature of life, emphasizing the importance of adaptability, curiosity, and resilience. The story's trancelike quality and its celebration of imagination serve as a reminder that there is magic in the mundane and that questioning the "conventional" can lead to weighty insights.
In an era where individuality, self-expression, and challenging the status quo are more celebrated than ever, "Alice in Wonderland" stands as a poignant investigation of the boundaries of reality and the infinite realms of human imagination that has been playing out for generations.
Alice still matters today. Alice in Wonderland is primarily set in an upside-down world where chaos and randomness rule and nothing makes sense to the practical, stoic little girls who found herself marooned there. The world she encounters is threatening and unfamiliar, yet she navigates it, she challenges it, she triumphs and eventually, she returns home.
Alice has been read by multiple generations, so it captures a large part of our shared imaginative history. People who are adept at plumbing the zeitgeist are using our shared imaginative history of the Alice story, iconography to simultaneously reflect the chaotic world we live in (fear) and marry it to the comfort and reassurance of a childhood fairytale (escape and hope).
What Alice means to me and maybe others…Alice’s journey down the rabbit hole represents escape; escape into fantasy because reality can sometimes be a prison. Alice has endured and thrived through the decades for one reason, yes, its classic literature, but it is powered by pure and fierce imagination that has bound Alice into the psyche of generations.
Imagination is the root of all creation, nothing that has ever been or will ever exist without first being imagined. Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.”Also, Alice is a traveler, bombarded with oddities and weirdness at every turn, but she never loses her head. (Pardon the pun)
We relate to her journey; we can channel her when the world around us begins to collapse into chaos. For too many people, today’s world is upside down, chaotic, and random. We hope to be as stoic and courageous as she is exploring Wonderland.
"The Wizard of Oz" continues to resonate today because it encapsulates the timeless themes of self-discovery, the longing for home, and the realization that we often possess the strength and qualities we seek externally, within ourselves. Dorothy's journey from the gray plains of Kansas to the technicolor world of Oz parallels the universal quest for adventure and understanding, only to recognize the inherent value and comfort of home and familiar surroundings.
The diverse cast of characters she encounters—each with their own insecurities and desires—mirror our own vulnerabilities and yearnings, emphasizing the human need for companionship, courage, love, and intellect. The story's central message, that we often have the power within us to overcome our challenges and that the things we desire most are sometimes right where we started, remains a powerful reminder of self-worth and resilience.
In an age of endless quests for external validation and fulfillment, "The Wizard of Oz" serves as a poignant reminder that sometimes, the answers we seek are already within us.
"The Chronicles of Narnia" is relatable today as it melds profound spiritual allegories with universal themes of courage, friendship, sacrifice, and the eternal conflict between good and evil. C.S. Lewis created an immersive world where ordinary children are thrust into roles of significance, emphasizing the idea that anyone, regardless of age or background, can rise to greatness when faced with challenges.
Not only might you be “the one” – but you could be the one regardless of pre-destiny. The adventures in Narnia evoke a sense of awe, tapping into the age-old human desire to explore and belong to a world greater than our own, where the boundaries between reality and fantasy smudge. Furthermore, the struggles of the Pevensie siblings and their companions, set against the backdrop of Narnian prophecies and battles, mirror our own familiar internal and societal battles, underscoring the importance of faith, redemption, and the resilience of the human spirit. In a world where complexities continue to grow and moral compasses are continually tested, Narnia remains a beacon, reminding readers of all ages of the enduring power of hope, love, and the potential for magic in everyday life.
"Star Wars,” also lasts because it masterfully interweaves timeless themes of good versus evil, the hero's journey, and the internal struggles of identity and destiny, set against the vast backdrop of a galaxy brimming with lore and wonder.
George Lucas's vision tapped into foundational human stories, borrowing elements from ancient myths, religious narratives, and classic tales of adventure, thus grounding the space opera in a tapestry of universally recognizable motifs. The saga's exploration of the Force—a metaphysical energy binding all living things—echoes our age-old fascination with the balance of light and dark, choice and fate, and the larger questions of purpose and interconnectedness.
Moreover, the diverse cast of characters, from farm boy Luke Skywalker to Princess Leia, and rogue Han Solo to the conflicted Darth Vader, showcases a range of human experiences, dilemmas, and aspirations, allowing viewers from varied backgrounds to find personal resonance.
In a world that often feels fragmented, "Star Wars" celebrates unity, resistance against tyranny, the power of hope, and the belief that anyone, from any corner of the galaxy, can rise to make a monumental difference.
