A Conversation with Karen Traviss

Question: Your new novel, The Clone Wars, is an adaptation of the animated film set for release in August. What's it like to write an adaptation? How do you turn the script into a novel, and do you have any freedom at all in terms of plot and characters?

Karen Traviss: The words "based on" mean just that — in fact, the phrase "very loosely based" would probably comply better with the UK's Trades Descriptions Act!

It's an animated feature film, and this is a novel, so the book can't be the same as the movie; there's already a gulf between what works in movies and what works in books anyway; you have two completely different products. Readers expect (and need) much more complexity and much deeper characterisation, and they're more demanding of plot logic - you have to tweak plots, because what is convincing to people watching a visual spectacle in a cinema very often doesn't work at all in print. And, inevitably, there's only so much movies can ever cover — they can never, ever see inside a character's head like a novel can. They have what's known as an omniscient viewpoint, and my books are all very tight third-person POV. So it's as different as chalk and cheese.

I'm pretty process-driven when I tackle a job like this, so I read the script, noted the main plot points, then worked out how I was going to cover the ground so that it started and ended in the same place as the movie and hit the same plot beats. Then I just...wrote it.

Now that movies are available on DVD, people buy books to get an experience that's different from what they can see on screen. They don't need or want a print version of the movie. They want something extra. It's my job to see they get it.

Q: The animated film is kicking off the new Clone Wars animated TV series. Does this new series pick up where the old Clone Wars series left off?

KT: No, it doesn't. It covers the same ground, although some of the continuity in the movie has changed from that in the last CW animated series. Because this is such familiar territory to SW fans —- I wanted to give them some things they'd never seen before. So they'll see the characters from a whole new perspective. Jabba, Ventress and Dooku may be a big surprise for some readers, as will some of the droids.


Q: Are you going to be involved in the new series–perhaps more novels set in this era of the Star Wars universe?

KT: I'm doing three of the five books from this series, with the other two being written by my good friend Karen Miller. It's a lot of fun to work with a buddy, and especially with someone who has the same take on fiction — that it's about character, character, and more character. We spend hours on the phone having debates about the psychology of the characters — often at weird hours, because she's in Australia and I'm in the UK.

Full interview

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