Five incredibly prolific young adult writers descended on the Marriott A707 Saturday 11:30AM “Writing YA for Hire” panel for a discussion one of the most exciting subgenres in the field—“intellectual property” (IP), which represent books that are written for other established properties. While all five of the authors on the panel, C.B. Lee, Delilah S. Dawson, Wesley Chu, Diana Peterfreund, and Mari Mancusi have published their own books based on original stories and material, they have also found success writing for properties from a variety of companies including LucasFilms, Disney, Netflix, and Microsoft.
The panelists shared a variety of stories on how they got started writing for other properties. Author (and occasional stuntman) Wesley Chu told two such anecdotes including having drinks with author Holly Black who was good friends with the author of the Shadowhunter series, Cassandra Clare. This chance encounter eventually led him to write a few books in the Shadowhunter world. Similarly, Chu also spoke about attending a party and meeting The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman. Kirkman asked him if the zombie apocalypse started, how would it play out in Asia. Chu explained how he saw it happening with the response of the government, the media, and the people based on cultural differences. This, in turn, led him to writing several pieces in the Walking Dead universe.
In a similar vein, Delilah Dawson was attending a writer’s conference in Macon, Georgia, when she mentioned to another author about how much she wanted to write a Star Wars story. A few months later, she found herself offered a gig writing for Kindle Worlds and the world of IP writing. Once her agent found that she was interested in IP, she eventually got her wish to write her own take on the George Lucas characters. She also got to dabble in the Hellboy universe thanks to meeting Christopher Golden and Jonathan Maberry at a past Dragon Con.
Following up on this, Mari Mancusi, author of the recent Wednesday cookbook, based on the Addams Family series from Netflix, encouraged writers to make sure their agents know that they want to work with other IPs. “Be a pain in the ass!” she encouraged while also saying that they should take to social media and post about their love for certain properties as this might attract the attention of editors looking for new writers who can meet the strict deadlines of this style of writing.
On this point, the panelists agreed that IP writing may not be for everyone. Most of the time, they have to finish a book of at least 100,000 words in about two months with little time for edits and proofing. However, they did all agree that editing for IP is actually much easier because the publishing houses are the ultimate deciders of what happens to their intellectual property. None of the authors are going to argue with Disney or George Lucas that they know more about the characters than the original creators. They simply have to sign off on the edits because the bosses writing the checks say what they want to happen with their characters.
Another type of IP writing, film novelizations, can be fun but they come with some downfalls. Diana Peterfreund told an anecdote about writing a novelization in which she included scenes that were eventually cut from the film. She advocated that the fans wanted to read novelizations because they often included extra details like deleted scenes. When the publisher disagreed, the novelization was published with no extra scenes and the reviews from fans were very negative because of that. This led to a major drawback to IP writing—the rabid nature of the fans. Because these fans have pre-existing emotional attachments to the characters and stories, they feel that authors sometimes don’t do those stories justice and get pretty upset.
In fact, most of the panel spoke of receiving death threats. C.B. Lee spoke about the positive outpouring from Star Wars fans who appreciated the addition of queer characters to that universe, but this led to death threats from others. Many of these authors also have to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) which prevents them from speaking out on fan sites or replying to negative reviews. Dawson even spoke about how one publisher made her take courses on how to lock down and secure material to prevent it from leaking out prior to publication.
The authors were also very eager to promote their upcoming books, including Delilah Dawson’s Marvel project Thor & Loki: Epic Tales from Marvel Mythology, which releases September 16th and which features the two superhero/gods trying to one up each other in a collection of stories from the original Norse Myths. Diana Peterfreund was also eager to show off new cover art for her next book series Ellen Poe: The Forgotten Lore, about a girl who is haunted by the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, which will be released in April.
This panel was informative and fun. The audience enjoyed the banter, the stories, and the information, and the panelists were incredibly gracious and entertaining. What a fantastic way to spend an hour.
