Guest Post: Tied Up, Tied In, and Tied In Knots — On Media Tie-In Writing with Bobby Nash

Editor’s note: We are pleased and honored to welcome Bobby Nash to Speculative Chic today! His article needs no introduction from us, so we will simply step aside and let him take it away.

We’ve all done it. We’ve all thought up an idea for a story we would like to see one of our favorite characters tackle and think to ourselves how much fun it would be to write those characters.

We’ve all done it, right?

I know I did. As a kid, when my mom banished me to the barren no man’s land we called the back yard, I would reenact episodes from the TV shows I had watched recently. I went on many missions with Colonel Steve Austin, Captain James T. Kirk, Batman, Buck Rogers, and Ponch and John. Eventually, you get tired of recreating what you’ve already seen and you start cooking up new adventures, putting the characters into new situations they might not encounter on the small screen. That’s where my first taste of storytelling was born.

As I got older, I discovered comic books and then novels based on TV series and movies. It was exciting to get more stories featuring these characters I loved. I thought it would be fun to write one of these kinds of stories one day.

Eventually, I got my wish.

Media tie-in writing is a fairly successful industry. You can find novels, comic books, story books, picture books, video games, and more based on popular television and movie franchises. Science-fiction TV shows tend to spawn tie-in fiction often. I don’t know which started the phenomenon, but my guess is that it had Star in the title. Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, and more have spawned many tie-in pieces of fiction, but so have shows like CSI, NCIS, Castle, Veronica Mars, and more.

You’re probably wondering what goes into writing a tie-in story. This is my experience working in the tie-in arena. Others may have different experiences.

My introduction to writing a tie-in character came when I was offered the opportunity to pitch a short story based on the 1966 television series The Green Hornet. The Green Hornet was a TV series based on the old Green Hornet radio drama. The show was produced by the same folks who were bringing the Adam West Batman series to air. The Green Hornet starred Van Williams as the Green Hornet/Britt Reid and Bruce Lee as Kato and ran for one season.

Writing tie-in fiction professionally has one big drawback over creating new stories for the characters as a fan. I mentioned earlier that I would often have characters in unique situations. As a fan, that was fine. As a professional writer, there are some restrictions.

One of the first rules of writing tie-in fiction is keeping the story within the bounds of the original stories. You are building on top of what the original property does, but it still has to feel like it’s part of that same property. In that respect, even though fans were well aware of certain story aspects, they still had to be repeated. After all, we were technically creating new episodes of the series so there had to be some sort of continuity. That also meant that, at the end of the story, I had to leave the characters exactly as I found them, ready for the next writer to take the reins and tell his or her story. That excludes certain plots right out of the gate. Sure, it would be fun to show Green Hornet and Casey consummate their love and become a couple, perhaps get married and start a family. The only way to tell that story would be if you could reset it at the end. That’s easier to do in a science-fiction setting like Star Trek, where time is changed and then corrected at the end of the episode so that those events didn’t happen. In Green Hornet’s world, things are a bit more realistic so that story is a harder sell.

I made my pitch. It had to be 350 words. No more. Normally, you pitch an to editor or publisher and projects are approved or not. With a tie-in novel, extra steps are involved. Once the publisher approved my pitch, it was then sent to the owners of the license, in this case, the owners of The Green Hornet. They also had to approve the pitch. In some newer properties, the showrunners, producers, and sometimes actors get input on projects. My pitch was approved with only a few notes to remember and I set about writing my story.

Getting the green light to write my story came with a series bible: a guideline to the characters and situations, what I could do, what I couldn’t do, what had to happen in each story, what parts of Green Hornet history were accessible and which were not (no Batman or Lone Ranger appearances, for example, even though both of them are tied to the character). I set about writing my story, watching episodes of the series to make sure I got the voices and details right, and having a ball. At the end of the day, my story passed through edits with only a handful of changes, mostly minor things. The licensor also signed off and the book went to print.

I’m often asked if it’s harder or easier to write tie-in or pre-existing characters than original creations. That’s a hard question to ask. You still tell a story the same way you tell a story, but there are more approval steps in tie-in fiction. The big thing to remember is that these are not your toys. You’re being allowed to play with them, but you can’t break them. I couldn’t have the Green Hornet lose an arm, for example, unless I found a plausible way to reattach it by the end of the story. Same with the setting. I couldn’t blow up the city of Detroit because the next writer would need it intact.

Writing tie-in fiction is fun for me as a writer. Not only does it allow me to play with characters I know and love, but the characters come with an audience who might be seeing my work for the first time. As a writer, reaching a new audience is never a bad thing.

Since writing that first Green Hornet tale, I have worked on a few other media tie-in stories. They continue to be fun and sometimes challenging, but always satisfying. I hope to be able to write more.

An award-winning author, Bobby Nash writes novels, comic books, short stories, novellas, graphic novels, and the occasional screenplay for a variety of publishers. Bobby is a member of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers and International Thriller Writers. On occasion, Bobby appears in movies and TV shows, usually standing behind your favorite actor. For more information on Bobby Nash please visit him at www.bobbynash.com, www.ben-books.com, and across social media.