I've covered both Dracula and The Phantom of the Opera (the books, obv), with Justin Fraser on the Wordy Pair Podcast, but I thought it might be fun to contrast them with each other in a bit more detail, so that's what I'm gonna do here (and in the video above).
Both of these books are classics of the Gothic Horror genre, yet they are about as different as can be!
I recently re-read Massacre of Mankind, an official sequel to H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds that was published in 2017, written by Stephen Baxter. It's a decent book, and Justin Fraser and I talk about it on this episode of The Wordy Pair Podcast.
This video was inspired by an episode of The Wordy Pair Podcast where Justin told me about "Beetlejuice" and its sequel, "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice."
Now, I've never seen either of those movies, so Justin ends up explaining how the fun, playful tone of the first movie was completely absent from the second movie. It's honestly kind of fun when I ask a basic question or put forward a rudimentary suggestion and Justin is like, "They didn't do that."
Anyway, based on this, I made a video talking about the importance of continuity (including continuity of tone), as well as thinking up some circumstances where you can get away with paying less attention to previous works.
Adapting a work from one medium to another is a difficult and not-necessarily-straightforward task.
I gotta say, I'm really proud of the most recent episode of the Wordy Pair Podcast. It's hilarious and it breaks down this really awful post about context cues, of all things. Somebody took a really basic, grade-school English topic and turned it into a confusing mess.
Halfway through, we started thinking it might be an AI article, and by the end, we decided AI would probably be clearer and make fewer mistakes!
If you want something fun and funny about writing to listen to, check it out!
You can find the whole series here. Whether you're a reader or a writer or even a movie watcher, you'll find something fun!
I always forget to mention this, but a friend of mine (who is also a writer) and I have a weekly podcast about writing, reading, and media. We're "The Wordy Pair!" (See, it's a pun off of the old Japanese sci-fi novels/TV show "The Dirty Pair")
The most recent episode had a bunch of really funny moments, as well as a really solid discussion of many of the really common things that slow down a writer.
Come for the comedy, stay for the advice.
