Preparing my Thesis Proposal on What Makes Some Stories Easy to Adapt
Hello creatives,
Today’s post is a little different. I’m in grad school and this semester I have to nail down my thesis. This whole process has made me very reflective of how I got here.
I was twelve years old, sitting down at the desktop computer in my grandma’s kitchen and reading Jane Friedman’s blog. It was eye opening to read about how big the publishing industry was and all the people it took to get books on the shelves: authors, literary agents, editors, graphic designers, marketers, distributors. That was the year I determined that I wanted to be a subsidiary rights manager. They are the ones who negotiate contracts between publishing houses, film studios, and others interested in adapting stories across different mediums.
That, unfortunately, did not happen. For various reasons I won’t get into today.
I ended up with an MBA in marketing, working myself into the ground at various agencies and in-house jobs until I reached my job now. It’s a comfortable 9-5 with really good benefits that has allowed me to have a do-over and get back in touch with my lifelong passion projects. In the 2.5 years I’ve been at the job, I’ve been able to publish a book, work on a short film based on that book, and I’m about to publish a prequel.
But for the purposes of this post, the most important thing is that I am in a master’s of arts program where I’m studying multimedia franchising. That’s the intersection of the creative, business, and legal strategies behind building empires in narrative fiction. Think Harry Potter, Twilight, Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, The Witcher, Lord of the Rings, or The Avengers. If you want to consider less modern examples of narrative fiction that have been adapted successfully across time, then you can look at The Odyssey, Romeo & Juliet, The Nutcracker, Alice in Wonderland, or The Brothers’ Grimm folktales.
It’s fascinating to me how there are certain stories that people have gravitated toward over and over again no matter how many times or in how many ways they’ve been told. I love that! And I want to know WHY.
So far, I’ve been able to take classes in the art of storytelling such as filmmaking and nonlinear narrative game design as well as take classes in subjects that provide insight into the business and legal side of supporting creative endeavors such as strategic philanthropy, executive coaching, and contract negotiation.
This semester, I have a seminar in global intellectual property law, which I’m very excited about because much of my knowledge around the subject is localized to US law. I realized I needed to broaden my understanding when I was on a panel at the World Science Fiction Convention last August, discussing ways in which independent creatives can franchise their story, and the audience was mostly non-American.
Another class I’m taking this semester is a thesis proposal seminar to prepare my thesis for feedback by my classmates and approval by a few professors. So, it should come as no surprise that I want to center my thesis around the question of “what makes a story adaptable?”.
This could mean a combination of:
analyzing the story structure of various successful franchises
comparing the economic output of different genres
considering the sociopolitical environment at the time of a story being released
And so much more.
If I had to make predictions, I’d say we’re headed for Hayes Code era content being green lit by major studios for the next few years from a filmmaking perspective while the building of utopian worlds in publishing and games will become much more popular. I may do a whole post of predictions later.
Anyways, this semester is where I'm really going to learn how to shape my knowledge and experience to refine the questions I want to explore in my thesis. It’s only been the first session, but I’m already realizing that I may be a bit too broad with my topic of interest and may need to narrow it down. How so? Not sure yet. That’s what the thesis proposal seminar is all about.
While my thesis topic and title are a work in progress, my curiosity for the subject of intellectual property adaptations has been consistent since I was in seventh grade. This journey has been healing for 12-year-old Rochele and I’m just getting started.
Until Next Time,
Rochele Rosa