From fiction to film: Interview with ‘The 5th Wave’ author

 

The next best-selling trilogy is making “waves” in the box office.

Miami native and best-selling author Rick Yancey wrote a science-fiction, apocalyptic series of novels geared toward a young adult audience that was so well received that it’s been adapted for the big screen.

The film stars Chloe Grace Moretz as Cassie Sullivan, the young heroine who tries to survive and rescue her brother from an alien invasion that has devastated the planet. You can catch “The 5th Wave” in theaters now.

I had the opportunity to speak with Yancey about writing “The 5th Wave” and the movie adaptation process in a conference call.

What motivated you to first start writing?

“My first inkling that I wanted to become a writer was in middle school. I was given an assignment in English class, and I really, really was surprised how much I enjoyed actually doing the assignment. It was one of the easiest things I had ever done and also one of the hardest things at the same time. It gave me such a feeling of fulfillment, and it made me feel so comfortable in my own skin. I guess it’s like falling in love. I fell in love with writing around that time period. I kind of got into writing for young people by accident. I had written a book for adults, and my agent had actually suggested that I make some changes to the manuscript and make my hero a young person because the young adult category was doing so well. I went ahead and did that, and it became my first young adult series. I stayed with it because it was so much fun. No rules apply in writing for young people except ‘don’t be boring,’ and I love that rule.”

 

What was a strong influence or meaningful event that became the inspiration for this series?

“Actually, the germ of the story was probably planted around 2008 when the financial market nearly collapsed worldwide. I guess that got me thinking about apocalyptic events, or it could have been totally an accident, but I doubt it. There are very few things in the arts that are accidents. I’ve been writing books for young adults for two years prior to that, and particularly that time in a young person’s life is almost apocalyptic in the sense that your childhood is coming to almost an abrupt end. I do remember bringing my three boys to college, and it was like one day, you’re under your parents’ roof, and your life is one way, and the next day, it’s totally different and completely changed. I think that’s one of the reasons that this genre is so popular right now. I think young people really relate to that, sort of ‘I’m on my own, and how am I going to navigate and survive in a world that’s so foreign to me and to everything that I’ve known before’. Certainly, that’s one of the major themes of the book. I mean, obviously it’s in an alien-apocalyptic setting, which is not very usual, but you can look at that as sort of a metaphor of being forced to grow up.”

 

As an author, what did you think of the adaptation process? Was there anything that surprised you?

“I think I’m luckier than a lot of writers to have my writing adapted. The rights to the film were picked out before I even finished the book. They were picked up shortly after the book was purchased by Penguin Publishing. I was in that process pretty much from the very beginning, although I did not have a hand in adapting my work — which is probably a good idea because movies are not books, and books are not movies. There are demands that are possible in books that aren’t possible in movies and vice versa, and I always try to keep that in mind as we move through the process, but the short answer is yeah I was pretty involved. I wasn’t there on a daily basis for the shoot. I was working on a different book at the time, but the days I was there, I had regular talks with the producers and the director. From what I have seen, I think that fans of the book will be very pleased with how the filmmakers have captured those core stories and how they’ve done the characters.”

 

What is the one thing you hope to see come out of this movie adaptation of your book?

“I don’t know. I mean, I haven’t seen it yet, but I was in for some if the filming, and from what I had seen, I think the filmmakers were very cognizant of the fact that what really sets this story apart is the heart of it, the characters and what drives them as ordinary people in just extraordinary circumstances. That’s the kind of story I love to read and to see on film, and I think they really worked very hard to capture the essence of that.”

 

What was the deeper message you were trying to get across from the book at first, and what message do you hope to get across from the movie?

“When you write for young people, you have to be careful about the whole ‘message’ thing because no one likes to be preached at, especially young people. Message is something that I kind of let grow organically as I tell the story. My first goal is to never bore people because I feel like, as a writer, particularly in this genre, your major goal is to entertain. You can tell a story and have a very deep reverberating message, but the story comes first, and that’s what I always focus on. But I will say as I wrote this series — and the last book is coming out this spring, in May — the message sort of unfolded for me as the writer. There is a message. It goes beyond the message that humans will do anything to survive, and we’re like cockroaches in the sense that we’re nearly indestructible. That’s one of the reasons we triumph over all of nature. For me, the deeper message is about the bonds that bind us together and that how even an advanced species, like I’ve presented in the books, really has no answer for that in terms of engineering our own demise. I think that’s the positive message of the story. It’s very, very difficult to eradicate humanity out of humans. Just as tribalism and hatred and prejudice and bias exist in us, so does the opposite side of that coin: love and the ability to sacrifice our own personal wants or needs for somebody else, which is remarkable and very difficult to explain when you start talking about survival of the fittest and Darwinian concepts and the idea of altruism and sacrificing yourself for a greater cause.”

 

What advice would you give to people who would like to write in the future?

“All of the usual advice. The first one is to read a lot. The second one is to always keep in mind that we learn how to be writers in the same way that we learn how to be speakers and walkers. We walk by trial and error. When we’re babies, we all learn to walk, right? And we all learn in our own way. Some babies get up and walk at 10 months, and some babies take almost a year before they’re up and walking because we have to learn by trial and error. Writing works the same way. The other aspect of writing you always have to keep in mind is just like you learned how to talk, and you’re copying the sounds that are coming out of your caretaker’s mouth, that’s also how we learn how to write. Don’t worry about being like writers that you happen to love and admire because that’s your way of learning the language of writing and how to be a writer. Eventually, if you keep at it, you will find your own voice, become your own person and whatever makes you unique.”

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