Q&A With Marc Guggenheim 

I have the honor & pleasure of doing this Q&A with Marc Guggenheim whose written novels, comics, television shows and movies! Marc has written the novels Overwatch & his recent novel In Any Lifetime (which I received in the mail last month & am eagerly looking forward to reading it).  Marc’s television credits are for ARROW, DC’S LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, TROLLHUNTERS, CARNIVAL ROW. Marc Marc’s movie credits are GREEN LANTERN, PERCY JACKSON – SEA OF MONSTERS, & the comic books he’s written are in the worlds of X-MEN GOLD, BLADE. Marc’s video game credits are for CALL OF DUTY 3 & SINGULARITY. 

Q: Marc, would you please give a brief description of your work beginning with your novels Overwatch & then In Any Lifetime? Where did the ideas for both novels come from?

A: Overwatch came about simply because one day my sister-in-law said to me, “Did you know that the CIA has a legal department?” I’m a huge fan of Tom Clancy and John Grisham, so the idea of The Firm set inside the CIA just seemed like a no-brainer to me.

In Any Lifetime, on the other hand, is harder to explain. I had been working on that story — in some shape or form — for over ten years now and I’m afraid that the initial impetus for the idea has since faded from my memory. If I had to piece it together, I’d say that the idea of parallel universes and “the road not taken” has always been of interest to me, but I can no longer remember how I’d hit on the idea of having someone looking through the multiverse for a lost loved one.

Q: You have written for comic books, television, movies & video games as well as books! I think that’s amazing! I also congratulate you on being an Emmy Award Winning writer and producer of tv and films! Would you say that writing & producing for television and film has helped with writing your novels? 

A: Thank you! I’m very fortunate that I get to make my living doing the things that I love.

To answer your question, I’m a big believer that work begets work and writing — in any form — helps one become a better writer. So, in general, I’d say, yes — writing and producing has helped inform my prose work. But that’s really because my 10,000 hours — per Malcolm Gladwell’s famous rule — are in script-writing, not prose writing. So, when I write a novel, I’m really relying very heavily on those skills and muscles.

At the same time, however, that experience can be a bit of a hindrance. In live action, it’s impossible to get at the interiority of the characters except through clunky voice-over. Screenwriters are trained to “show not tell.” But prose doesn’t have any of these limitations and when I’m writing a novel, I often must remind myself that it’s good — desirable, in fact — to get inside the heads of the characters. 

To put this another way, different mediums have different narrative tools and the mistake I often make when writing a novel is to forget that I have other things in my toolbox which I can avail myself of.

Q: What lessons do you hope readers learn after reading your novels?

A: Oh gosh. Is it horrible that I don’t have any such hope? I write primarily to entertain, not to teach. So any lessons that one might glean from my work are, I assure you, wholly accidental on my part.

Q: Since you have written for television & film, have you written a screenplay for both Overwatch & In Any Lifetime? Has Hollywood gotten the rights to both novels yet & who would be your dream cast to play the characters you created? The entertainment industry is in desperate need of original content again! 

A: Because my background is in screenwriting, I’ll often work out scenes for the novels in screenplay form before “translating” them into prose. For Overwatch and In Any Lifetime, I have script versions that I used as (what I call) super-outlines. I mainly use these for dialogue purposes, as writing good dialogue while crafting compelling prose is a bit of multitasking, I feel I’ve yet to master.

I used to think that writing the story out first as a script was weird, but I recently met another author who does the same thing, so I don’t feel quite a bit self-conscious about it. I’m repeating this method in my latest novel, but I may try to take the leap and write more conventionally for the novel after that one.

There was recently some interest in the rights to Overwatch and I remain hopeful that someone will want to turn In Any Lifetime into a movie someday, but — as with my creator-owned comic book work — I don’t really think about the stories having a life beyond their target mediums. If it turns out that someone wants to turn something I write in prose or comics into a television series or movie, that’d be lovely, but it’s not something I cling to or even necessarily want to do myself. Once I’ve told the story — be it as a novel or a comic book — I’ve scratched the creative itch that was driving me in the first place.

That being said, I recently wrote a pilot based on my graphic novel, Last Flight Out, and last year, I adapted another graphic novel of mine, Too Dead To Die, as a movie for Universal Studios. But both instances came about because I was the writer the studio wanted to work with, and in both cases, I had to find fresh ways into the material to keep myself creatively engaged.

Q: If Overwatch & In Any Lifetime were to get sequels, what would the characters of both novels be doing right now?

A: Over the years, I’ve thought now and again about what Alex from Overwatch is up to. The story that I’ve got in my head has him leaving the CIA and practicing at a private law firm like I did. But then, of course, he gets dragged into another shadowy conspiracy.

As for In Any Lifetime’s Jonas and Amanda, I think any sequel would focus not on Jonas and Amanda but, rather, one (or more?) of their doppelgängers from parallel universes. One of the things the novel established was that although there was only one Amanda, there were numerous Jonases in pursuit of her and I’ve always thought that maybe one of them might make an interesting protagonist in a future work.

Q: Can you reveal the details for the novel you are writing right now, or is it too early? 

A: Ah, it’s far too early. I’m only about halfway through it now and haven’t even shared any pages with my agent or editor. Suffice it to say, however, it’s something of a departure for me, a genre that I can’t say I’ve truly worked in before.

Q: What advice do you have for anyone wanting to write books, comics and for television, movies & video games? 

A: My advice to aspiring writers is always the same: Create and consume. Writing is a talent that improves with experience and repetition. I learn something new with every writing project that informs, in ways large and small, every subsequent project.

Similarly, I learn a lot from reading novels and scripts and watching TV shows and movies. You can learn as much from bad writing as you can from good writing, so it’s all worthwhile to consume. If you’re looking to write anything other than prose, I highly recommend watching the movie or playing the video game and then, if possible, read the underlying scripts for them. You can learn so much by taking note of the alchemy that goes into turning a script into a comic book or TV show or whatnot. And the Internet is an incredible repository of scripts and screenplays; almost everything is out there if you look hard enough.