EL James, Stephanie Meyer, and Authorial Intent

Author EL James

The similarities between EL James and Stephanie Meyer have been clear since the beginning.  Obviously James' Fifty Shades of Grey series was originally intended as a fan fiction of sorts to Meyer's Twilight series, but there are other similarities.  Both women hit it big from what was their first real efforts in the publishing marketplace, both women worked on a series of books that became wildly popular and eventually turned into successful film franchises, and both women even decided to re-write their first novel from a different character's perspective (hell, apparently it seems that both women had the bad misfortune of having this book stolen from them).  The difference ends there, though, as James has followed through on her novel Grey, which tells the stories of the books from the perspective of Christian Grey and comes out next week, delighting booksellers everywhere, while Meyer never went through on her novel Midnight Sun.  It also makes me wonder about the weird closed door strategy that seems to have become a part of the world of writing, especially when it comes to books with movie tie-ins.

You see, Stephanie Meyer has in fact not written any books since Twilight ended, with the exception of The Host (a trilogy she never finished) and The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, a novella that was used both to raise money for the Red Cross and to boost interest in the Eclipse movie that was coming out that year.  Meyer's lack of a follow-up is hardly surprising in the world of publishing (look at how long it took Joseph Heller to write a follow-up, and he had a true masterpiece on his hands), but it's surprising in a world where Marvel, Disney, and other industries are constantly expanding their grasp into different mediums.

After all, Twilight was INSANELY successful, both on book shelves and in movie theaters, and most would have thought that Summit Entertainment would have tried to continue that success in the same way that Marvel and DC did with their comic book universe, planning more and more movies, pushing out TV shows, comic book tie-ins, books, action figures, and continuing the trend for potentially another decade of roll-out.  Twilight, though, along with Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, is held back in this way by an author that doesn't seem interested in saturating her world to the point of exhaustion.  One might argue that all of these authors are sort of the antithesis of JRR Tolkien, who probably would have written about Middle Earth ad nauseum if he hadn't, you know, died.

They're also sort of keeping their works at bay because fans still view them as the "authority" on the world.  It's a weird sort of differentiation from certain filmic works like, again, comic books, where three different actors played the Hulk in a short series of time or where George Lucas can have no hand in the making of a new Star Wars film.  Fans still view Meyer, JK Rowling, and EL James as the definitive authority on these characters, and lambast changes to their visions onscreen.  We want to see their visions on the screen, not a director or screenwriter's interpretations of what their characters are.  In a world where there's an increasing interchangeability between different novels, a constant rehash of every idea when there are too few new ones, and where we are remaking the Spider-Man movies again, it's nice to know that authorial intent still matters, and that even if Stephanie Meyer, JK Rowling, and (quite probably after this latest novel) EL James never revisit these characters again, they'll get to keep their own stamp on what happens in these worlds both in publishing and film for decades to come.  I like the idea that at least some things won't instantly be discarded so we can adjust it slightly to make another buck a few months later.

I would also like to read Midnight Sun, so Stephanie could we please make that happen now?