A Single Shot

I went about creating John the same way I do every character I write about. Before starting the book I put him in a number of imagined situations and wrote pages of him conversing with various people in those situations. When I felt I knew him well enough to have an idea, without having to think about it, of how he would react in any type of circumstance, I wrote the opening scene to the book and, from there—from John walking up the mountainside with his twelve gauge at the crack of dawn—I trusted my knowledge of him enough to follow him into whatever he led me to.

Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone, was kind enough to contribute a foreword for A Single Shot. What are your thoughts on how he’s prefaced the new edition? Would you say you’re as much a fan of Woodrell’s work as he is of yours?

Well, I’m not sure what to make of him calling me “a twisted motherfucker,” though in context of the rest of what he wrote I’m pretty sure he meant it as a compliment! In all honesty, when I heard Daniel had offered to write a foreword to A Single Shot I was thrilled, largely because—as I told him when I thanked him after I’d read it—I didn’t have to pretend I was a huge fan of his work, I actually am one and have been for a good long time. A review he wrote in the Washington Post of A Single Shot when it came out in 1996 first alerted me to his work. Not long after that I purchased a copy of The Ones You Do, and from there I was hooked and have gone on to read all of his novels. He is one of a very few authors whose release of a new book is an event I eagerly anticipate. In my mind he is “the voice” for that part of the world he writes about. If I hadn’t been such a recluse I would have contacted him to thank him after he wrote that first review of A Single Shot—I’m glad he didn’t hold it against me! And I’m honored that he feels about my work the way I do about his.

Your novel Deepwater was made into the 2006 film of the same name, and A Single Shot is currently in development as well. Were you consulted as part of the filmmaking process for these two projects? Did you adapt them for the screen yourself? What are your thoughts on book-to-film adaptations—of your own work, and in general?

I had nothing to do with the screenplay for Deepwater, which had a lot to do with why I accepted an offer to write the screenplay for A Single Shot when it came along and, after that, the screenplay for my novel Boot Tracks, which is also in production. Not that I believe Deepwater is a terrible film (for what it is, it’s fine); it just isn’t close to an accurate representation of the novel or, in truth—and, more important—anywhere near as good a film as it could have been. In fact, the main producer of that film, after reading the screenplay I’d written for A Single Shot, told me he wished he’d hired me to write the script for Deepwater. I told him I wished he had too! So when the A Single Shot job was offered to me I felt I had to accept despite a few novelist friends warning me off of it based on their unpleasant experiences in trying to cross over into the film world. The truth is, though, I love movies nearly as much as I love books and, as a novelist, have always considered writing dialogue one of my strengths, which is a lot of what a good script is. The two forms, though, are very different. Novel writing in my view is an art in which the writer touches every one of a reader’s five (or, I guess, six) senses, whereas script writing is more of a craft in which my self-imposed rule is “if you can’t see it or hear it, don’t write it.” One quickly learns too that movie making, in direct contrast to novel writing, is very much a collaborative endeavor. Everyone—from the director, to the producers, to the actors, even sometimes the DP—gives their input on a script. Then there’s the money people who worry, is it too dark? Is it too graphic? Is it too anything that might negatively affect their investment? So, the writer, while making compromises, has to work hard to keep in the script the true core and essence of his story. The only way I believe that a novelist can do a good adaptation of his own novel is to always bear in mind that the movie will not be the novel. And it shouldn’t be. It should be the novel seen through a different prism and experienced in a different medium.