The Creative Process of Turning BookTok Skits to Plot
Creativity comes in many forms and the evolution of creativity is no different. Characters on the page become art pieces, literary works become cinematic works, and comedy skits on BookTok turn into a novel. Assistant to the Villain was originally a way to tap into everything I love about fantasy, but making it lighter, more fun, something to laugh at. With each skit a new facet to the story developed, plot pieces that would become tools when I eventually sat down to write this story into a novel.
(What Is BookTok and Why Should Writers Care?)
The Skit series eventually developed into an episodic format with interconnected storylines, featuring a grumpy villain, his sunshine assistant, a slow-burn romance, and office hijinx in a fairytale setting. These developments were a natural and slow evolution with each new plot point and storyline. By the time I was ready to sit down and write the book, I felt like I knew these characters. I knew their backgrounds, their stories, their hopes, and dreams.
A skit format can be limiting, but putting words to a page is boundless. That first day I sat down to write their story, I could not get the words down quickly enough. When characters and a plot live in your head for so long they beg to come out, to be seen and to unfold.
Essentially what the book became was taking an already developed group of characters and putting them in situations where they became more real. So, the first thing I tackled was backstories. When the characters would come up in the skit series I would start to ask questions. Who are they? Where did they come from? Why are they here? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Because I had those thoughts already forming, all that was left was to put them to page.
Dialogue came easily as well, in the skits we only see one perspective, the assistant. But every time she spoke on camera; I would be imagining how characters would respond behind it. Their repertoire was familiar because it existed long before the book did, it just wasn’t visually in front of me yet. Putting it into a book format was fulfilling a need I’d created in the series and was finally answering the question. How is the person I can’t see on screen responding to what the assistant said?
Check out Hannah Nicole Maehrer’s Assistant to the Villain:
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Setting was where things became really fun. Because the series was filmed first in my small college townhome, to my parents living room. Alas, I did not have a fairytale kingdom on hand for background ambiance. But that was just fine, because putting my characters to page allowed me to create the setting I always saw them in. This story in its quirkiest twisted way is a fairytale.
(3 Ways I Wrote My Novel With BookTok in Mind.)
So, the setting needed to reflect the energy the characters were giving, familiar comfortable. All my favorite stories as a child were magical and full of whimsy, so I took that feeling and the setting was born!
Lastly and depending on your view, most importantly, plot. The plot in the beginning was tricky. Unlike the skit series, which I still make regularly and has over 200 installments. A book has a start, a middle, and an end. My goal was to create the familiarity of the skits, the characters, the humor, the slow-burn romance, and give them one overarching problem to work around.
In the process of doing this, I wove elements of storylines from the skits throughout the book where they fit. Like an evolution of the old into something new, something you’ve seen, but haven’t. The plot needed to be something new for the people who’d been following the skits, while also delivering the same energy we started with.
In all the years I’d imagined my first novel, I’d never quite imagined the story being born this way. Creating the skits first allowed me so much time to familiarize myself with my characters, until it felt like in a way, they became my companions. It was them championing me to write their story, and I’m so grateful I was able to tell it.