By Brianne Hogan.

Chuck Hogan. Image by Gage Skidmore

Award-winning crime novelist Chuck Hogan had his first foray with film when his novel, Prince of Thieves, was adapted to the silver screen (by Hogan himself) as the Ben Affleck-directed flick, The Town.

Since then, Hogan has written more books, as well writes and produces the TV series The Strain, based on a book he co-authored with Guillermo del Toro. Last week the screenwriter returned to the big screen with 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. The movie, directed by Michael Bay, is based on Mitchell Zuckoff’s book by the same name, which tells the true story of six elite ex-military operators assigned to protect the CIA who fought back against overwhelming odds when terrorists attacked a U.S. diplomatic compound on September 11, 2012.

Creative Screenwriting caught up with Hogan to discuss the challenges of going from novel writing to screenwriting, what drew him to the 13 Hours story, and, of course, Hillary Clinton.

Pablo Schreiber as Kris ‘Tanto’ Paronto and David Denman as Dave ‘Boon’ Benton in 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Image by Christian Black

You’re a crime novelist. How did you get started writing for the screen?

I always wanted to write for movies. I just wanted to tell stories, which is one of the great things of writing fiction. It doesn’t cost a lot, but it takes a lot of time. So I was able to do that.

Then after I sold the rights of my first novel I made my adapting the screenplay part of the movie deal, so that’s how I got started.

What were some of the challenges going from novel writing to screenwriting?

It is a very different format. Writing novels, I find it extremely difficult. You literally have to do everything. There is so much more world building involved.

With screenwriting – not that it is easy because it’s not at all – but there is a little bit more of a game element to it, which doesn’t really exist in novels that I find enjoyable. That is, writing to a format and not having the luxury of either writing 300 or 400 pages, depending on how long the story is. You have to fit the needs of the medium and that’s a cool challenge that is very different from writing a novel.

13 Hours in Benghazi, by Mitchel Zuckoff

With 13 Hours, you had the job of adapting another book —  non-fiction one this time — into a screenplay. How did you get involved with the project?

The book had been written, but it was many months away from being published. They were waiting for the CIA to vet it. The book was written by Mitchell Zuckoff who is a journalism professor at Boston University and the actual CIA contractors who were in Benghazi at the time, so it wasn’t able to be digitally reproduced at the time or circulated. But Zuckoff and I know each other – we have the same agent – and he kept telling me about the book.

I didn’t have much interest at the time. So I finally took a look at it, read it and I was blown away. I mean, it was obvious. It was a great story, and on top of that, it was a story that a lot of people didn’t really know at the time.

It was a year before the book came out. So I told my agent that I would do anything to be involved with such a great and important story. 

What specifically drew you to the story? Was it the characters, the politics?

I would say because of the lack of politics. It’s really just a human story beginning to end.

It’s about these guys who are incredibly accomplished, retired military guys with families back home, who, two months at a time, go to these dangerous places and situations because it’s their job to protect CIA agents. Not as bodyguards, but as invisible bodyguards.

So, first off, I hadn’t really seen that before. And second off, I was really interested in the type of person who a) was qualified to do that, and b) made their living through that.

I was really interested in the guys themselves, and, of course, the story. As far as what was in the public conscious, it was more about what happened before and after, but not what happened that night. 

David Denman as Dave ‘Boon’ Benton and Pablo Schreiber as Kris ‘Tanto’ Paronto in 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Image by Christian Black

What kind of research outside of the book was involved to tell the story?

There was. The book is a fantastic read beginning to end – there is so much more. But, yes, I was fortunate to interview the guys, which was important for me so I could get them right.

I did read some other books about it, which, frankly, were inaccurate, but it did help me zero in on the story that I needed to tell.  The most important thing was meeting the guys and seeing how they interacted and trying to physically put them back there that night in Benghazi in 2012.

Hillary Clinton isn’t depicted in the film. Was that a conscious choice to not include her and the surrounding controversy surrounding the attack?

It wasn’t a conscious choice to include her or not include her. It’s just the fact of the night, those 13 hours, as far as I can tell, there really isn’t any involvement in those 13 hours.

These guys were boots-on-the-ground and they didn’t really have any contact with anyone outside but their own groups, the CIA, the Special Missions nearby. The most interesting story is that it’s so localized and these guys had no idea if help was coming, and they had to act accordingly. They didn’t know how it was going to end, which is something to keep in mind when dealing with something so famous. But that’s the truth – they didn’t know how it was going to end.

Hillary Clinton. Image by Marc Nozell

What differs in your writing process when you’re adapting someone else’s work as opposed to adapting your own?

The most important thing is just getting excited on the subject matter. I find that once that matters, then things start to assemble themselves in my mind.

This story was a little different because I knew we had to develop a pitch, which we had to take around. So I had to prepare a document, not to be read but to be drawn upon for my own reasons ahead of time.

This meant I had an organization going on before writing. From there, we really wanted to stick to the facts of what happened that night without making a 13-hour movie.

Based on the other films you’ve written, would you say this is the most action-packed script you’ve worked on? I mean, it is a Michael Bay flick.

I would say that. I worked for a year on The Town, which is based on my book. There is action in that, but it is a completely different scenario.

I had to learn a lot about the military. I have no military background, so I had to lean on the guys and my own research. I think it is super helpful to learn about new things and educate an audience about it.

Jeremy Renner as James Coughlin in The Town. Image by Claire Folger

Some emerging writers have trouble with writing action. What are some tips in writing good action sequences?

For me, first of all, caffeine and sugar. That helps stretch my imagination.

Sometimes I will drive around at night and let my mind go there. In terms of most of it, it really begins and ends with the people involved, and what the action does to them in the scene, from the beginning to the end of it.

If there is action, but nothing really is changing, then you’re writing in place. You need to express what is going on inside of the characters’ heads and what is going on in their lives, scene by scene.

You also write for The Strain, which is based on the book you co-authored. How do you balance working on different projects simultaneously?

When I started writing novels, I don’t think I could imagine working on two projects at once. And then once it happened, I just started doing it. It’s sort of a muscle that developed over time.

It was more difficult at first. I had to change mentally from one story to another. I find that once I get going, one story occupies one part of my mind, while another story occupies another. But it didn’t happen naturally. It was something that I definitely had to learn through the process of experimentation.

Mía Maestro as Dr. Nora Martinez in The Strain

What would be your advice to new writers? Something that you wish you knew before you started out.

For me, one of the most important developments in my screenwriting career, was working side-by-side with Adrian Lyne, who originally wanted to direct The Town. It was working with a real filmmaker and having him say, “Chuck, this what you have written here, I can put on film. But what you have written here, I can’t film that.”

So what I learned from him was to be rigorously specific in my writing. Not blue sky everything where you can write something and think everything you write can go onto the movie screen.

Realizing that people, including movie crews, have to come together to make something happen, so the practical nature of screenwriting was a lesson well-learned. It is hard to visualize that early on in your career. People have to make your words turn into something visual.

You’ve adapted your own work into screenplays and TV series. You’ve adapted someone else’s work into a film. Do you want to try your hand at writing something original?

Yes, definitely. For me, I love doing different things. Its so easy to keep doing the same things because you’ve had some success there, but I am all for doing new things. So, yeah. That is my next step.