When you have 23 criminal novels as source material, you might think that writing a show would be as simple as simply copying books as closely as possible. But “Bones”, which is based on the Brennan Books series by Dr. Kathy Reichs from Dr. Kathy Reichs, is much more than a simple adaptation. The series of novels began in 1997 with “Deja Dead” and followed the career of the judicial scientist Temerrance “Bones” Brennan, whose homonym also leads the spectacle. Temperance is, in turn, based on the life and experiences of Reichs (which had a sneaky cameo in “Bones” season 2), but the spectacle itself deviates considerably books, introducing a brand new distribution of characters and scenarios.
“Bones” ran for 12 seasons from 2005 to 2017, most of the episodes with new mysteries for the temperance of Emily Deschanel Brennan and the FBI special agent of David Boreanaz Seeley Booth to resolve – with the help of “Squinterns” at the Jeffersonian Institute. As such, the series would have quickly missed ideas if it had simply adapted a mystery by episode. Instead, the writers “Bones” had to offer their own scenarios based on the characters of Reichs, and to do this, they used a process that differentiated their television broadcast from most of the others.
Bone writers were on a tight calendar
“Bones” started in 2005 with a pilot who included scenes torn from real life. The series was, after all, only in a loose way on the series of books of Dr. Kathy Reichs, and needed to find the inspiration elsewhere to expand his own vision of the world of temperance Brennan, whose background frame had to be told in a single episode. To do this, the screenwriters of the show have developed a unique way of making episodes.
In the first days of “Bones”, the creator of the show Hart Hanson spoke to UGO of the writing process of the show, revealing that it is slightly different from the approach of the typical writers’ room. Asked if the writing scene was different from other series, Hanson said,, “A little different. Instead of a piece of all writers, we tend to separate into small groups and develop each outline.” The creator then detailed how the writers “Storyboard” of the show in this way, with small groups developing contours of episodes before “the writers leave to write the outline by themselves, then launch into a first project”. He continued:
“Due to the speed with which we move, the writers cannot do as many drafts as I would like before having to remove it. It is always difficult to determine the show while you are in motion.”
As a rule, a story would be broken by the writers’ room as a whole before an episode was assigned to a specific writer to produce a first project. This would then be brought back to the group, which would refine it, before other projects were produced. On “Bones”, it seems that Hanson wanted to remove the initial step of the contribution of all writers, leaving writers rather to develop the plan and write the first project without contribution from all writing staff.
Why did Hart Hanson simply adapt the novels of Temperance Brennan
Although “Bones” uses the character of Temperance Brennan, the spectacle itself is actually mainly based on Kathy Reichs itself. As Hart Hanson said to Scriptmag, when he started to develop the show, he was based on a meeting with producer Barry Josephson, who had obtained the rights of a documentary on Dr Reichs. When Hanson came to develop “bones” based on this meeting, he thought he had only the rights of the history of Reichs’ life and not books. As the creator explained:
“I created the world of” bones “from this documentary. There are nothing original books in the series. In books, Temperance Brennan is a former 50-year alcoholic, divorced who has an adult girl. She works in Montreal and North Carolina, in two medico-legal laboratories. But I did not take any of this world.”
It was only after Reichs suggested using the name of Temperance Brennan for the main character that Hanson took something from the books. As such, making “bones” a simple adaptation of novels has never been really on the cards, which meant that Hanson and his writing staff were responsible for producing completely original mysteries for Emily Deschanel and the characters of David Boreanaz, as well as to create a whole world. When you have 22 episodes in a season, it is a hell of mysteries to find, and it seems that Hanson and the writers must simply use an unorthodox writing approach to follow the requirements of production. When “Bones” was affected by a writers strike, it made things even more difficult, resulting in a turn which remains controversial to date.
