The perils and pitfalls of adapting works from various media into film.

1. Adaptation:
The Perks and Pitfalls
aka, what to keep on the brain
so you don’t lose your mind
By Valerie Kalfrin,
Screenwriters of Tomorrow
March 2014

2. By definition:
a form or structure modified
to fit a changed environment
To screenwriters:
“[It] can be heaven or hell,
and it’s usually a little of each.”
– script consultant and
screenplay analyst Elizabeth Stevens
What’s an adaptation?

3. Where to begin?
● A book
● A short story
● A play
● A comic or graphic novel
● A musical
● A video game
● A news or feature story

4. What’s the attraction?
The perks:
● Hollywood loves them. At least 5 of the top 20
grossing films of all time are adaptations, including
“Jurassic Park,” “The Hunger Games” and 2002’s
“Spider-Man.” (IMDB.com)
● Well-known material has “an existing and
appreciative” audience. (Script magazine)
● They’re a great way for unknown writers to show what
they can do.
● For writers, they provide a blueprint: plot, characters,
setting, dialogue....

5. So, what’s the problem?
The biggest pitfall? The pressure!
● Turning a lengthy or intricate book into a two-
hour movie means cutting – and lots of it.
How do you focus?
● What if the fans don’t like it?
● What will the writer think?
● Familiarity + expectations = writer’s block

6. What authors say
“I was frankly surprised that
something so tepid and
conventional could have been
fashioned from my slightly
unhinged novel.... ‘Endless
Love’ was meant to be a knife
to the reader’s heart, not the
writer’s.”
– Scott Spencer
(“Endless Love”)
“My attitude is, if you haven’t
invited me in to contribute,
then fine. Go make the
movie you want to make,
and I’ll see it when it
comes out.… And I'm in
no position to tell people
to see this movie or not see
it. If I'm asked I say:
See the movie as a movie
and judge it as a movie.”
– Max Brooks
(“World War Z”)

7. What authors say (part 2)
“I believe in trusting the
screenwriter. It’s hard enough
to expect a creative person to
transform another writer’s work
without the writer breathing
down his neck.... It was a fatal
mistake to cut Pendergast from
the final script. On the other
hand ... [i]t was fast-paced
and well acted. The monster
was well conceived and the
finale perhaps even better than
in our novel.”
– Douglas Preston
(“Relic”)
“I felt that the movie they made
was genuinely moving and a
wonderful movie. I might have
felt very differently had I not
liked the movie.… A decision
that I admired very much in the
movie was when Hiccup lost his
leg at the end of the movie. ...
I thought it was a fantastically
powerful thing to do, and very
appropriate for the character.”
– Cressida Cowell
(“How to Train Your Dragon”)

8. The golden rules
● You cannot be literally faithful to the
source material.
● You should not be literally faithful to the
source material.
● You must be totally faithful to the
intention of the source material.
● Whatever feeling moved you to say,
“I want to try and adapt this” must be
translated to the script. And you must
protect that to the death.
– Oscar-winning screenwriter
William Goldman (The emphasis? All his.)

9. Before you start, ask:
● Do I love it? (Emma Thompson worked on adapting
“Sense and Sensibility” into a screenplay over five years.)
● Do I have the rights to this material – or can I get them?
● Most important: As Goldman says, “Can I make it play?”

10. Make it play
How will this play onscreen?
● Is what’s happening dramatic? Does it advance the plot?
(No ordering food, arranging for child care, etc.)
● What’s the reality? Will seeing something previously only
imagined be so jarring, it takes viewers out of the story
(e.g., Urbana Sprawl from Carl Hiaasen’s “Strip Tease”)?
● Will the audience believe this? (A 78-year-old bank robber
on the run?)
● Films are “motion pictures.” Can you write this for
movement and sound? (A lost 10-year-old autistic boy
survives alone and unscathed over four days in a Florida
swamp with thunderstorms and alligators. True story.)

11. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...
Characters
● “Shiloh” adds a girl as the protagonist’s confidant to put
the book’s voice-over into dialogue.
● AMC’s “The Walking Dead” has fan favorites who in the
graphic novel died (Carol) or did not exist (Daryl).
● “How to Train Your Dragon” swaps in a new girl viking
(Astrid) and changes Toothless from a dragon the size of
an iguana to one on which the hero, Hiccup, can fly. Also
gives Hiccup a prosthetic leg by the film’s end.
● SyFy’s “Battlestar Galactica” and “StarFist” (the book
series Eric is adapting) change military men (Starbuck
and Hammer) into women.

12. More changes afoot...
Chronology, scenes, sequences or the whole plot:
● The film “All the President’s Men” ends in the middle of
the book.
● The films “A Simple Plan” and “Primal Fear” focus on
narrow segments of their respective books.
● In the book “The Last of the Mohicans,” Hawkeye
is not interested in Cora; Cora likes his brother, Uncas;
and British soldier Duncan likes Cora’s sister, Alice.
Also, different characters survive by the film’s end.
● “Lawnmower Man” is so different from Stephen King’s
short story that he successfully sued to have his name
removed from it.

13. Why change?
● To compress time. Every minute counts! Move back story
and motivations forward.
● To explain key events that occur offstage (message to
Romeo in “Romeo and Juliet”) or in a few paragraphs
(ending battle in “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn –
Part 2”) – or to adjust elements that won’t work on film.
(The musical numbers in the film “Chicago” are in Roxie
Hart’s head.)
● To eliminate unnecessary voice-over. Sheriff Ed Tom
Bell in “No Country for Old Men” tells a deputy and his
wife, among other characters, what in the book he
confides to the reader.

14. Let it be – the genre, that is
Following the intention of the source material also means
don’t turn the tale upside-down:
● “The Stepford Wives” is a horror story, not a comedy
(2004’s flop).
● Two failed films cast “Endless Love” as a star-
crossed romance. The book is steamy, but its
protagonist is an obsessed stalker.
● “Ever After: A Cinderella Story” and “Snow White and
the Huntsman” give us strong princesses – including
wielding swords and wearing armor – but stay in the
fantasy realm.

15. 7 building blocks
● Who is your main character?
● What does he or she want (internally and externally)?
● Who or what keeps your character from achieving this?
● How does he or she achieve the goal in an unexpected or
unusual way?
● What are you trying to say by ending the story this way?
(What’s your theme? Any unifying thematic devices?)
● How do you want to tell your story? Who should tell it?
● How do your main and supporting characters change?
– screenwriter and instructor Richard Krevolin

16. The bare bones
My advice? Don’t hash out the script as you flip page by
page through the source material.
● After your logline, create a one-paragraph summary in
the colloquial way you’d recap a juicy story for a friend.
● With the logline and summary as a guide, re-read the
source. Take notes and highlight the text for characters,
key attributes, back story, good quotes, scenes, motifs.
Do any necessary research.
● Expand your summary to three detailed pages, one
page per act. What’s the inciting incident? Midpoint?
Climax?
● Start writing!