If you’ve read some of my reviews, you know that I typically read books that also have (or will soon have) an adaptation on the big screen. I like to learn from the adaptation, see how they streamlined the story, see how they interpreted the words I read and imagined myself.
In almost all the cases, however, the following statement ended up being true.
“All in all, that show/movie/series is practically nothing more than an advertisement for the books.”
Almost always, the adaptation is considered worse. And this is not a problem of expectations or fans that feel wronged. No, most people who watch such a show have not read the books. They didn’t come in with any pre-existing knowledge or expectations.
But when they finish the show, they think: “Well the premise was good / interesting / intriguing, but the execution was shit. I’ll just read the books now.”
And sometimes they report back after finishing the books to confirm they were right. The books had the same premise and world, of course, but just better and more fleshed out.
That’s what is meant with the show just being an advertisement for the books. A very expensive one. One that probably took longer to make than the writing of the actual books.
A great example of this is, of course, Game of Thrones. Most people started reading those books when the show was still good. The first few seasons were amazing, people couldn’t wait to see how the story unfolded or get more details about something, so they bought the books.
When the show became worse and worse, and especially when it ended horrifically, more people bought the books still. Because the setup was good and the world was intriguing. But they knew the show was just a watered-down version and they wanted the real thing. The million-dollar show sold the twenty dollar books.
What I’ve just described is the reality. All book adaptations that were turned into a movie or a Netflix show, ended up just making the books more popular and selling more of them.
And so I wonder: Is this a good thing or a bad thing? SHOULD this be the reality or can we change it?
A good thing?
I think this is mostly a good thing.
Firstly, it gets more people to read. Many people turned into readers by watching a Netflix show first. Many people weren’t interested in books before. Then they saw a cool pilot for a show that botched it afterwards, and everyone online said that “the books actually do it right”, so they started reading books!
Secondly, it’s better than the other way around. If a Netflix show would replace or kill the original material, that would be a negative spiral that eventually kills all media. Writers would never sell rights for adaptations again, because it’d kill their book sales. As soon as the first season aired, writers would lose motivation to actually finish their book series.
Moreover, it would cause uniformity. Even if film adaptations of books were incredible, always, I’d still argue the books should stay relevant. Having things available in different forms is always good, even if one form is superior to the other. The variety and diversity is what’s needed to keep things alive and to keep things fresh.
Running the risk of becoming too technical, I think the best comparison is evolution. If we look at species that have survived for a while, we always find that they diversify. Conversely, species that suddenly died off or went extinct, did so because they were uniform. They could only live one way, they could only perform one functionality, and if that was impeded for any reason then all of them died.
In other words, it’s valuable to have everything available in diverse formats and media, even if one is objectively better than the other. Because otherwise, something humans once knew how to do or once created, would go extinct.
Thirdly, it means that adaptations get the general vibe or premise right almost 100% of the time. It means adaptations are at least good enough to communicate why this story is so intriguing and set it up right. Even if it’s ruined in all other ways, that is enough to make people buy the books afterwards.
It’s better than the other way around, again. For example, you could create a faithful adaptation that gets all the exact plot beats right, and everything looks exactly as described in the books. But if it doesn’t actually communicate why viewers should care and why this world is interesting, then it has failed miserably AND won’t be an advertisement for the books.
A bad thing?
The bad thing here, of course, is that this means most adaptations are not great, while they are incredibly expensive and time-consuming.
It’s not a great sign if someone watches your 50 million dollar production, and says: “I’d rather read 300 pages than hear more shitty dialogue on a dark screen.”
As stated, I’ve read a lot of series and then watched the adaptation, but I’ve also done it the other way around. No matter in which direction I went, I always felt the show was just … weak. Inexplicable choices that led to worse scripts, weird pacing, moments that take you completely out of it.
Some things can be explained through constraints of the visual medium, sure. Some scenes are far cheaper to shoot than others. Some plotlines in a book, such as inner conflict that mostly happens in thought, just can’t be moved to the screen without change. Maybe there were scheduling conflicts, the entire COVID-era of production issues, etcetera.
But this covers, at most, like 20% of the changes. Everything else is just inexplicable to me.
For all those changes, I can hardly find any argument to support it. It’s not cheaper, there’s nothing wrong with how it’s done in the book, they had the exact ingredients to do what needed to be done. But they didn’t.
They put extra effort into changing an already written story to make it worse on all counts. I just don’t understand it. Adaptations could be so much more. They could be an advertisement for the books AND an amazing show on their own.
In most cases, I’ve learned, this has two reasons.
- Meddling from higher-ups, who have no clue at all how to write a story, but will chase any short-term hype they see.
- Writers who simply wanted to write their own story but could only do so by hijacking someone else’s work.
This is just a sad reality. This article isn’t about this topic, but I found it necessary to mention this. Writers often know what the script needs, they know how to adapt something well, they just don’t get the chance.
Having a show just be a “mediocre version of better books” is just not acceptable when that show costs 2 years and 50 million dollars to make. That’s an advertisement so expensive it can’t be sustainable. That’s an advertisement so expensive and senseless that I almost feel uncomfortable watching the show now, as if I’m complicit in some crime.
How might we change this?
Authors vs Adaptors
Firstly, there’s a clear divide between original writers and adaptation writers. Some people are great at original work; others are great at adapting and improving existing work. Those are truly different skill sets, in my experience.
And so, any adaptation should obviously look for the second type of writer. They should look at their earlier work, look at their personality and plan, and be able to see what type they are. And then, simply, never give a book adaptation to someone who only writes original work. No matter how good they are at doing that.
An original writer will forcibly change the books to fit their own vision. This is rarely a good idea, but most of all, this is not an adaptation anymore.
Smaller budgets, better distributed
Secondly, they really need to figure out their budgets. Netflix cancels a lot of well-received and well-watched shows simply because they gave it a ridiculous budget. Of course, if you give a show 100 million dollars, it needs to be a frickin’ viral masterpiece to have any hope of turning a profit.
Most recently, I noticed this with Lockwood & Co. That show did not look like it had a budget of 65 million dollars. In many places, I noticed clear tricks to reduce budget on scenes. There are a lot of reused locations, it almost exclusively focuses on 3 unknown young actors, and they’d modified the script to remove almost the whole crux of that story—the ghosts and hunting them.
Before looking up their budget, I would’ve thought this was some very experimental project that got the smallest of budgets ever and made it work. But yes, when you have a relatively niche teen/YA ghost-hunting story, and you leave out most of the ghosts, you’re not going to make back that kind of budget. Even though the adaptation was pretty good and many watched it.
Notice how I haven’t said a thing about the visual side of adaptations. I mostly mentioned that the adaptations go wrong by having a terrible script and changing parts of the story that didn’t need changing. The script, the actual content, is at the heart of every story and decides if it’s any good.
And yet … there are numerous stories about script writers being given something like two weeks (and probably measly pay) to write the whole thing. When budgeting a move, like 0,01% goes to the actual script. And so scripts generally suck, which you just can’t compensate with fancy clothes, sets and special effects.
As such, I think budgeting should reserve a far larger slice of the pie for the scriptwriting.
- More money
- More revisions / writers / involvement from the original author
- More time in general
I think most book adaptations could have been done on a budget 1/10th the size. Ensure the script is good, and the rest doesn’t need to be shiny; in fact, that might just get in the way.
That’s how you get adaptations that are good on their own and not just an advertisement for the books.
In for the long haul
That’s also how you can make sure they get to do the entire series, instead of inevitably cancelling the project after season 1 because the budget was too high.
The largest expense—the biggest hurdle in general—is that first season. Just like the very first book of an author is the biggest one to get right. Once you’re in, they get noticeably more lax on the editing of later books, because they know they’ll be published and they will sell.
In the world of film and tv, you can obviously reuse all your sets, props, actors, and material already shot. Any seasons after the first are cheaper and easier to do, while shows with multiple seasons are also proven to grow a larger viewership over time.
Because these days, most people need the confidence that a show won’t just disappear. Seeing that it already has 2 or 3 seasons is what they need to get started watching it.
Book series are especially known for having longer arcs and longer intervals between payoff. Any adaptation that only does the first book in a series will miss out on loads of juicy scenes, pay-off, mysteries and arcs. In fact, people often say you can’t really judge an adaptation until it has done the whole series.
Another thing they got wrong with Lockwood & Co, if you ask me. They sped through things so they could include specific moments or developments from later books in the first season already.
And yes, they correctly recognized that some of those things were the coolest moments and the biggest hooks. Many mysteries are introduced in book 1 but only resolved in book 4 or 5. Similarly, those later books have nice callbacks to earlier books, and moments feel stronger because you’ve been with those characters for so long.
But … without build-up, without actually getting there in the proper time, they felt hollow and unearned. That one season basically rushed through the “beat sheet” of the first two books, hitting all plot points technically … but not actually doing any of them right.
When you adapt a book series, I think you should basically guarantee you will adapt all books. Make a vague plan for adapting the whole thing in X seasons. Make sure you already reserve the budget right now for the whole thing.
It’s as if the executives at streaming services have forgotten that 99% of all media are not instant hits. They do not peak the day after releasing, but over time accumulate more fans, and get their biggest boost when the entire story is finished. Because when you neatly wrap up all arcs and storylines after 5 seasons (for example), the show will be loved and be recommended everywhere.
Conclusion
Those were my thoughts about adaptations. About the general climate, which has been this way for years, where shows are expected to be meh and just an advertisement to buy the books if the main premise intrigues you.
I only briefly touched on the constraints and differences between book and film. That’s the main argument of writers/executives whenever they’re asked about massive changes or pacing issues: “The film and the page are different media, we had to change that.”
But did they? Did they really? In most cases, no change was needed. There are so many scenes that are botched in the show while they could have literally lifted the dialogue from the books, and the scene would’ve been equally long but jts better.
Still, you might say, books are always longer and use more time. You need to streamline and save time somewhere! Yes, but actual streamlining of a plot doesn’t mean rushing through it or cutting out half of it, it means being creative and merging events into simpler/faster ones.
Moreover, these adaptations often add stuff. When you add entire new characters or plotlines—often clearly motivated by political reasons or some instruction to follow trends—the entire argument of “but we don’t have time for that scene in the books!” obviously goes out the window.
But most of all, however, I want to question the overall decisions and structure. Before any adaptation is greenlit or any script written. There’s this idea of “rules” that must be followed with every adaptation. For example, most shows have the exact same number of episodes with the exact same length. Or they all follow that structure of “cold open->intro->actual story”. Or, as stated, they assign a huge budget and blow it all on one large battle scene that wasn’t even in the books.
But you don’t have to do that. Change the adaptation to fit the books, the budget, the actors. Usually, with just one or two more episodes, such adaptations could have included all major points from the books. But now, for no reason than “this is the duration of all shows right now, so follow it!”, the writers have to cut crucial stuff and get a mediocre show as a result.
As such, I think the real way to adapt books into good shows is to realize that it’s a different thing than writing an original show.
Don’t get stuck in templates used by other successful shows. Do whatever is right for the work, even if that means fewer episodes, a different structure, a different marketing approach, a creative way to show a character’s inner monologue, etcetera.
Don’t do a first season, see how it goes, then write the next one. Book series are a complete thing, best served in their entirety. Book series are different beasts because they have the original source material already available. If you take too long, the audience’ll just read the books instead. If you try to follow trends or apply general marketing wisdom, they’ll just read the books instead.
Don’t assign huge budgets. If millions of people around the world fell in love with characters just from some letters on a page, then what do you need the expensive special effects for?
And, for the love of god, involve the author and actually listen to what they say. They are usually right. Yes, they have no experience creating a movie and might not realize the cost or complexity of a specific scene. They are still right most of the time. They know how to tell their story best; it’s up to the director to be creative and find a way to put that on screen.
As stated, a good script is the beating heart of any successful adaptation—not the expensive sets or flashy camerawork—and the best way to get one is to let the author have their say in it.
If those changes are made, well, then I might just watch a show one day and say it’s better than the books. Instead of directing everyone to the books instead, telling them not to bother with the 100 million dollar production. Wouldn’t that be something?
Good night,
Tiamo