Thoughts on Book-to-Film Adaptations

No jump cut in this post; sorry for the length. But: thoughts, I have them.


If you’re about to use one of the following criticisms of a film adapted from a book:

“_______[setting] wasn’t what I pictured.”
“______ [character] isn’t supposed to have a beard/be tall/be short/be blond/be black.”
“They left out___________” [a character? an important character? or an incident where a character blows his nose on a dirty hankie or passes by a cottage with a mean, barking dog outside?]

Please consider the following:

-Films and novels are different art forms. If it’s a book told from first-person point of view with a lot of internal monologue, in order to remain really true to the book, you’d have the character sitting or standing or walking around while a voiceover tells the story. Film gives the possibility of opening up the landscape. So instead of a montage and a voiceover, we are treated to a flashback of Katniss Everdeen with her dead father, and scenes from the Capitol where the gamesmakers are pulling the strings and talking about how to mess with the tributes and keep the audience at the edge of their seats.

- The visual medium is much faster at establishing character and setting.  Nevertheless, in the interest of character development, some characters may be omitted or combined. See the bit about "establishing scenes" below.

-The POV of the book may not translate to film very well.

-Not everyone who is seeing the movie has read the book.  Filmmakers have to consider a wider audience when adapting a text.

-“_________[character] was too short/ too tall/ not hawt enough.” If a male character described as tall is being portrayed by an actor who is only five-foot-six, please consider: would you rather have an actor who captures the character’s essence, personality, etc.; in short, one who plays the character well, or someone less talented who fits your daydreams? And “hawt” is certainly in the eye of the beholder.    

Small rant on casting: Occasionally, and unfortunately, the most “bankable” actors are chosen regardless of talent or whether they fit the character. I grant you permission to complain about that one. Case in point:  Tom Cruise as Claus von Stauffenberg in “Valkyrie.”  The rest of the cast were perfect in their roles; Cruise, however, felt like a big blank spot to me. Tom Cruise in an American Army uniform circa 1867 (“The Last Samurai”) was also Tom Cruise in a Nazi uniform in 1942; rinse, repeat. I wasn’t at all convinced.  Cruise has done fine work, especially in “Rain Man” and in “Born on the Fourth of July,” but this performance felt phoned in. My personal opinion is that Jim Caviezel would have been a much better choice, both for his physical presence (Stauffenberg was over six feet tall and so is Caviezel--physical presence is extremely important to a visual medium) and, more important, for his personal religious conviction. Stauffenberg was a devout Christian, and when the atrocities of the Nazi party began to conflict with what Stauffenberg considered his first commitment to a power higher than Hitler, he put himself on the line and spearheaded an assassination plot which failed, resulting in arrest and execution for treason. Caviezel is a devout Christian.He certainly could have used that to inform his performance--and my personal opinion is that "Claus" should have been given some dialogue to that effect. It could have been done without coming across as preachy.

-A book or book series that takes place over several months or years is going to need paring down to make it fit into a reasonable two-to-two-and-a-half-hour time slot--and again, make sense to an audience that hasn’t read the book.  The events of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird take place over more than three years; the film based on the book condensed it to a year.  Because Atticus Finch was the moral center of the book, there was much more face time for Atticus in the film than in the book, and a good bit of time spent in the courtroom.  No complaints here, as we get amazing performances from both Brock Peters as Tom Robinson and Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. I admit I was disappointed at the combining of the characters of Miss Rachel Haverford and Miss Stephanie Crawford into the character of Dill’s “Aunt Stephanie,” though I understand the necessity for what the filmmakers intended. For me, the biggest disappointment was the POV shift to Jem. But back to my point: What filmgoers may not understand is that characters in films need “establishing scenes.” The same for The Hunger Games: Prim gives Katniss the Mockingjay pin instead of Katniss’s friend Madge from the book. I had to explain to my students that, for an audience who hasn’t read the book, Madge would have needed an establishing scene--the two girls passing notes in class, walking home from school together--and there were more important elements, such as showing the bond between the two sisters, the scenes with Katniss’s father, that were more important for the first film.  Madge gets more face time in Catching Fire; we’ll see what the filmmakers decide to do with her then.

The 1940 film version of Pride and Prejudice featured costumes that looked like they were left over from “Gone With the Wind,” moving the setting from the early 1800’s to the mid-1800’s.  The dances in the movie were mid-1800’s rather than Regency-era as well. Greer Garson was 36 when she played 21-year-old Lizzy Bennett. Lady Catherine comes as Darcy’s ambassador at the end rather than as an antagonist, which was a complete departure from the book. Yet I love the adaptation for its fidelity to the spirit of the book--the social satire and the madcap all-girl Bennett household are quite faithful to the book’s portrayals, as is the depiction of Mrs. Bennett, anxious to the point of neurosis, to see her daughters settled and secure. Plus, you have wonderful Edmund Gwenn as Mr. Bennett. Best of all, it was the catalyst for my reading the book and starting me down the path of near-obsession with Jane Austen’s work. (haters to the left!) I’ve seen other adaptations and liked different things about each one.  How awesome is a literary work that it can be done and redone so many times and still be fresh?

My students have complained about the film adaptation of Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief. Their complaints range from change in characters’ hair color/ complexions to more principled complaints that scenes from the other four books were included in the first film. I asked if those changes were helpful to someone who hadn’t read the book.  Many of them admit they were.  “But what are they going to do for the other four movies?” was the question that arose.  And they had a point.  Since I haven’t read the books (yet) the movie was all right, but given the alterations made, I may have actually been unable to give the filmmakers a pass on what they changed. Perhaps there are some books or book series that are better left unadapted to film, even the ones with high action and adventure.

So. . . movie or book?  Which one to go to first?  My response: Look! A meteor shower! *runs away.*

New stuff added to "Pages" tabs

"Plot Points and Pacing and Getting Unstuck," which I wrote for A. C. Grant's Creative Writing Toolbox, has just been added to my Revision Strategies page.  About two weeks ago, I added "Female Characters and the Readers Who Love Them" to the Characterizations page.  The characterizations page has pictures now as well, mainly because the one of Agatha Heterodyne was too good not to include, so I had to add the ones of Gregory Peck and Alan Rickman as the characters Atticus Finch and Severus Snape.

The characterizations posts were sort of a tangent for A. C.'s blog, and once I got started, it was like a runaway train.  If only my fiction writing went so smoothly.

I've found a couple of interesting articles on female characterizations.  Give me some time to write a decent post on them.

See you next week.

I got nothin'

I'm currently blocked.  But Neil Gaiman isn't.  I can't wait to read whatever it is he's working on.

Full post here.

An excerpt:


It's a weird thing, writing.


Sometimes you can look out across what you're writing, and it's like looking out over a landscape on a glorious, clear summer's day.  You can see every leaf on every tree, and hear the birdsong, and you know where you'll be going on your walk.


And that's wonderful.


Sometimes it's like driving through fog. You can't really see where you're going.  You have just enough of the road in front of you to know that you're probably still on the road, and if you drive slowly and keep your headlamps lowered you'll still get where you were going.


And that's hard while you're doing it, but satisfying at the end of a day like that, where you look down and you got 1500 words that didn't exist in that order down on paper, half of what you'd get on a good day, and you drove slowly, but you drove.


And sometimes you come out of the fog into clarity, and you can see just what you're doing and where you're going, and you couldn't see or know any of that five minutes before.


And that's magic.


The rest of the post goes on to say that his current project is taking a different direction from where he'd originally planned.

It's exciting and scary to stare into the abyss, even if you see the other side. How awesome to trust the magic.

I'm not there yet.  But after some research and a few outlines, and a cure for insomnia, maybe I will be.

Thanks for stopping by.

Commonly-Confused Words: Don't Be Discreet When Citing a Site

Saw some really messed-up usages on Yahoo! this week, so I thought I’d share with you how to use these words correctly.

discreet/discrete:  
Unfortunately, they’re both adjectives, so there’s no easy memory gimmick to help you with these.  Discreet is judicious, decorous, modestly unobtrusive.  Taking somebody aside to tell them they botched the assignment is much more discreet than yelling at them in front of their coworkers. From the same Latin root as our modern word “discern.”  To use discretion is to be judicious or thoughtful when making a choice. Discrete, on the other hand, means detached, separated, as in:  “The students were in discrete groups for the mythology unit:  some groups researched Greek myths, some Roman, and some Egyptian.” From the Latin discretus, meaning “separated.”

site/ cite/ sight:
Site is a noun, and only a noun.  It is used as a synonym for place. “The photographer was shown the dig site where the pottery shards were found.” “The new site for the store has excellent freeway access.” It’s been compounded into the word website, which is, simply, “a place on the Web.”
Cite is a verb, and only a verb. It means to quote, to mention or support, or to call attention to.  “Don’t neglect to cite your sources in your research paper.” “The candidate cited her experience with a local Board of Education when listing her qualifications for State Board of Education.” “The soldier was cited for bravery on the battlefield.” Equally, “My brother was cited yesterday for going 45 in a 30 zone.”
Sight can be noun and verb and its past participle can be adjectival.  As a noun, it can simply refer to vision: “I’m angry with you and I need you out of my sight for awhile.” Or as a metaphoric reference to a firearm: “You obviously cannot be trusted, so be warned I have you in my sights.”  As a past-tense verb: “She was sighted coming out of The Coffee Cave yesterday.” It’s a little silly and pretentious to use it instead of seen, but at least it’s used correctly; I’ve seen sited used in that context. The past participle sighted is also used as an adjective.  “All but one of the Gleeson’s children were sighted; the youngest lost his sight to diabetic retinopathy.”

Why there was no post this weekend

This is my talented husband playing a Native American style flute on stage with Nino Reyos at the Moab Arts and Recreation center, for a flute festival which took place over President's Day weekend. I've been trying to have some kind of predictability to my posting, usually timing them to hit on either Sunday or Monday every week, but I dropped the ball this weekend.  I was making new friends and renewing some old friendships, basking in the music and talent and positive energy of the people who make flutes and the beautiful music of those who play them. And I was blissfully off the grid, only checking the computer once to see if we should be trying to cross Soldier Summit in a snowstorm at 2 in the morning (we didn't--it turned out to be a wise choice).

When I write, I agonize over every word.  I edit and re-edit and often end up completely scrapping things I'd spent a good deal of time on.  In other words, my process is pretty slow and I'm hard on myself. There are times I'll go back and re-read some of these posts and think, "jeez, everybody knows this.  Why do I bother?" There are times I feel like taking down everything I've ever written online and crawling back into my cave of relative anonymity.

Especially when I read something like this. It's Neil Gaiman's praise for Jonathan Carroll and other writers who inspire him, put so eloquently that it makes me want to bury my own keyboard and never write again.

Here's a snippet, but I encourage you to go and read the entire post:

There are millions of competent writers out there.  There are hundreds of thousands of good writers in the world, and there are a handful of great writers.  And this is me, late at night, trying to figure out the difference for myself.  That indefinable you-either-got-it-or-you-ain't spark that makes someone a great writer.


And then I realise that I'm asking myself the wrong question, because it's not good writers or great writers.  What I'm really wondering is what makes some writers special.  Like when I was a kid on the London Underground, I'd stare at the people around me.  And every now and again I'd notice someone who had been drawn - a William Morris beauty, an Berni Wrightson grotesque - or someone who had been written - there are lots of Dickens characters in London, even today.  It wasn't those writers who accurately recorded life:  the special ones were the ones who drew it or wrote it so personally that, in some sense it seemed as if they were creating life, or creating the world and bringing it back to you.  And once you 'd seen it through their eyes you could never un-see it, not ever again.  


There are a few writers who are special. They make the world in their books; or rather, they open a window or a door or a magic casement, and they show you the world in which they live.

As much as being in the presence of talented and loving people inspires me, it also brings all my insecurities to the surface. The comfort zone isn't very interesting, but it is safe.

Sorry for the personal wangst.  I'll be back to my critical analytical wordnerdy self next post.

Genres and Tropes: Historical Fiction

Or, “Everything I Know About History I Learned From Literature”

This is one of the most difficult posts on genres and tropes I’ve written yet, probably because it’s mostly “genre” and not much “trope.”  

Historical fiction deals with fictional characters placed in a historical setting.  You have practically limitless possibilities here, as long as you’re willing to do the research necessary to do justice to your subject.

You could choose a “major historical event” such as the Nazi Holocaust, the Russian Revolution, or the American Civil War and place your characters in or near the action.  Your characters can be “ordinary” people caught up in extraordinary circumstances or they can be friends or acquaintances with some major historical figures of the time in which your story is set.  Most authors opt for the “ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances” trope because this presents much less difficulty (both of fact and of logistics) than, for example, creating a character who’s a BFF for Eva Braun.  

Some final (I hope) thoughts on reader reviews

In my past two entries, I’ve ranted about author shenanigans in response to online reviews by readers. There are writers who create accounts under assumed names, aka “sockpuppets,” in order to praise or defend their own books.  They go on Twitter and encourage their friends, relatives and fans to vote down negative reviews and vote up positive ones, or to join a dogpile to criticize a negative review or attack the reviewer.This week, I turn to thoughts on amateur book reviews.

Once we've bought or borrowed a book, spent time reading it, succeeding or failing to relate to it, we feel a certain ownership. For this reason, I believe that readers have every right to call an author out for not doing research for a historical novel or for one set on the other side of the world.  A writer giving a novel a present-day setting has no excuse for not checking an atlas or Google Earth to verify whether Istanbul is located in the middle of a desert or not. A writer who presumes to write about an ethnicity or culture about which they know very little deserves any criticism she gets for not accurately portraying those people, their culture, their history or folklore. I personally consider it disrespectful and arrogant to co-opt a culture without their knowledge and consent. A writer writing historical fiction has to remember that he is placing fictional characters in an historical setting and treat that setting with appropriate respect. This includes anything steampunk, science fiction, or presented as alternate history. Whatever your alterations, we readers can tell if you know your stuff or not.