When transferring a story from book to script, why do film/screenwriters take so many liberties?

There are lots of reasons. The audiences of a book and a movie are vastly different, for one. A screenwriter has to condense a story to a reasonable film length, which often means losing important chunks of a story.

This isn't always because they don't fit -- remember that a novelist has the ability to build up the cause-and-effect of a situation; the characters involved and their feelings and thoughts about what's happening; and all the circumstances surrounding a particular event that might just not fit into a film. So all that work that a novelist can use to build up a plot line to make it make sense, a screenwriter doesn't necessarily have the space or time for. That means condensing plotlines, cutting out pieces, and narrowing focus.

Another point is that screenwriters are dealing with movie audiences, who won't necessarily wait twenty or thirty minutes (or fifty pages) for a story to develop. Nor are they fully willing to delve into, say, an intense sci-fi or fantasy plot that a novelist has time to construct. There's also a few other considerations: For one, when a writer adapts a novel, he or she doesn't want to rehash the same story exactly, for no other reason than the fact that while a book may be "better" in its original form, seeing exactly what you read isn't all that interesting.It's also probably not worth $10 and a Friday night.

Even though a book's movie comes with a built-in audience, the movie will never live up to what they've imagined, even if it's exactly the same. And finally -- a screenwriter doesn't want to rewrite someone else's work. Even screenplays adapted by the original writers are often far different (the work of Michael Crichton and Stephen King stands out).

Every writer wants to make something new, even out of a story based on another story. There has to be creativity -- otherwise the writer is really just transcribing. Hope that answers that question, at least from the standpoint of a writer who knows what it's like to work in adaptation.

I think the whole Hollywood machine has evolved into something inbred and truly weird these days. It's too full of ego's, and yes men who won't tell the big men when their ideas are bad. There is so much money involved in feature films and there are so many supremely unqualified people trying to exert their influence on what is made that the end result is something designed by committee...I believe this is in part why the powerful directors, with final-cut approval, are some of the few who can (sometimes) pull good films out of the Hollywood machine: they have the influence and power to be able to stop some bad decisions being made.In my opinion, the ultimate example on why the original story is ignored or butchered so much: Day of the Jackal.

Best selling book by a very big name author, and what do they do? They threw away the story and made a new one. All that remains is the title.

It still made money. Actually, I can think of one other place where sub-par licences are regularly made: computer/console games. Many incredibly bad or derivative games come out every year, based on very good films or celebrities.

Why? The name and the publicity sell it...so maybe the consumer is to blame too? Too apathetic to what it released, we watch what they tell us we should watch.

The fans watch and are disappointed, and the rest watch because they've heard it was a popular book, so naturally the movie must be good. Personally I think the biggest blame can be laid at the feet of the Hollywood machine: too many people making decisions, and too many out-of-touch people in management trying to change it into what they like, or what they believe 'the public' wants.(Rememeber back when almost every movie had to have a love-scene? It's stupid ideas like that.

) And then they have focus groups and try to avoid offending anyone. The end result, a bland product that says nothing. But there's something else prevalent there: a lack of respect for writers.

I think a story is viewed as a raw product, the status of the writer meaning little in ego-centric Hollywood. Books are just a first draught. You can get a final script quickly, and you'll get 'fans' into the theatre too.

Bonus! :) Wow, I hope that didn't come off sounding too cynical.Hehe.

They are two different media. Example: Micheal Crichton wrote lots of books that eventually became films. In his career, he wrote a bunch of books, took a break and directed some films, then went back to writing books.

He was pretty deeply involved in the first Jurassic Park movie, and look how differently it turned out from his book. (A major character dies in the book, yet survives the film. ) Now look at the sequel.(_The Lost World_) WAY different.

The dead guy from the first book is still dead in the second book, but alive again in the second movie. Two children in the book get amalgamated into one.(Or, I guess you could say that 3 children in the book are amalgamated into two in the film. ) A bunch of different stuff happens.

Why?Dunno. Film ain't books.

1) Film requires a much larger investment than publishing and has a shorter life span to make it's money back. That is why you will notice that sex, gore and thrill are added or emphasized in stories where they aren't even present in the book in a lot of cases allowing previews to have a higher sales intensity and hopefully increasing opening weekend/Box Office Numbers. 2) Show, Don't Tell.In a book we have infinite time to explore.. say the background or history of a simple object, like the vase in "Atonement".

In film you have about 120 pages to tell a story even if the book was 300 pages long. There is also the inner man... some films use the "voice over" to solve the inner man dialogue, but it can get very annoying and the general rule is SHOW don't tell.. which is why most actors will tell you they don't want to have the job of exposition in a screenplay and no one wants to hear greek style monologues explaining the feelings of the characters, what you read in a book may have to be conveyed in a visual that falls short of your expectations as someone who read the book and yes, adaptive writers don't always make the best choices for visual replacements.3) Different Audience, Although there is a lot of over lap and if you read a book you will probably see the movie, the fact is that the movie is written more for the larger audience who NEVER reads the book and prefers visual entertainment - this audience has no interest in the book version and is ready to accept the more superficial glossy version of the story... the rules are vastly different for this audience, so the interpretation has a whole different goal for sensibilities and this truly effects the story.4) A story read is never the same as a story seen... even when you try to do it shot by shot.. Watchmen is an example of a film that tried to follow the exact story page for page of a graphic novel, the result still did not please the readers... the medium is simply different... 5) The Minds Eye.. and finally, not the writers fault, but there is also the minds eye - your imagination conjures images for the story that no film-maker can match, because your mind is your own world perspective and so that is also a factor in dissatisfaction with film versions... I am a huge movie fan and also a book fan, but I have rarely loved the film version of a book I read first.. Just my opinion :).

Well, there are many reasons, some good, some bad. The core is that a movie is a different sort of experience from a book, it's an audiovisual medium, it has a relatively fixed length (you can write a 1000 page book if you like, but a movie should really be around 2 hours or less if you want people to actually watch it), and has to actually show things happening rather than being able to describe things like the internal mental state of the characters. Some things which work fine in books don't work at all in movies, or only work in very specific situations (third person narration, for one).

So when you go to make a movie out of a book, you may actually need to change quite a bit to try to be true to the spirit of the book, sometimes even to the point of adding extra characters (or taking people out) or adding or subtracting large amounts of material either to make the story more concise or fill in gaps. This can be done well, or poorly, and I think we've seen examples of both. Let me give you an example of an upcoming movie.

Coraline is a movie based on a story by Neil Gaiman, in the movie version they added a character (a friend of the main character) who is not present in the book at all because the book is told from the point of view of the main character, and her mental state is often important. They needed to give the main character somebody to talk to in order to make that happen and seem natural. This was done with the full approval of the author, who also agreed that it was a beneficial addition to the movie version (I would like to give you a movie that's out and you could have seen, but this is the one example where I've seen interviewers with both the director of the film and the author and I know what they both think about it).

In my screenwriting class, we learned that most movies are directed for people at a 12-yr-old intelligence level. That makes them more marketable. Movies are about making money.

You may have noticed that if you were waiting on the Harry Potter movie release this November (I know I was), just to find out it had been moved back to July to get the summer kids crowd. With that in mind, screenwriters take liberties with the material because they are being paid to write a movie, not a book. A book can take you down a path of visual imagery and fluid writing, and as many pages as the writer thinks are necessary.

A screenwriter must work within the constraints of a time limit (this is because of the attention span of the viewer). He or she also must make changes that are believed to be visually compelling to the watcher. That's why so many good books are killed by movies that are based on visual effects.

Movies are just visual representations that can't live up to what your brain can envision based on the words you read. Screenwriters know this, and they have too many constraints by the movie production people to be true to the work.

You have to take into mind that so many people get an input into a movie, that the script changes drastically from the original adapted script to what you see on film. I think it's important to remember that movies are just adaptations of a book, not the book in visual form. I work in the television industry and I've seen scripts completely butchered from their original version because so many changes are made along the way.

Too many cooks in the kitchen at each stage and here's why: Mostly, it comes down to politics. Are the executives on the project wanting to justify their job by making meaningless notes? Probably.

Also, the director likes telling their own story instead of using someone else's, so they add their own spin on it (who cares about the fans). Plus, the movie is all about making money, so whatever is cheapest and looks best in the trailers are going to make it into the film. Hope that clarifies it.

I agree with hartwell. They really are two different media. Novels, as an art form, can be enjoyed at an individual's leisure for a long period of time.

Novelists are encouraged to develop many characters and to explore relationships in a way that would take more than just a few hours to absorb. Films, on the other hand, must be condensed into, usually, about two hours. It would be impossible to develop the typical Stephen King novel into a single, two-hour film.

The filmmaker must alter and abridge elements of the story to fit the medium. Think of it from a formalist point of view. An art form should be utilized to display all the things that cannot be displayed in other art forms.

If filmmakers were required to plot out novels identically scene for scene, beat for beat, a significant amount of the artistic element and originality is removed. Would you really prefer classic films like The Shining or The Godfather to follow their origin novels exactly? I think I prefer The Godfather without 20 minutes discussing Sonny's girlfriend's vagina.

I remember hearing all this originally from my screenwriting professor Richard Walter. He said that a screenwriter owes absolutely nothing to the original novel or its author. A film is a completely different beast and should be treated as such.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.