How do you write a screenplay that is better than the book?

A

Angelshare1

Well-known member
I very rarely hear someone say that the movie was better than the book. Of course the notion of comparing the two is flawed. What if they made a movie into a book. The book would almost always suck because it's being compared to the movie as a standard. See the Star Wars books.

Let's try to answer this question anyways. When a great book is to be turned into a film, how do you handle this? Do you grab a few big themes and then build a movie around those or try to follow the plot pretty closely? Roger Ebert says we go to books for facts and movies for emotion. Perhaps following story closely is the wrong approach.

I have a few favorite books that I wouldn't mind developing into movie ideas. (Just for fun and practice so I'm not concerned about copyright.)

And tell me, what movies do you think actually are good examples of being better then the book?
 
Books and movies are totally different art forms. A book lets you in on what's going on inside each character's head. Some of my favorite books could never, realistically, be made into watchable movies, because in a movie there's no way to really convey the thought processes inside the character's heads. In a book, you can describe and the viewer can experience all five senses, plus thoughts and wishes and motivations... in a movie, you're limited to two senses: what the viewer sees, and what they hear. They don't know what's going on inside someone's head unless that character speaks it to another character -- and even then, if it's a good movie, the character will never truly say exactly what they feel anyway, they'll use subtext and let the viewer make the connections.

And, furthermore, there's just no space to explore the depth of what a book can do. Look at the latest Harry Potter -- the book is, what, 800 pages? And they released "part 1", which covers maybe -- I don't remember, 600 pages of that book? In a 120-page screenplay... how do you cover 600 pages of material in 120 pages? You can't.

Adapting a book into a watchable movie is one of the hardest tasks in screenwriting. Adapting a book into a movie that's actually better than the book? That's an Oscar-worthy task, and it has rarely ever been done.
 
Barry_Green said:
Good ones do.
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Sure. But compared to a book it's no contest. That's why good books don't have pictures. :)

When reading a book our imagination fills in everything. You might read it and imagine Sandra Bullock as the lead, I may picture Emily Blunt.
Movies don't allow that kind of range. You get what you see. Even the good ones don't allow that kind of freedom.

It's tough to beat ones imagination. This is why movies rarely, if ever, live up to the book.
 
Okay, right -- I see where you're coming from now.

I was taking it from the angle of that a movie doesn't need imagination, and I think that a movie that doesn't involve the user's imagination is likely not a good movie. Good movies involve the user's imagination to a heavy degree. But, obviously, nowhere near as much as a book does.
 
It's not too common for a good film to spell out the moral premise, the subtextual theme, tying everything together. The same is true for books. One must have a 'moral imagination' to understand film. Actually, good filmmakers understand that a film is a collaboration between their imaginations and the audience's on a number of levels. I'm not talking only theme here--this covers all aesthetic practical concerns from edits to composition as well.
 
i'd say the best way to make a movie better than the book is just to start with a really awful book. but other things to consider are that a lot of books follow a different act structure (5 vs 3). And along the lines of what these other guys are saying, it'd be tough to let people in on the characters emotion, even tougher if you're trying to adapt a book written in the first person vs the third. You will be leaving out a lot of detail from the book by cutting pages, so you'll have to figure out ways to quickly show what the book is getting at, vs explaining it (unless you're michael bay and you just have a character reveal everything in a forced line of dialog).
 
It's tough to beat ones imagination. This is why movies rarely, if ever, live up to the book.
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So what do movies offer that books don't? We've all had the discussion many times before about how and why books are so much better than the movies adapted from them, how the movies miss so much. But rarely do we talk about what ways movies are better than books, for original stories or adapted.

The two things that come to my mind are
1. Less time invested. I know the common retort to that is people are lazy, and they are, but there is value in being able to tell a story in two hours versus twenty. Even more so if you end up not liking it.

2. Audience attention. With a book, it's easy to get distracted by kids, dinner, or the annoying neighbours next door. When there's a dry spot in the story, you can skim a few paragraphs, or even pages to pick up where things interest you again. With a movie, you're in a dark theatre with no distractions for two hours. At it's worst, other than playing on your smart phone, you've got nothing better to do than watch the movie in front of you. You are essentially forced to focus on the film, though hopefully, it doesn't feel that way. But I think it's a big plus for movies that you get the audience's attention, concentration even, for two straight hours. And your focus in that time is narrowed. As discussed, with a book you're imagining the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches and the story. With the film, the senses are taken care of for you, so your imagination can spend more time wandering about the tension in the story.
 
Very interesting topic. I was talking about this with someone the other day. The movie in question was Dune. I absolutely love the David Lynch version, and the book, but hated the version the SciFi channel did. While the SciFi channel was more accurate to the story (except for the Harkonens), all of the dialog between Paul and his mother were really boring in the film. In the book, you just speed through that part not reading dialog at the pace it would be spoken.

To me, Lynch took all the concepts of the book that were really neat, and crafted it into a story that worked better on film. It's not the same story, but the elements were fascinating to me and built a real world I could see and understand. I know people hate the Lynch version, and there is no right or wrong on this, but it is what it is.

Another example is "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" as compared to "Bladerunner". I read the book AND saw the movie, and they are both different. I like them both equally honestly. The stories have similarities, but where the book wouldn't translate well to film, they changed it, and I like the changes.

To me, I would try and recognize just what does not translate well to film and find an ingenious way of presenting that information that might be essential to the story through another mechanism. The thing is, diehard fans will NEVER be happy with what you do because it isn't the book. Like covers in music, some people, no matter how good the remix, can't get past the original and what it does for them.

Almost every great movie I have seen based on a book ALWAYS deviated from the book. I honestly really enjoyed Forest Gump when it came out, and it too, was very different than the book. It's realizing how you capture what most people find to be the most important aspect of the story.
 
Barry_Green said:
Books and movies are totally different art forms. A book lets you in on what's going on inside each character's head. Some of my favorite books could never, realistically, be made into watchable movies, because in a movie there's no way to really convey the thought processes inside the character's heads. In a book, you can describe and the viewer can experience all five senses, plus thoughts and wishes and motivations... in a movie, you're limited to two senses: what the viewer sees, and what they hear. They don't know what's going on inside someone's head unless that character speaks it to another character -- and even then, if it's a good movie, the character will never truly say exactly what they feel anyway, they'll use subtext and let the viewer make the connections.

And, furthermore, there's just no space to explore the depth of what a book can do. Look at the latest Harry Potter -- the book is, what, 800 pages? And they released "part 1", which covers maybe -- I don't remember, 600 pages of that book? In a 120-page screenplay... how do you cover 600 pages of material in 120 pages? You can't.

Adapting a book into a watchable movie is one of the hardest tasks in screenwriting. Adapting a book into a movie that's actually better than the book? That's an Oscar-worthy task, and it has rarely ever been done.
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Actually one book/movie that is a good example is Perfume. It's about a serial killer in 17th century France who has a super sense of smell and is killing women for their scent. The movie does an excellent job of projecting smell.

Also if you want to smell a film, rent Das Boot. People have said that you can smell the sailors in it. (Or maybe it's the guy sitting next to you.) Of course smell taste and touch are pretty difficult to put in film on your best of days.
 
a famous example of "correct adaption" vs "movie adaption" are the Shining movies.
Kubrick got a lot of Flak from Stephen King and his Fans for taking too much freedom.
But when you watch King's version you immediately understand that Kubrick made the right decisions in his version. You simply can't transform from one artform to the other and expect the result to have the same impact on viewer/reader.
 
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