Book to Movie Adaptations: A Success Criteria Authors Should Aim For?
Love them or hate them, a book to movie adaptation gets people talking.
Personally, I tend to fall into the hate camp. I can name at least a dozen that left me rolling my eyes and feeling incredibly frustrated. There’s also a small camp of books I’ve read that left me with the weird feeling the author wanted the book to be made into a film, perhaps even that the purpose of the book was to secure a movie deal. A recent example was The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland. Throughout the book, I kept thinking ‘why does this read like an overly detailed movie pitch?’ I was unsurprised to learn that the book has already been picked up to be turned into a mini-series.
It got me thinking though, is this a success criterion for authors? Is an adaptation the epitome of success for a book and if so, what impact does this have on the work and the author themself if it turns out to be a massive flop?
There have been some incredibly successful blockbuster hits, of course. The Lord of The Rings paved the way for trilogy adaptations and The Hunger Games followed in hot pursuit. Both of these series have found intense popularity, both in book and movie formats. Although die-hard fans of the books have critiqued the adaptations for missing out important details or adding in superfluous scenes, the movies were box-office hits. (And, I have to admit, I did enjoy both of these). Then we have the book to movie adaptations that have gone through a revival. Stephen King’s I.T. was a hit when it was first adapted in the 1980s, and has found equal popularity with a recent remake and a second installment, not based on any work of fiction (I’ve only watched the 1986 adaptation, never again). I don’t think I even need to go into detail about the Harry Potter series which has secured not only screeching adoration for the books and movies but a completely sold-out, global run with a theatre adaptation too.
More recently, with the determined march of online streaming sites like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Stan revolutionizing the ways we engage with this media, we’ve also seen the rise of book to mini-series adaptations. Big Little Lies, Little Fires Everywhere, and Normal People have taken the world by storm and resulted in increased book sales across the board for these authors. Following the success of the Big Little Lies series, author Liane Moriarty was the top-selling author in Australia in 2015, despite not releasing a book that year (I did enjoy the series, but I haven’t read the book. A few friends of mine had a lot to say about what it missed. I’ve also read a couple of Moriarty’s other books, and let’s just say, not my cup of tea).
There’s a clear distinction between the books being turned into movies versus the books being turned into mini-series it seems. But when it works, the rewards that the authors reap are plentiful. Not least, an increased readership.
Above everything else, it’s the one thing authors cite as making them the happiest when their work makes it to the big screen. But I can’t help think, doesn’t an increased readership lead to the other success criteria most authors covet? Including making it onto best-seller lists, higher book sales, global publication rights, and (ultimately) more money?
Carrie Lissner details in The Atlantic her full journey from writing her novel Carrie Pilsby and the fourteen-year process of publication to Netflix adaptation. She makes no secret of the fact that money was a key motivator:
“It went on to sell 74,000 copies worldwide. But nearly a decade later, I was struggling with revisions to a new book, still living in a tiny apartment in the town I’d moved to after college, and about to turn 40. I really wanted my writing to reach a new audience. Actually, I really wanted to be able to afford furniture.”
It’s no secret that some of the literary elite would see this as ‘selling out’ which causes further conflict and hierarchies within the writing and publishing world. The nobility of writing for the sake of writing without a care for monetary gain is usually reserved for those who already have money.
In reading about this topic, I’ve found numerous pieces from various writers describing their experience. A common theme is the process of wrestling or relinquishing control of their creation. A clue here is in the word adaptation, which holds literal connotations of change. What works well as a book won’t always translate well to a movie and it’s important to make this distinction. Scott Tobias, a film critic, talks about this extensively for AV Club:
“A book is a book and a movie is a movie, and whenever the latter merely sets about illustrating the former, it’s a failure of adaptation, to say nothing of imagination.”
Lionel Shriver talks about this a lot when discussing how her book We Need to Talk About Kevin was adapted to the big screen. She doesn’t see the movie as ‘her work’ and confesses that if she had directed it, there are many things she would have done differently, but that the lack of artistic connection to the film actually helped her to feel more relaxed about the process:
“Now, when I read reviews of the film, I don't feel it's my work being appraised, which made the film's release fairly relaxing for me. I wish it well and I'm pleased when it's positively reviewed, but only in the way that you feel when you're happy for someone else.”
In all my reading on book to movie adaptations though, there have been several warnings from writers about embracing the process. Not only is it lengthy, but many advise the rights to their books were bought and dropped a number of times before anything stuck. Contrary to Shriver’s experience, others have found the ways in which adaptations have taken their work into new directions was actually detrimental to their emotional health. This seemed to be particularly the case when authors had a strong personal connection the work. Simon Carr’s memoir about his wife battling cancer, The Boys Are Back In Town, was adapted to a movie that took a decade to come to fruition, by which time he and his wife were divorced. The experience was not a positive one:
“I ignored the fact that I was handing my very personal story over to a team of screenplay writers to do with what they liked. When the film did come out there were some pretty strong emotional repercussions in my boys, which were the defects I hadn't predicted. Seeing your own story on screen wakes up all the trauma, and we'd presented it to them in a way that was very powerful. I'm afraid to say I didn't handle the whole thing terribly well.”
Ultimately deciding whether to have a book turned into a movie or mini-series is a personal decision authors will need to weigh up in their own terms. As a success measure, it’s one with a lot of nuances that need careful consideration and weighing up. Shriver sums it up well:
“When you sell a book it is a gamble; you take the risk that someone will take your work and turn it into something you're ashamed of. But something happening is generally more interesting than something not happening, so it's a risk worth taking.”
