How Novelizations Differ From Adaptions
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012Movies based on books seem to be all the rage in recent years. A greater number of movies from books have been coming to theaters and attracting existing readers of the book the film is based on. These films are often known as adaptions (sometimes referred to as movies based on books).
A different form of movies from books (or more accurately called books from movies) are novelizations, and this is pretty much the reverse of a film adaption. A novel is created when the script is put together and therefore the movie is “novelized” for an additional group of potential fans.
Often times a movie studio hires a screenplay writer to compose a script for a film. Once the screenplay is complete, or often times when the screenplay is still getting developed, the production company might employ the services of an author to create a novelization of the screenplay. The function of this is normally for advertising and extending the audience for that tale to a bigger spectrum of prospective fans.
The drawback with novelizations is that often it’s tricky to turn a tale that was primarily a script into a novel. With a film, viewers don’t end up getting much inner-discussion, and in addition descriptions of locations and individuals are not as clear. If the writer of the story did not originally imagine it, then it is frequently difficult to change the script to a book form and continue to keep the tale complete, not choppy, and above all engaging.
So we have books as movies and we’ve got books from films. Yet which one is preferable? It’s a hard argument. Almost always however the initial format the project was created in will be more enjoyable than the adaptation.
So if the book was compiled first and afterwards a script based on the book was written, most frequently the novel should be more enjoyable. In comparison if the movie script was created originally, then the book was written second, the film will probably turn out better. Of course there are cases when that isn’t the true, however generally speaking that is the way it normally goes.
Alongside adaptions & novelizations, there are also tie in editions. Such editions generally contain the same text of the original book, but the cover picture is swapped out to fit in with the film adaption and “tie in” the novel to its matching movie.
Whether books as movies were originally written by an author or a screenwriter, ultimately the process is all about adjusting a project to a revised format with the intent of finding new enthusiasts who will be able to experience the initial story in whichever way that they prefer.
If you love watching your favorite books as movies then visit the Books as Movies news blog for the latest details on books that are movies or becoming movies.