"Read the book; see the movie!" "Now a major motion picture!" "A novelization..." "A new musical based on the stage play..." "...based on the book..." "...based on the hit movie!" "The timeless story of..." "...a classic tale..." "...updated for today's audience..." "...colorized..." "...reformatted to fit your screen..." "edited for television."

It's the same old story. Or is it? Is a story the same when translated from one medium to another and if not, how is it different? What qualities must be changed to preserve a story's integrity? To adapt adeptly an author needs to know the answers to these questions.

Before we can find out answers, it would be prudent to define some terms. First, what do we mean by adaptation?" Simply, adaptation is the process of translating a story from one medium to another. What is a medium?" A medium is a physical facility for storing information and the processes involved in recovering it. Finally, what is story?" For our purposes we shall define story as any information an author wishes to communicate to an audience (including considerations, experiences, and feelings).

So, putting it all together, adaptation is the process of translating information from one physical facility for storage and retrieval to another in such a way that it can be communicated to an audience. Sounds cold, doesn't it. That's because this is simply the logistic description of adaptation.

A more organic description might be: Adaptation is the process of reproducing an audience experience in another medium. That has a better feel to it, but is much less precise. Also, we can clearly see a difference in the purpose of each approach, as pointed out above when we spoke of the new story's identity versus its integrity. One seeks to preserve the parts, the other to be true to the whole. And that is the paradox at the heart of the adapter's dilemma: Should authors strive to recreate the structure accurately or to reproduce the dynamics faithfully? More to the point, why can't we do both?

The answer lies with the media themselves. Every medium has its own strengths and weaknesses. Often what can be easily carried out in one medium is either difficult or even impossible to achieve in another. Books are not very good at directly communicating sounds or visual atmospheres. The motion picture, on the other hand, is a poor medium for directly communicating a character's inner thoughts and feelings.

In each case, indirect means must be employed to accomplish what might be directly communicated in the other medium. To adapt a work successfully, an author must determine what to add or remove to achieve the same effect as the original medium.

It would seem that adaptations always fail to capture some aspect of the original, either in substance or essence. That is true, but it does not have to be a fatal problem. An audience tends to regard certain aspects of a story as being essential. As long as an adaptation keeps or recreates those essential elements, the audience will find the effort successful.

Beyond the essential, other elements may be more or less fully developed than in the original, providing something of the same flavor while allowing the latitude to tailor the piece for the new medium. The question then becomes how to decide which items are essential and how deeply they need to be developed, on a case-by-case basis.

The first step is to do a complete analysis of the original work. Just reading the book a hundred times or watching the movie until images are imbedded on your retina is not good enough. You don't want to know a work just from the inside out, but you want to know it from the outside in as well--the way the audience sees it. To develop both an understanding and empathy for the story, it helps to examine it in terms of the Four Stages of Communication.

The Four Stages of Communication describe the manner in which the author's original intent makes its way from his mind into the minds of his audience. Stage one is Story forming, in which the author first defines the message for himself. Stage two is Story encoding, where the author comes up with images and events to symbolize the message. Stage three is Story weaving, which is the process of arranging these images into scenes and acts. Stage four is Story Reception, which describes the relationship of the audience to the work. By analyzing how each of these stages functions in a story, an author can make sure the adaptation will connect at all levels of appreciation.

Storyforming

A key concept of traditional narrative theory is that the narrative itself is transportable among media. The narrative is not the complete story, but simply the essential dramatics of the deep structure. In Dramatica, we call this the Storyform. Dramatica is precise about what this underlying dramatic argument contains.

Each of the elements that must appear in a complete storyform is called a story point, because it is necessary for the audience to understand the story from that perspective to prevent a hole in the dramatic argument. Some story points are structural in nature, such as the story's goal, or the Main Character's unique ability. Others are more dynamic, such as the Main Character's mental sex, or the story's limit through imposing a timelock or an optionlock.

When analyzing a work to be adapted, it is sometimes difficult to separate the storyform from the storytelling. A good rule of thumb is to think of the storyform as the author's logistical argument and the storytelling as the emotional argument.

A good example of this can be seen by comparing Romeo and Juliet to West Side Story, Cyrano de Bergerac to Roxanne, or Heart of Darkness to Apocalypse Now. In each pair, the storyform is nearly the same, while the storytelling is different.

An example of a poor adaptation that failed in the storyforming was the translation of A Christmas Carol into the motion picture Scrooged, starring Bill Murray.

In the original Dickens story, Scrooge is a character who must start doing something, rather than stop doing something. Scrooge does not proactively hurt people. Scrooge allows suffering to continue because of his lack of action. He has a hole in his heart. The ghost of Christmas Present presents him with two children, Ignorance and Want. They serve to illustrate the problems Scrooge perpetuates through his lack of generosity.

In the modern adaptation, Bill Murray's character is someone who must stop doing something. He proactively harms several people. But when the argument is made for him to change, he is still presented with those who want and are needy. That argument is simply not appropriate to a character that needs to stop. As a result, the attempt to make a more proactive villain, updated for our time, failed because the supporting argument contained in the balance of the storyform was not adjusted to support the change.

Use your Dramatica software to arrive at the single storyform that best describes the work you are adapting. Make sure that if you decide to change anything, you run another storyform to learn what else must be changed as well. You may discover that you need to make only minor adjustments. Or you may find out the storyform requires so much altering that the item you intended to change would scuttle any sense of familiarity with the original.

Storyencoding

If the storyform is the skeleton, the storyencoding is the meat. Let's take a single storyforming story point and see how encoding can flavor its meaning. Suppose the goal of the original story is to obtain the stolen diamonds. Without changing the storyform, we might adapt that to obtaining the stolen gold. We could also change it to obtaining a diploma, obtaining someone's love, or obtaining the office of President of the United States. Each and every one of these examples has a goal of obtaining, but each also has a different flavor depending solely on the encoding.

Often, encoding is more important to an audience than anything else. Encoding determines the setting, the subject matter, the size and scope of the issues. Substituting stolen gold for stolen diamonds would probably be interchangeable to most audience members. Substituting obtaining a diploma would not.

Encoding is the first stage that is open to authors' interpretation. It is important to illustrate the original story's storyform completely, so all the specific symbols used by the original author can be documented. Then, the process is to sort through the list, see which are essential, which are secondary but must be given lip service, and which can or even should be cut because of the specifics of the new medium.

When delving into this much detail, it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. For example, if we elected to change stolen diamonds" to stolen gold" but still had our Main Character working for DeBeers, we might have created a problem.

This is not to say that every encoding story point must be consistent with all the others in flavor. In fact, many stories are appealing simply because the juxtaposition of contrasting symbols. The key is to make sure you preserve the same relationship between the flavors. Much like adapting a recipe for a culinary feast, you might substitute salt for sugar, but then you must also substitute vinegar for sour cream. The overall flavor would be different, but the relationship between flavors is upheld. That level of pattern-recognition is well within the grasp of most audiences. How many times has The Simpsons reproduced famous scenes from famous movies in a completely different context? This works because the internal relationships remain consistent.

Storyweaving

Storyweaving is the process of unfolding the symbols of your story for the audience. It is where we create suspense, tension, mystery, and surprise. When adapting genres such as horror, thriller, and murder mystery, the experiential mood is almost storyform and storyencoding dependent. It is the weaving that takes center stage, and is therefore the most crucial characteristic to preserve in an adaptation.

With murder mysteries, the manner in which the cat is let out of the bag defines the audience experience. Much of the appeal of a Sherlock Holmes mystery, for example, is because of the steps through which the chase becomes afoot. Holmes has been successfully translated to almost every time and place in human history changing both storyform and storyencoding until nothing remains of the original because the feel remains the same because of the way the case unravels. In many respects, the Holmes stories are identified by their exposition template, and that is why the audience comes to the work.

This same stage of communication is highlighted in The Twilight Zone (the first series, the movie adaptation, and the adapted second series). It is also used in The Outer Limits (first series and adapted series), and almost every Stephen King book and movie. Did you ever wonder why some of King's best works don't translate well to the screen? The adaptations that don't work change the storyweaving, which is the identifying trademark of the King experience.

Make sure you examine the manner in which the audience is let in on the secrets of the story to be adapted. Is the story an Extrovert that lets it all hang out from scene one? Is it a Flirt that flaunts it but takes its time in delivering? Is your story an Introvert that must have its secrets coaxed out one at a time, or is it a Liar that fools us with red herrings and misdirections?

Unless you strive to keep the original's personality, much of the charm may be lost in the translation. An example of this kind of mistake occurred in bringing The Beverly Hillbillies to the big screen. In the original series, the storyweaving personality was much like a British comedy of manners in which the cultured and proper are forced by circumstances to accommodate unsophisticated bumpkins. Enter Politically Correct storyweaving. Suddenly, the focus of comedy shifts from manners to physical comedy.

The slapstick gags are funny enough, but that is not what the audience expected. The Beverly Hillbillies, with whom the audience grew up, was nowhere to be found in this movie. The personality associated with the title was not maintained. Interestingly, if there had been no original series, the motion picture would likely have been much funnier to an unbiased audience. When creating an original work, storyweaving considerations can be limited to exposition of the storyform. When adapting a work, storyweaving must also consider the expectations of the audience, described in the fourth stage of communication, Story Reception.

Story Reception

We started in Storyforming with the message, encoded it into symbols, relayed those symbols through storyweaving, and now that multiplexed signal arrives at the receiver: Your audience. Problem is, they all might be tuned to a different channel!

Some members of your audience will be familiar with the original work itself. Some may have experienced it many times. Others will have heard about it from a friend, but never saw or read the original. Many have only seen the advertisements, or the book review, or the trading cards, or the lunch box. A few have never heard of it at all and just stumbled on your adaptation. You may want to play on in-jokes and setups that require prior knowledge. How about that scene in Superman: The Movie when Clark runs up to the phone booth to change and there's somebody using the phone? It would not be funny to someone who does not recognize it as a twist on the expected pattern.

In addition, there is no such thing as an audience, except when defined as a collection of individuals who experience a work. They may have nothing else in common, so you can't expect them to respond as a single unit. What buzzwords can you safely use? Which obscure buzzwords do you want to use anyway because you expect they will catch on and become all the rage? How much biased, special-interested, politically correct, atheistic, agnostic, faithful, black, brown, white, red, yellow, young, old, middle-aged, female, male, gay, straight, bi, Republican, Democrat, Independent, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, brilliant, stupid, insane, and emotionally challenged baggage are audience members going to carry to your adaptation?

Part of the adapter's job is to identify the audience. An equally important job is to identify with the audience. This puts a burden on the author of an adaptation that the author of an original work usually does not share.

When creating an original story, one often has the luxury of writing whatever one wants, and then hoping the finished piece finds its audience. In contrast, the adept adapter must consider the full spectrum of the new audience. Usually, if a work is being considered for adaptation, it is because there is some following for the original. The adaptation is intended to not only appeal to that audience but also exceed it and attract a wider crowd.

How do you adapt a work for the masses? Simple. Make sure the story works not only as an adaptation, but on its own merits as well. Never violate dramatic integrity solely for the sake of adaptive integrity. Better to disappoint a few diehard fans than to disappoint the potential legions of new fans.

Conversely, there are those projects where the size of the new audience is unimportant. The purpose of this kind of adaptation is to supply those few diehard fans with a new medium of enjoyment for their favorite story. In this case you must be faithful to every detail, even if it turns out a work that can't stand on its own merit.

Either approach is reason enough to shape the nature of the adaptation. Seldom can both be done at the same time. More than anything, Story Reception is where the author decides for whom they wish to write. Once you have identified that group, you must get into their heads, to get into their hearts.