Why Story Arcs Change Between Novels, Games, and Films
Hello creatives,
In one of the last few posts, I talked about The Hero’s Journey and how this very common framework can be seen in countless stories across time. Every story has unique characteristics that are at the heart and soul of the story. What happens when you want to adapt that story from one format to another?
Books to tv shows. Video games to movies. It’s becoming more and more common to see. In theory, adapting stories across mediums should be a surefire success because they have built in fanbases that will carry over and it provides an opportunity to engage new fans.
But that doesn’t always happen.
Sometimes, the story drifts too far away from the source material, disillusioning the fanbase and costing everyone involved potential revenue. Let’s dive into how and why this happens.
Why Do Story Arcs Change Between Novels, Games, and Films?
The processing of bringing novels, games, and films to life are a winding journey. By the time you hear of your favorite story being adapted into something else, there has already been years of work put in behind the scenes to negotiate the licenses and coordinate the funding to make it happen.
If there’s one thing all these industries have in common, it’s that investing in books, films and games is a gamble. Decisions within the process of creating these works are often times based on a mix of budget constraints, audience expectations and executive meddling.
To understand why story arcs change within multimedia franchises across books, film and games, you have to first understand the people and the decisions that are made when bringing these things to life.
In previous blog posts, I’ve covered a great deal about:
But let’s connect all these concepts together, shall we? And just for fun, let’s add in the layer of complexity that comes with video game adaptations, which I will go over in more detail in a later post.
A Very Brief Explanation of How Novels, Games, and Films Get Adapted
When you have a source material that interesting enough to catch the eye of either a literary agent, a scriptwriter, producer or a video game studio, the value of that intellectual property is weighed to determine whether it’s worth investing in the option or license to adapt it. Factors that can impact IP valuation include sales records, active online fanbases, talent that’s already committed to the work, etc etc.
Once the source material has been contracted in some way, whether temporarily or permanently, to the people who want to adapt it, then the work begins. But remember, everyone is working against the logistical constraints they’ve been given. What sets them apart is how those logistical constraints manifest depending on the project you are on.
For films and tv, this means you have to determine the priority of what matters most to the integrity of the story: talent, location, costume/set design, special effects? Or, more crucially, what creative liberties with the plot and characters can you take while still keeping the integrity of the story?
For publishing, this looks like weighing how widely known the author or creator is prior to signing them on, the commercial appeal of the story being told in this way and the costs associated with footing the bill before calculating what you hope will be a success that breaks even.
For video games, this looks like figuring out the type of game to be designed, the expenses of the programming needed to build the game, the number of developers needed to create the animations and the coding to support the systems for the game, the list goes on.
Examples of Franchises and How they Adapted Across Mediums
Books being turned into tv shows
When you look at examples like Game of Thrones. The popular book series written by George R. R. Martin, was adapted into a tv show by HBO. Up until the last few seasons, which got ahead of the books and strayed very far from the original source material. As audience opinion began to wane and it seemed the final book in the saga may never get published, the show’s originally planned 12 seasons were cut down to 8.
This forced the show runners to make difficult creative decisions that put character integrity and plot devices at risk of not making sense to the audience. All so they could stay on budget and wrap up a show that was ending 4 seasons sooner than it was supposed to.
Books being turned into video games and tv shows
For game adaptations, The Witcher started as a fantasy book series written by Andrzej Sapkowski and has since been adapted into both a video game and a tv show. What makes The Witcher unique is the author was involved in the tv series as a consultant, but not in the video games. This means that the games stray a bit from the original source material in a way that the tv show doesn’t.
The main differences between the games and the show are largely in Geralt’s love life and how closely the games follow the source material in terms of racial diversity. The Witcher is a Polish novel with large Polish influences so there is little diversity in them. And in the games, Gerald has a love triangle that doesn’t exist in the show.
Had Sapkowski been more comfortable with the idea of being a consultant n the video game, there may have been unique aspects that would have been explored in a way the books couldn’t address. Such as the case was in how the Netflix show explored Yennifer’s back story more than the books did.
For tv shows being turned into books
For adaptations into books, one example is how after Nickelodeon’s Avatar: the Last Airbender ended, the show’s creators continued the plot line through a graphic novel series. This graphic novel series was able to explore the main character’s stories further and tie up loose ends the tv show didn’t get to do.
Because the show runners were the ones behind the graphic novels, the entire graphic novel series has been able to expand the world of Avatar while maintaining the story’s grip on pop culture by growing up with the fanbase and making it accessible to younger demographics.
I hope these examples help put some things in perspective. Often times, dozens of people have worked together to bring a film, tv show, book or video game into the world for the pubic to enjoy. It’s a complicated job that not enough projects break even on, but the creative economy can be a gold mine under the right circumstances and with the right decisions.
Until Next Time,
Rochele