Your work's been adapted. What's likely to be glossed over/missing?

Congratulations! You've been lucky enough to get a screen adaptation of your work

But what do you think would be too 'edgy' or 'extreme' in your source material for the widest-audience, lowest-common-denominator pablum of a film/series adaptation? what never had a snowflake's of making it onto the screen, or what's going to appear as a small shadow?

I actually have a plan for when my work is adapted, and a censored version written up.

The Stuffed into a fridge / Moral Event Horizon would be turned into a nervous break down with the character later returning as a mute background character after her therapy.

I'd say they'd work 90% of the slice of life out, probably a good amount of the Mentor Ship Ho Yay even if most of it is Lamp Shaded. Though hopefully I'll get some crap past the radar.

edited 16th Dec '10 11:57:57 PM by americanbadass

I could see one character who really just serves as point about the main character's mentality being cut, as well as the entire 'mid story climax'.

The political subplot would probably be avoided completely in favour of a straight recruit/train/mission plot with a love story as icing.

The Slice of Life-esque stuff at my beginning will likely get compressed if shown at all to a roughly 3 minute or shorter opening. Some of the subplots could be distilled or removed.

Ultimately however I have a contingency plan for such things in that I'm actually consulted and hold creative control over the adaptation. Assuming I'm not the one doing the adaptation itself. Some parts are too awesome to let the idiots in Hollywood dick around with it and thus fall into Adaptation Decay. (For example, I just know they'd want to throw in dialogue on some of my fight scenes when they are really supposed to be the equivalent of the No-Dialogue Episode.)

Hmm, the only one I can imagine being adapted is fairly standard fantasy from my earlier writing days...but they would totally turn my healer character into a girl and then play his/her previous and really really horrible history as a slave into a really really horrible history as a Sex Slave and make it seem appealing.

Also, he'd be lame, which he isn't, and the M Cs sister would come off as a complete bitch instead of extremely misguided with low self confidence. Not that that is actually an excuse for accusing your sibling of magic and getting them burned almost but not quite to death.

And finally, my MC would end up married with babies no doubt. Because obviously Babies Make Everything Better.

edited 17th Dec '10 8:20:57 AM by AwayLaughing

My gender-ambiguous characters will probably be assigned a specific gender, with my main character as a boy to have a balanced two-boys-two-girls group of protagonists.

Other than that, said character's lover will probably be cut out entirely because, really, s/he's mostly filler.

If my work became a musical, any magical action sequences would understandably be limited (unless the budget was huge enough, and then it would be awesome!). Also the quieter characters would be significantly less nuanced/quiet, minor characters cut, Foreshadowing made much more obvious. But I would totally lend a hand to writing the script and songs and ask for the best seats in the house because it's a musical.

For the "Love and Murder" story, I think the Child Soldiers faction might be eliminated altogether to focus on the assassins and the murderers.

For "The Defectives", Dr. Decibel and Lowlife would probably be combined into one character.

Child Soldiers, missing. Protagonist wiil not be celibate. Protagonist will be a hero. All stabs at the head are instead put somewhere else people are more used to seeing, like the chest. Strategic planning and stuff, missing. Protagonist will be played by someone who isn't half-white and half-asian (or even looks that way.) Antagonists will be flanderized into generic evil dudes who don't have much motivation. All depictions of Nazi weapons will be replaced with American weapons and the enemies might use Russian weapons. Unless it was made in Japan, then replace "Russian" with "Chinese" or something. Monster-ness of protagonist will be missing and will pretty much look like your average bloodsucking superhuman. "Revenge" will be replaced with "Justice" No human-eating. No dog-eating. No human experimentation. No side-stories, unless it's an anime or something. Waaaaaaaaaaay more blood than usual. All sex scenes removed, most of which are rape scenes anyway. Religious references removed. Swastikas removed, even the ones that have nothing to do with Nazis. If made in Japan, replace all female soldiers who happen to think the protagonist is kind of cool with the Unwanted Harem.

See, I'm hoping I'll retain the creative power to avoid glossing over or missing of anything important.

Code Geass RP: Rise of Forces Novelization:

• 13 year old Prince Michael of Britannia raping Lisa Carver. No way in hell are they showing a 13 year old doing that.
• Lisa Carver's injuries. Squick
• Jason Amver impaling Traitor James through the cockpit of Lamorak with a huge sword. That is just disgusting.
• Bringer Sharpain's death.

Alternate History World War two story.

They'd most likely cut out nearly every character except the officers on both sides of the conflict - which is justified, seeing as there are at least 80 characters on the Allied side alone, half of them being ridiculously weird. They'd most likely cut out some of the more unrealistic stuff - mechs, powered armor, et cetera - which is fine, really, since it is an anime script and wouldn't really get away with it to the big screen without being really ridiculous or having to convert it to a straight action/sci-fi story, no matter how realistic the mechs and armor are treated.

Goodbye cross-species homosexual romantic subtext. Or my raptorman will be turned into a bombshell raptorlady and the subtext will become text.

...also, goodbye downer ending. Because duty can never triumph over romance and expect to make a profit.

The narration, which I have to say is rather snarky and heartwarming at the same time :c.

in my case as i love Movies i always worked it within a script department but also considered doing it as a miniseries. so i could expand on the characters. although i'm not so sure of which i really want to do.

anyway i think it would the nastier aspectts of the villain i have or the back story one or the other.

so, what do you guys think? Would those cuts I said be the type that would be cut out of an anime?

I guess it depends, there is some pretty heavy stuff in certain animes. The thirteen year old may stay, I don't really know.

Writing my outlines as dialogues is starting to mess with my head.

• Editor: Our biggest concern is length. I tallied it up, and I have two years of film reels sitting at home. I want my basement back; it's like Inglourious Basterds down there!
• Producer: Calm down, man. Remember what happened to the last guy who tried to adapt this shit?
• E: Yeah, yeah, I know. That reminds me—have you watered him this week?
• P: Uh, I think so. But, how to cut the film. For one thing, it is pretty heavy on dialogue. Like, that Demetrius character is way too verbose. We could take his thirty-minute speech to Kenichi about his mutanthood and the plan to keep the Langley skyscraper safe from assassins and condense it to "You're hot. Don't leave."
• E: I disagree. The dialogue is all right, but the action sequences are too drawn out. Dialogue is the key to shortening those—like, the big trip sequence where Ginger tears apart the computer simulation of the city to keep Kenichi finding the clue in it to her identity. With the falling buildings and trains derailing after him and shit. Instead, we could just have her say, "How about not?"
• P: But then, how do we find out who she is? This could be the wrong approach. Let's try another—maybe we could try to bring in a younger audience and cut out all of the fanservice. I hear "short films" are all the rage these days.
• E: Impossible. I spent all last night trying to do that—
• P: My hero!
• E: ...and all that remained was an animated .gif of a spider. Yeah, no.
• P: Speaking of .gifs, about Act Three...
• E: Don't tell me we're cutting the animation budget again!
• P: Sorry. I just got the bill for Act Two's explosion effects today. See for yourself—they call this genre "bullet hell" for a reason. Now, however we're going to cut the last third of the film, it's got to fit into this. *holds up a Make Your Own Flip Book kit*
• E: Huh, a challenge. If we play our cards right, we can pass it off as intentional. Artsy, y'know...what's that? At the very bottom of the bill? *points* It doesn't look accounted for...
• P: Huh; I never saw that...it's SPACETRAVEL's. Probably just a little...fuck. So that's where the budget went!
• E: "Meido the House Android and ten thousand packages of cherry cough drops"? What kind of project are you running here? The source material sucks. The workload sucks. We suck for spending so much time on this. Fuck this; you can edit the film yourself. I'm outta here.
• P: *tosses flip book kit out a window* You mean SPACETRAVEL can edit. Wanna go see a movie?

edited 20th Dec '10 10:12:59 PM by SPACETRAVEL

my story would probably lose all the minor (child) characters. for example, young, married and (eventually) pregnant teenage girl. no sirree! we can't have that. so, remove that charcter, you lose her subplot, and the consequences of that. that's a third of the book gone. but if you lost her, you'd need to lose the Commodore (or work her back into the story, because otherwise you lose the big battle [if by big battle, you mean something which is closer to 'dynamiting fish'])

but if you keep the Commodore, you may have to cover the dark secret behind her fleet's operations: powered by cyborg jar children. which does not really say 'we're the good guys'

^ Yikes.

Firefly original character fic here:

Some of the cyberpunk elements would be lost, as well as some of the hard sci-fi aspects, to bring it more in line with established Firefly canon, what little there is. Transatmospheric fighters might go away, but that screws up one of my characters, even though they're not seen much.

Maybe the ship would be made smaller, too. I'm using something about four times larger than a Firefly-class.

Some minor character development plot points that aren't related to the Big Bad. Unless this is a TV show. Then they stay, probably as filler episodes.

But really, I can't see much else being killed - well, maybe there's the flashback sequence which explains a portion of the backstory for how our protagonists got together originally, but that could be hinted at through running gags and in-jokes.

Hm, this is an interesting thought. I highly doubt that my webcomic, Red Right Hand, would function as a movie, so it would have to be an ongoing animated series like Avatar The Last Airbender. There's a few iffy scenes, like one where my dryad (insect-woman) character Yarrow kills a mugger in the same way a scientist kills a lab animal: holding his back straight and breaking his neck. She doesn't feel that she did anything wrong. After all, he threatened them, and aside from that, his body showed clear signs of drug use and other dangerous behavior. Yarrow insists that he would have likely died soon anyway, and that she had every right to stop him from attacking. The whole scene is supposed to be pretty gray and confusing, and that's the kind of thing that usually gets removed on adaptation.

I'm noticing a trend in here. None of us myself included thinks very highly of Hollywood directors, writers and producers when it comes to adaptations.

I have a problem with my work. The main character appears at ages 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 23 (spending most of the story at 23 and having important flashbacks to all of the other ages). How exactly would this be done in Live Action? (I like animation but I don't think it's right for my story).

If my Silver Age Deconstructive Parody/George Lucas Throwback thingy ever became a tv series, the political satire would be very toned down. And the parts where horrible things happen to certain female characters and it's played for laughs would probably be cut. And the parts where the action stops for five minutes so I can use one of the characters as a mouthpiece to rant about the flaws in the university system would definitely be cut.