I love film and literature. Whilst I don’t always think film adaptations do their novels justice, I appreciate seeing the director’s vision of a narrative I’ve previously imagined. </p>
One of the best things about adaptation is just that – seeing how others visualise characters, sets and events and whether they bear any resemblance to your own personal opinion.</p>
It’s even more intriguing when the novelist is heavily involved in the creation of the adaptation. I recently saw Stephen Chbosky’s <i>Perks of Being a Wallflower</i> and was astonished at how brilliantly it had been made. Chbosky not only wrote the novel but he adapted the screenplay and directed the film.</p>
The book was first published in 1999, but Chbosky was supposedly dubious to jump on the novel’s success at first and only began writing the screenplay in late 2005. I always respect when authors are closely involved with an adaptation of their work, but I can’t help feeling that the line between novelist and scriptwriter is becoming quite blurred with the increase in writers optioning their novels before they’re even written.</p>
If we look at Nicholas Sparks’ novels, I think his plots are always intriguing and his character development is brilliant, but following the success of the adaptations of <i>A Walk to Remember, The Notebook</i> and <i>Dear John</i> it came as no surprise that Sparks wished to be involved with the script adaptation of his next novel, <i>The Last Song.</i></p>
With the screenplay optioned, Sparks completed the script with co-writer Jeff Van Wie before he even began writing the novel. Whilst I’m a fan of both the book and the film, I feel cheated that the book is essentially an adaptation of the film, rather than the other way around.</p> 
Although Sparks maintains that his writing of the novel wasn’t influenced by the production of the film, I was shocked to hear that it is becoming more frequent for novel writers to change aspects of their narratives to better meet the needs of film production.</p>
An example of this supposedly happened during the creation of <i>I Am Number Four</i>. The novel, written by James Frey and Jobie Hughes under the pseudonym of Pittacus Lore, was still in the final stages of editing whilst the film adaptation went into development. It is alleged that film producers asked Frey to incorporate different settings and props into the novel as they would look better on screen. These changes were made to the final edit of the book.</p>
I love adaptation and think that it’s great when authors are fortunate enough to get their books made into a film and want to be heavily involved in its production, but I feel that the increase in the creation of these two types of texts clashing with each other is going to have a negative impact on both the fiction and the film. 
Whilst many feel it is important for adaptations to be faithful to their source texts, when both are being made at the same time it feels like an obvious marketing ploy.</p> In the creation of <i>The Last Song</i>, Sparks was obviously going to be influenced by the fact that the most popular teen star of the time, Miley Cyrus, was attached to the film project and with <i>I Am Number Four</i> originally planned to be a franchise, you can’t help but think that the inclusion of more visual props was an excuse for more extensive merchandising. </p>
More than anything, I feel like the fine line between the production of literature and film is a kick in the teeth to the novelist. Even if it isn’t their ambition for the novel to be adapted, gone are the days when their writing was sacred and they had the final say on its creation.</p> 
With the two industries now seemingly working hand in hand, it seems major literary agents will only be interested in publishing fiction which shows promise of being the foundation of a major movie franchise. This is a sad prospect for the brilliant writers with no interest in the film industry.

