The Art of Adapting (Patreon)

Hey guys!! 

If you are here, then you are probably aware that I am often adapting novels into graphic novels. So far I've adapted the YA novels Beautiful Creatures, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, Hollow City and The Mortal Instruments series! (City of Bones, City of Ashes and now... City of Glass)

Adapting a novel into a comic involves a lot more decision making than one might think, and it can take a lot of time and effort. So I wanted to share, for those interested, the process I go through. Even before I get to start jumping into drawing. 

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First) I go through the novel and write down an outline of all the scenes. 

I list every scene with a most basic description, and at this point, I will cut out any unnecessary scenes. Ideally, I would never cut out a single scene, but novels can be hundreds to thousands of pages long... all full of words. When translating this into a graphic novel I unfortunately have to condense the story. I already need TWO comics for every ONE novel, just to fit the story. If I included every line of dialogue and every piece of every scene, it would be a heck of a lot more...

So I do have to think hard about what is absolutely necessary, what can be skipped, and what dialogue can be moved to a different scene. (For Example: maybe there is a scene that is largely unimportant except for one line that a character says. I might move that one line to a different scene because it needs to be said)

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Second) Stringing scenes together. 

This part can turn into a real project. Sometimes in a book the story will skip back and forth between characters. In this case: The story skips from Simon in prison, to the rest of the gang in the city. The scene will shift every two pages Simon > Group > Simon > Group. 

While this works fine in a novel... in a comic that would appear choppy, hard to follow and jarring. So as I comb through the book I make notations stringing the two separate scenes together. This way, once I draw the comic, Simon's scene will be one long stretch. And then the Group scene will be another full stretch. 

There is a lot of back and for the like this in City of Glass, so I'm spending a good deal of time puzzling the pieces together. Obviously you do want some back and forth even in a comic, but not as frequently as is in the novel. 

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Third) Condensing the Scenes.

Again, ideally I wouldn't have to cut out a thing. But scenes can be long and while dialogue in a novel only takes up one line of text... in a comic it requires speech bubbles- which take up a lot of space. And many panels of drawings. 

So at this stage, I go through each scene underlining the actions and dialogue that I'll include in the comic. 

In some cases, the character says nothing at all. In the novel, their thought process is written out, but in a comic it's hard to draw someone's thought process. So I will write new dialogue or like in this case, I will write an internal thought-bubble to include to show what the character was thinking about. 

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In the end, I have to hope that I put together a good comic that includes every important scene, has been pruned of unnecessary dialogue and scenes and YET does not feel rushed. It's a tough balance and with each adaptation I do, I hope I improve. 

I hope you found this look into the process of Adapting interesting! After these steps I move on to the art-side of comic making (Thumbnails, Inking, and the Finishing touches!)