Literature vs. Film: How Characters and Their Stories Change in Adaptation

How film reshapes plot details and character.

Comparing books to their film adaptations lets us trace how literary plots, images, and ideas transform under the influence of cinematic language. Through comparing details, narrative emphasis, and artistic choices, we can better understand how a work's content shifts moving from text to screen.

How books and their characters have transformed in adaptation — read on in this DeTalks article.

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

The events of the novel, which take place in Nazi Germany, center on the life of Liesel Meminger and the people closest to her. The story is narrated by Death, whose voice shapes the work's central idea — an exploration of human nature under the conditions of war.

In the novel, Death appears as an omnipresent, timeless narrator, whose voice is full of philosophical reflection, irony, and frequent shifts in time. The text is nonlinear, blending verbal and visual elements with color symbolism that draws the reader into co-creating meaning.

The film, by contrast, leans toward linear storytelling and visually concrete events. Death's character keeps the author's voice and tone, but loses some of that inner reflectiveness, compensating with emotional visual expressiveness, color choices, and music.

The film heightens the drama of its key scenes — bombing raids, character deaths, moments of silent coexistence between life and death. This makes the concept of death more viscerally felt, but less analytical.

Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston

The film adaptation of Red, White & Royal Blue keeps the book's central plot — the romance that develops between Alex Claremont-Diaz, the US president's son, and Prince Henry of the British royal family. The characters start out as rivals but gradually come to recognize their feelings for each other.

The novel gives considerable attention to the characters' family dynamics. Alex grows up in the divided family of President Ellen Claremont and Senator Oscar Diaz, which shapes both his political future and his personal growth, and he has a sister, June, who serves as both a contrast and a source of support for him. In the film, meanwhile, Alex's parents are married, and June's character is absent entirely, which shifts the focus onto the central romance without the branching subplots.

The film also cuts a number of key characters and plot elements, like Senator Rafael Luna — a mentor and political guide for Alex in the novel — and replaces the book's complex political intrigue with a simplified subplot involving a journalist who becomes the source of conflict after the characters' emails leak.

Another difference lies in the British royal family's characters. In the novel, a queen rules, while in the film adaptation, that character is changed to a king, which could be either an artistic or a cultural choice.

The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware

The Netflix adaptation keeps the general plot about a journalist who, while traveling aboard a luxury yacht, witnesses a mysterious incident. The protagonist sees a woman fall overboard, but afterward, neither the crew nor the passengers confirm that such a person ever existed.

In the novel, the protagonist, Laura ('Lo') Blacklock, is a journalist experienced in writing travel pieces who suffers from anxiety and insomnia after a recent break-in at her home, and comes across as an unreliable narrator due to her psychological instability and drinking habits. Through this, the author creates a sense of uncertainty about what actually happened on the yacht.

In the film, by contrast, Lo is turned into a more stable, competent investigative journalist with more experience covering serious stories, and the 'unreliable narrator' element is largely removed, which changes how the audience perceives events.

Other characters' personalities and motivations also change. In the book, Lo is in a relationship with her boyfriend, Judah, which affects how the conflict develops later on, while in the film, that character is absent, and her ex-partner, Ben, gets a different storyline and even dies during the climactic events.

On top of that, in the novel, one of the central antagonists and his accomplice have a romantic relationship, while in the film, that's transformed into a pragmatic conspiracy, with motives of financial control over an inheritance moving to the forefront.

The book ends more open-endedly — Lo is rescued and returns to her life after her escape and a period of survival. The film, by contrast, builds its climactic conflict around a public exposure of the conspiracy and a direct confrontation with the antagonist at a gala event.

I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

Richard Matheson's novel is a philosophical dystopia that depicts a world after a global pandemic that wiped out human civilization. At the center of the story is Robert Neville, likely the last living human, trying to survive among creatures transformed into vampires by the disease.

The text focuses on the protagonist's physical survival and his gradual understanding of a new reality, in which ideas of normalcy, humanity, and monstrosity keep shifting. Central to the novel is the realization of a historic shift, in which humanity stops being the dominant form of existence, and Neville himself gradually transforms from victim into a threat to the new society.

The film adaptation, by contrast, transforms the novel's plot and conceptual emphasis. In the film, the creatures inhabiting the postapocalyptic world are portrayed as dehumanized, aggressive beings with no social organization, which shifts the conflict into the realm of a classic 'man versus hostile environment' story.

The protagonist's character shifts from an existential 'other' figure into a traditional hero-savior, and the ending takes on the character of heroic self-sacrifice.

In this way, the film adaptation abandons the novel's philosophical reexamination of the concept of normalcy and replaces it with the genre model of a postapocalyptic thriller with a clear moral hierarchy.

Hallowe'en Party, by Agatha Christie

Hallowe'en Party is a classic Agatha Christie detective novel, in which Belgian detective Hercule Poirot investigates a series of mysterious deaths that begin during a Halloween celebration in England.

The events unfold after a party at which 13-year-old Joyce Reynolds claims she once witnessed a murder, though no one takes her seriously. The girl is later found dead in a tub of apples. Poirot, together with novelist Ariadne Oliver, unravels a web of events that leads to uncovering the truth behind several deaths and the betrayal of local residents.

The film adaptation, A Haunting in Venice, differs significantly from the literary original, both in plot and atmosphere. The action moves from an English town to a mystical Venice, Italy, where the atmosphere and architecture create a gothic, 'horror' tone that leans more toward a mystery thriller than a classic detective story.

In the film, the main plot isn't about a Halloween party at all, but about a séance in an old palazzo, during which a murder takes place, drawing Poirot into the investigation.

The characters and their motives are also changed. Joyce Reynolds in the film is already an adult woman working as a medium (not a 13-year-old girl), and Hercule Poirot himself sometimes begins to doubt his own abilities and even entertains thoughts of the supernatural. In the book, by comparison, he's always confident in his own reasoning and consistently builds his case through logic.

Some events, like the appearance of real or imagined 'ghosts,' become part of the narrative in the film, while the book has no supernatural elements at all — everything is explained through the logic of human actions.

Finally, the film significantly simplifies the book's branching plot. Instead of several crimes and detailed investigations, most of the action centers on a single nighttime intrigue, and the number of killers and their motives are changed for compactness and dramatic effect.