Story Modification Quotes

The ability of a television series to make adjustments is something you've got to take advantage of.

Though the Grimms kept about 100 of the tales from the first edition, they changed them a good deal.

The part in 'Taxi' was originally written for a guy named Phil Ryan, so they made it Phil Banta, and then they made it Tony Banta, which sounded a lot better anyway.

There was a different ending to 'New Moon' originally. It was a much quieter book. It was very much all in Bella's head.

I needed to create some dramatic tension to sustain the interest of the audience. For instance, the boy in the film is not in the play, so this relationship that he had with the former teacher, and his guilt, this is not at all in the play. I thought it would be interesting to look at in the film, and I added stuff like that around the main character. For me, it was not more difficult or less difficult.

I tend to think of a myth and then explore how it would play out if it were happening in the modern-day world. I modify all the myths I use, but I stick very closely to their structure - it is the hidden teacher in me.

We're at a point nowhere it has to change. We have characters that are not alive that are alive in the book. We have characters that never appeared in the book. We have a lot of events that didn't quite happen the same way in the book. But there's so much in the book, stuff we've passed in the timeline that I really thought was awesome, that I really wanted to get to.

'Gossip Girl' was an adaptation that, although very different from a Marvel property, had a vocal fan base. On that show, we started off very nervous about making any changes from the book. As we got our sea legs underneath us, we became more bold.

It's very unusual for scenes to be added for a character.

I couldn't enjoy 'A Dance With Dragons,' unfortunately. Of course, I enjoyed it, but it was the first of the books I read as a writer on 'Game of Thrones,' so all I could do is think, 'We're going to have to shift that,' 'We won't be able to afford that,' or 'That's a great scene.'

The most fascinating thing for me is that 'Peter Pan' is a fairy tale, but now, this Filipino kid is a part of the folklore. Can you imagine telling the story of 'Sleeping Beauty' or 'Cinderella,' and all of a sudden there's a Filipino kid in there after all these years?

Here's how adaptation works - almost everything in the movie is in the book in some form. But it's as though the deck has been completely reshuffled and some of the cards have been assigned different values, some of the fours have been made into jacks, and some of the jacks have been made into twos.

Writers are not always right however, but then again, I've been on shows where the actors have complete control and change everything and it's terrible.