With so many people telling the writing community, “show me something I’ve never seen before!” you’re probably wondering why anyone trying to make a dent in Hollywood would consider an adaptation.  Well, there are reasons.  Awesome reasons.  Reasons that could make you a very rich writer.

The first reason to consider doing an adaptation?  A built-in fan base.  The movie adaptation of Twilight just opened this weekend (11.23.08), and you can bet the legions of rabid teenage fans cultivated through the novels helped the mediocre-at-best film soar at the box office.  Sometimes, it doesn’t even matter if an adaptation is good, if people recognize a story they’ve loved for years, they’ll pay money to see it.

Films based off of comics are a great example.  What little boy or girl hasn’t flipped through the pages of Batman or Iron Man and wished the pictures would come to life?

If the first incarnation of a story is successful, most people assume the new version will be just as great.  Obviously, this isn’t always the case, but there’s just something about Superman, Harry Potter, and the CareBears that is so fantastic to us that we’ll never grow tired of seeing reincarnations.

Another great reason to adapt?  The hard parts are done for you.  You already know how the story ends.  You know all the important plot points.  Even if you change things a good deal, you’ve got a tried and true base to work off of, and a rock solid story trajectory is what all writers desire.

The third reason you might consider adapting is the excitement of bringing a story you’ve loved forever to life.  Sharing a childhood fairytale your mother read to you every year or the first coming of age tale that ever spoke to you with a new audience is a powerful way to communicate.  Chances are, if you fell in love with it, other people will too.

Now that we’ve sung the praises of adaptation, are there any reasons you might not want to do it?  Well, one of the biggest practicality issues is acquiring rights.  If your story is in the public domain, than you should be able to take it and run with it, but if someone still owns the rights to the story you want to adapt, it can be expensive and time consuming to get them to option them over to you.  Sites like THIS ONE help you find out if the story you want is available for free.

Another issue to think about is the reverse of the positive “built in fan base.”  If you adapt a well-known and well-loved story, your audience is going to be constantly holding your version up to the original.  They’ll judge you and rate you and if your story doesn’t stand up to their standards or memory, you could be forced to deal with the dreaded backlash.  The recent film The Golden Compass is a good example of a fan base railing against a movie they felt bastardized the original novel.

When it comes to deciding to adapt, the impulse has to come from the writer herself.  Adapting has it’s own patch of weeds, but if your love of a certain story is strong enough, the process can be monumentally rewarding.