Adapting a novel is a translation, not a summary. Here's how to approach the parts of a book that don't survive the transition to screen.
Find the screen story inside the book
Most novels contain more story than any single film or season of television can hold. The first job in adaptation isn't cutting. It's deciding what this project is actually about, on screen, specifically. That decision determines everything that follows: which subplots survive, which characters get combined or cut, and where the adaptation departs from the book.
Externalize what the book keeps internal
Prose can spend pages inside a character's head; film generally can't. Interior monologue, backstory delivered through narration, and reflective passages all need to become something visible: action, dialogue, behavior, or image. This is usually the single biggest craft challenge in adaptation, finding the external, dramatized equivalent of something the novel handled internally.
Decide on format early
Not every novel is a feature. Books with dense plotting, large ensembles, or multiple point-of-view characters often suit a limited series better than a two-hour film, where there simply isn't room. Making this call early, based on plot density and scope rather than preference, avoids a lot of wasted structural work later.
Accept that something will be lost
Every adaptation loses something the source material had. Fighting that reality usually produces an overstuffed, unfilmable draft trying to include everything. The more useful approach is deciding, deliberately, what matters most about the book (theme, character, a particular relationship) and building the screen version around protecting that, rather than trying to preserve the whole thing.
