Adapting My Book

My book two is The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. For those of you who haven't read it this is an amazing book about a symbologist named Robert Langdon. He is mysteriously awakened in the middle of the night by the French police.They demand that he come to help them analyze the death of the curator of the Louvre who has painted puzzling symbols and arranged himself in painful positions in order to send a message to his granddaughter, Sophie Neveu, a decoder for the French Police. However the police misinterpret "P.S. Find Robert Langdon" and Langdon is accused of the murder. Sophie and he must now run from the law while trying to solve the murder and decode Sophie's grandfather's final message.
Difficulties of adapting this to screen would be the fact that the curator is naked, Sophie and Langdon go through a stripper street and the length of the book. The first two obviously either need to be taken out or somehow "fixed" so that a pg13 audience is able to see it or the filmmakers risk losing money. As for the last one, it again makes them take scenes out of the book that readers may have liked but since it didn't drive the plot it was found useless by the directors. This brings down ratings and causes the story to lose a little which is often felt by the audience.
The three scenes that have to be kept are when Langdon sees the body, the discovery of a betrayal, and the final resolution. In case you wish to read this book I won't go into too much detail for the last two scenes. The first one is where Langdon meets Sophie and the plot is started by giving them a mission and an extra little challenge, solve the murder, decode the curator's clues, and evade the police while you're at it. This begins the book and sets the action filled pace of this book. The second scene, the betrayal, is equally important because it gives Langdon a huge choice to be able to reveal the Holy Grail or keep it hidden as the Priory of Sion seems to want. This scene allows for us to finally get a good idea of where Langdon stands and who he feels loyal to at the moment. The resolution is important for obvious reasons, it ties the plot together and was actually satisfying. It was a good ending and deserves to be kept. I would say more but I don't want to spoil anything.
Two scenes that would have to be cut from the book in order to fit time for the main plot would be Langdon's flashbacks of his lesson's at Harvard would have to go and so would Aringarosa's, a bishop, little scene where he is debating the morals of what he has been forced to do to hopefully keep his denomination as part of the Catholic Church. The first was added into the book to help us to understand Langdon better and gain more background knowledge behnind the symbols. While this is valuable they take up a lot of time and don't drive the plot making them incompatible with the screen. Aringarosa's dilemma on the plane is explained elsewhere in other, more exciting, scenes rendering this one unnecessary and time consuming. Because of this, and the fact that the audience cannot of course read his mind, makes this one of the more ideal cuts.

Book 1 Project

Nineteen Minutes Choose Your Own Adventure

            Have you ever read a book and wished desperately that the author had chosen to make the characters choose a different path? Well now you can try for yourself to determine the course of a real book and see if you’re a better author than Jodi Picoult. For the first time there’s a choose your own adventure book that’s based off of a published book. Montgomery and Picoult will be coming together to write out this amazing book, allowing readers to interact with Nineteen Minutes. Nineteen Minutes Choose Your Own Adventure will enable readers to choose each character’s actions despite the authors wish. This will be the first ever opportunity to do so, and will allow you to answer crucial question such as: what would’ve happened if Peter had committed suicide instead of mass murder? Everyone has had those “Why did they character do that? They’re so stupid!” moments and this is the first chance to rectify that. If you love Picoult, realistic fiction, and/or Choose Your Own Adventure this is a must read for you!

            Jodi Picoult asks tough questions in her book and with tough questions come tough decisions. Each of her characters in any given book either take the next step in their life or are forced to take a new look at the world and base their decisions off of their new and often terrible experiences. For example Lacy Houghton, the mother of the shooter, faces difficult problems such as, “Could you hate your son for what he had done, and still love him for who he had been?” (Picoult 248). It becomes apparent later on in the book that she chose to answer that question with a yes. But what if she had decided you couldn’t? Or back in middle school when Josie picked had to pick between the “cool” kids and Peter, her lifelong friend- “’So,’ Matt said, ‘are you coming with me?’… ‘Yes,’ Josie said, and she followed Matt without looking back.” If Josie had chosen Peter though would the shooting still have happened? And perhaps the biggest decision in that whole book is which boy Josie shoots in the locker room. Peter, who had been her best friend until seventh grade, was holding her boyfriend at gunpoint while she pointed the extra gun at Peter. Matt, her boyfriend, tells her: “’What are you waiting for? Shoot.’” However she does what neither boy expected and she shoots Matt. But if she had shot Peter what would’ve happened? It’s those questions that inspire Nineteen Minutes Choose Your Own Adventure.

Publicity

In Nineteen Minutes many big decisions were made, and most of them were far from easy. For readers this is a once in a lifetime chance to interact with a book in a way that puts the reader and not the characters in charge of what happens. The difference between this one and any other choose your own adventure books is that you know, love, or hate the other characters already. It’s not a matter of will I survive? But what you felt was right for these characters. And, as this is the first choose your own adventure book to come out that was based off of another book it will gain a lot of publicity. With this publicity the book’s title will get out and intrigue Picoult fans, teens dealing with bullies, and any avid realistic fiction reader. Many people read Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper after news of the movie got out; this book will act like the movie drawing those same people who read My Sister’s Keeper to read Nineteen Minutes.