Adaptation Analysis

Due Dates:	Requirements:
Working Draft—April 22, 2015 Final Draft—April 29, 2015	5-7 typed pages, double-spaced MLA Format

Objective

Choose a film on the syllabus and write an analysis of its relationship to the novel that the filmmakers have based it on.

Overview

The goal of this course is to examine films as works of literature emerging from novels. Building on the close-reading strategies of the scene analysis, consider specific details in a chosen film and explain what they reveal about the filmmakers interpretation of a prior work of literature. What have they added and taken away from the original novel in order to tell a story?

Procedure

Choose a film from the syllabus for this course and carefully examine specific details in it.
Analyze the novel on which the filmmakers have based their film and identify key interpretive decisions that have shaped this film. Focus on interpretive decisions on the filmmakers' part that are particularly open to argument.
Formulate a thesis statement that explains how filmmakers have chosen to adapt the novel and that takes a stand on the merits of this adaptation.
Break the argument down into between two and four subtopics that are likewise arguable. Think about the arrangement of subtopics that is the most appropriate for the structure of your argument. Avoid an arrangement that lends itself too much to plot summary of either the novel or the film.
Write a draft of your argument. Go back and reconsider your thesis statement. Revise it.
Bring the draft to class on April 22, 2015, for peer-editing. If you cannot attend class on that day, let me know. You can regain some of the points lost to an absence on peer-editing day if you can exchange papers with another classmate and edit it before turning in the final draft.
Be sure to include a Works Cited List on the last page of the paper.
Be sure the paper is at least five pages long. Five pages is the absolute minimum length, and papers under five pages will lose some points.
Revise and proofread the paper over the weekend and turn in the final draft on April 29, 2015.

Writing Tips

I have based many of these tips on my comments to you on your previous papers.

In many cases, your first thesis statement will not be arguable enough. Keep revising it until you have a statement that truly arguable and truly interesting. Do not hesitate to revise it after you have written a complete draft of the paper. The thesis statement should directly address your chosen works.
Organize your paper around the thesis statement and be sure each part of your argument bears some clear relationship to the thesis statement. Do not leave it to your reader to figure out what each subtopic is doing in your paper.

Turn each subtopic into a unified paragraph with supporting evidence in the form of quotations and/or specific descriptions of scenes in the film. If a paragraph gets too long, break it down into two paragraphs, but make careful use of transitional phrases to keep the logic clear to the reader.
Follow MLA format when using quotations or paraphrases to support the argument:
1. When quoting passage from the novel (which you should do in this paper), use blended quotations for quotations under four lines and block quotations for quotations over four lines. Remember the tricky punctuation rules for each type of quotation. If you have questions about this, ask me or look it up in a style manual such as Keys for Writers or at the "Online Writing Lab."
2. When referring to details in a film, be clear about when in the film a scene takes place, who is speaking, and what that character is saying. Do not hesitate to look a film up online for correct spellings of character, actor, director, and screenwriter names, dates, and other factual details that it will be helpful to include. The Internet Movie Database at "http://www.imdb.com/" is a good resource for this information.
3. Write a list of Works Cited at the end of the paper. For written works, the last name of the author comes first, then the title of the selection, and then, if applicable, the title of the book in which you found the work (i. e.: Pride and Prejudice). MLA format suggests that each film entry begin with the title of the film. Notice that you should italicize the name of a book or film whenever you mention it.
  
  Examples:
  
  Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. 1813. New York: Oxford U. P., 2004. Print.
  
  Pride and Prejudice. Dir. Joe Wright. Perf. Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfayden, Rosamund Pike. Universal, 2005. DVD.
  
  Alphabetize works cited according to the author's last name. There are many other rules for MLA format for peculiar instances that will come up, but the above examples should serve as useful models for the vast majority of cases for this class. Do not hesitate to look these rules up. The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University offers an extremely helpful collection of guidelines for using the MLA Format, and you can find it at
  
  http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
  
  Go to that website and click on "MLA Formatting and Style Guide" in the right-hand column.
Grammar points:
1. Refer to events in a work of literature in the present tense. This may sound strange at first, but it is the convention for addressing literature. Notice that we tend to follow this rule in class discussion.
2. Avoid contractions in academic writing. Contractions produce a casual tone and academic work tends to be more formal. The same rule applies to business letters. So, replace they're with they are and replace don't with do not.
3. A grammatically complete sentence has at least one subject and one verb. If it is missing a subject or a verb, it is a sentence fragment (unless it is a command, but papers do not normally use commands). Sentence fragments are sometimes acceptable, but only if you mean to use them.
4. The word it's (with an apostrophe) is a contraction of it is. The word its (without an apostrophe) is the possessive form of it.
5. It is acceptable, on occasion, to use the first-person singular pronoun—I, me, my. However, in many cases, doing so makes your sentence redundant. Everything in your paper is something that you have thought. Thus, writing "I think" at the start of sentence adds nothing to that sentence.