TV writers ‘shouldn’t stick to plot’

LITERARY purists look away now: adaptations of your favourite novel for stage or screen need not be faithful to the plot, a leading writer has said.

Robert Harris, the bestselling author, said there was “nothing worse” for an adaptation of a novel than trying to remain too faithful to the plot.

Harris, whose Cicero trilogy is being made into both a Royal Shakespeare Company play and a television series, said such attention to precise details would make the finished product “too stilted”.

Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Harris urged other writers to “let go” of their natural urge to want to keep their plot and characters intact.

Asked whether he would miss the many parts of his novels necessarily cut from the play, he said: “It’s different. You’ve got to just let go. There’s nothing worse than a movie or a play that’s trying to be too faithful to the original. It’s too stilted, it’s a different form.”

Speaking of the work of Mike Poulton, who adapted Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall for the RSC and is currently turning his hand to Cicero, he said: “I think he’s found the essence of the novels, but clearly it can’t repeat the same artistic form.”

Poulton likened the process of adapting a novel to a play as “taking a Rolls-royce and reassembling it as a helicopter”.