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In novel-to-film adaptation processes, screenplays are generally considered as transitory texts in chaotic flux, a number of necessary phases that characters and narratives must pass through, characterised by innumerable changes during the course of film productions.

The traditional models, based on industrial productions, thus place the screenplay in the middle between two complete works of art in a linear process, an illustration of the modernist era’s ideal industrial models. This liminal position has marked the screenplay’s and the screenwriter’s statuses as subservient to any works of art and other artists, without proper recognition of the craft and values of the art of adaptation screenwriting. 

There have been alternative models, especially in screenwriting manuals, romantically depicting the screenwriter’s independence to create the foundation for an artwork, after the novel has been read once or thrice. However, the screenplay is still reduced to a mere starting point for the film production, a screen idea, to speak with Ian MacDonald. In more complex models of adaptation, such as for instance the ur-text model (Cardwell) and intertextual approaches, the screenplay is generally neglected.

I suggest that that as long as the models of adaptation that include the screenplay are based on simple, linear orders, and neglect the more complex concerns, the value of the adaptation screenplay cannot be fully appreciated. Thus, this presentation proposes a model, based on multiple two-way processes, which describes how the screenplay adapts and appropriates both novel and film, or the screen idea, and is at the same time appropriated by the characters, vision and conventions of both novel and film.