What Causes Plots To Progress Incoherently In Adaptations?

There’s a mess of practical and creative reasons why adaptations sometimes feel like they’re tripping over themselves, and I’ve gotten oddly obsessed with spotting them whenever I watch something made from a book or manga. The biggest technical culprit is compression: when a 10–20 hour story has to fit into a two-hour movie or a single season, whole arcs and motivations get trimmed. That isn’t just cutting scenes — it often removes the connective tissue that makes characters act believably. I once rewatched a film after reading the novel and realized a character’s turnaround made sense only because three motivational scenes were gone.

Beyond time, shifts in perspective wreck coherence. A novel’s internal monologue, unreliable narrator, or layered exposition doesn’t always translate to a visual medium. When creators try to replace thoughts with clumsy dialogue or awkward voiceover, it sounds like plot for the sake of plot. Sometimes the adaptor misreads the core theme and rearranges beats, which makes the story arrive at the wrong destination: technical fidelity doesn’t equal thematic fidelity. The 2009 movie 'The Last Airbender' is a textbook example of cutting and reinterpreting so much that the emotional logic collapsed.

Then there’s the ugly industrial stuff — network notes, budget limits, casting availability, and last-minute rewrites. I’ve seen shows where mid-season writer changes or reshoots force plot shortcuts that feel like plot holes. If you want a fix: prioritize preserving core relationships and cause-effect chains, allow space for exposition to breathe (even if it’s in a short prologue), and resist the temptation to mash too many source arcs into one installment. I still enjoy many imperfect adaptations, but the ones that stick are those that respect why the original moved me, not just what happened in it.

When I binge an adapted series and it starts jumping around like it forgot the map, my first suspicion is someone tried to cram too much into too little time. You can almost feel the missing moments — characters make big choices that have no lead-up, or side plots vanish like they never mattered. That usually comes down to runtime pressure and producers demanding highlights instead of coherent pacing.

Another pattern I notice is medium mismatch: something that relies on inner thoughts or long descriptive passages in a book gets flattened on screen unless the show invents new cinematic ways to convey it. And then there are the behind-the-scenes headaches — lost scripts, test screenings, or studio mandates to be more 'marketable' that force tonal shifts. I’ve seen a comedy turned darker, a mystery made obvious, and a romance given less chemistry because of casting changes. A small hack I use is to recheck the source between episodes — that often reveals what was excised and why a scene suddenly felt off. Still, some adaptations surprise me and rework things brilliantly; it’s just that the ones that fall apart usually did so long before cameras rolled.

I’ve gotten older and pickier, so when a beloved story becomes a confusing adaptation, my eye goes to the soft connective stuff that’s missing: inner motivations, cultural subtext, and pacing. Films and shows have different rules — novels can afford long detours and subtle worldbuilding, while visual media often demands immediate cause-and-effect. Cut too many explanatory beats and you end up with a logical tumble where character actions seem unearned.

There are also practical monsters: budget cuts, censorship, legal rights that force plot changes, or a director’s desire to stamp a different theme on the material. That can be interesting but it can also detach the story from its anchors. I try to treat adaptations as companions rather than replacements, and if something feels incoherent I go back to the source or director interviews to piece together what got lost — it’s like detective work, and sometimes it makes the flawed version feel less frustrating.