Pretty Little Liars

"Pretty Little Liars" is a novel and television series developed for young adults. "Pretty Little Liars" began as a series of novels written by Sara Shepard. A companion television series was then created by Marlene King.

By studying both the novels and the television series, I was able to find many differences. While my personal opinion as a result of my comparison has led me to believe that reading the books before engaging in the television series was not as beneficial as I thought it was going to be, but I did find both works incredibly interesting.

Reading the books was enlightening, leading me to have higher expectations for the show. The television show brought many things to my attention. For example, it helped me visualize things, allowed me to establish more relationships between the characters, created suspense, changed the genre of the story as a whole and even diverged entirely from the novel series. When first watching the series I thought they were going to follow the story line of the books, but that assumption changed quickly.

The television show allows viewers to visualize the things that were actually occurring. It gave a more first-person view of the events happening at that point in the story. In the books, we are aware of the major turning points that happen in the story such as one of the main characters, named Alison, disappearing. Other events like finding Alison's body, the anonymous text messages, etc. are also well designed in the book. However, the television series allowed me to get a better feeling about what is actually happening because I could visually see it rather than having to create the scenario in my head.

For instance, in the very first episode, all five of the girls; Spencer, Aria, Hanna, Emily and Alison are at a sleepover when something mysterious happens. When the girls awake the next morning, their best friend, Alison, is missing. Spencer, another main character, is the first one to search for Alison, but cannot locate her. Through the soundtrack, lighting and visual representation, viewers start to get a feeling that something bad has happened, but are unsure what that actually is. This is a feeling that I think that the book tried to create but was unsuccessful doing so because it couldn't use these techniques to instill dramatic effects through words.

Another reason the television show differs from the novel series is through character