Elisa Ricci

Adapting voices: transforming dialogues from Outlander novel to TV series

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy

Diana Gabaldon’s epic Outlander saga, intricately narrated, has captivated millions of
readers with its time-traveling adventures. However, transforming such a complex plot into
a television series implied various challenges, including maintaining the first-person
narrative voice (that of the protagonist, Claire Fraser) and rewriting dialogues that, if left
unchanged, would not have the same impact on screen. The creative choices of
producers, directors, and screenwriters have thus been influenced by the visual language
tropes inherent to cinema and TV, which necessarily exclude the typical prose of novels.
Adapting a novel for television involves inevitably rewriting dialogues or monologues not
only for technical reasons – such as adjusting to a different narrative pace and synthesis –
but primarily to preserve the essence of the plot, characters, and original themes. This is
how the viewer’s experience can be shaped and made as authentic as possible. Through
the comparison between the original text and the television adaptation, interviews with the
team, and the analysis of scenes differing from the original, this study aims to explore the
strategies adopted, the linguistic dynamics, and the narrative nuances that emerged during
the rewriting process.

This paper, therefore, provides a detailed overview of the creative adaptation process,
outlining how the rewriting of dialogues can influence the perception and interpretation of
the story in a context different from the literary one, namely the visual realm.

Elisa Ricci is a PhD student in Linguistic Sciences at the Università Cattolica del Sacro
Cuore in Milan. She specializes in adaptations from novels to TV series, of historical
genre, with a particular focus on Outlander and Bridgerton.

She attended a master’s program in International Screenwriting and Production in 2021
and worked as an assistant to the creative producer at Cross Productions, a production
company in Rome.

Her interests include cinema, TV series, adaptations, historical and fantasy novels, History
and literature.