The movie industry is fond of taking bestselling books and turning them into movies -- often with less than terrific results.  How many times have we seen a book's plot points and characters completely change when the story hits the silver screen?

Don't ask me why but last night I got to thinking, "What if they turned books into soap operas?"  This sparked a fun game in my head.  I invite you to play along in comments and come up with how you think your favorite book would be changed if they made it into a soap.  (If you can, please pick a book most of us also know.)

Here's my entry: 

If Gone with the Wind was made into a soap opera:

Rhett would leave... come back... leave again... and he and Scarlett would marry and divorce at least four times.

Twenty years into the future, they'd discover that Bonnie didn't really get killed in that pony jumping accident.  Although, she'd hide her identity when she first returned to Atlanta and harbor resentment that her parents didn't know that she'd secretly been kidnapped by Union sympathizers and had been raised in Albany.

Ashley and Scarlett would have had an love affair in actuality instead of just lusting after each other forever.

Discovering this, Melanie would slowly descend into madness and, possibly, be suspected as a serial killer.   Borrowing from Jane Eyre, which Ashley read but Scarlett didn't, they'd hide her in the attic at Tara with only an aging Mammy to guard her.  At some point, she would accomplish what the Yankee army didn't and burn down the house.

We wouldn't have know that the Tarleton twins were twins from the get-go.  We'd only have known about Brent.  Stuart would have been the evil, mystery twin who wreaked havoc around the plantations.  Brent would have been arrested for crimes his unknown twin had committed.

Belle Watling would still have been the hooker with a heart of gold.  That's already a soap staple.

Scarlett secretly suffered a brain tumor that caused her to do all of the things she did.

Prissy was really the illegitimate daughter of Gerald O'Hara and, working together with the reconstructionists, took title to Tara.

Scarlett's other two kids who are born in the book but have no presence in the movie scheme to have her committed and take control of the family lumber empire.

Finally, the South wins the war.

Your turn!