Wow. Quite a response. lol. Thanks...
Your responses really got me thinking. I don't know why I'd missed some of the points you guys gave. I think I'm able to answer my own question now.
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Originally Posted by Hodge
Books have greater development. A movie must be scrunched down into a few hours, whereas a book has much more room for getting all the information and characters and situations and such fleshed out.
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Very true. I'll bet this is even more true when it comes to epic novels. Even the best epic films can't compare to the scope of an epic novel.
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Originally Posted by Hodge
The narrative style also acts as the "camera." Older authors tended to describe EVERYTHING whether it was relevant or not, but nowadays only the relevant bits are described.
Books also have wordplay and the benefit of language, whereas a movie is mostly visual except for dialogue. There's no music, but you can use words to instill a particularly evocative moment -- the purpose of music in movies is to cover this deficiency.
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Yeah, that makes sense to me. That's very interesting actually, to think of the narration and the language as the paper and ink version of camera-work and cinematography. Because, while a camera is the medium through which the story is passed through (just like words on a page are for books), even the best cinematography could never be described as "poetic."
Using "The Shining" as an example:
The camera might simply show:
Jack Torrence has blood on his face, and he screams and swings an axe into the bathroom door over and over. His wife Wendy looks frightened on the other side. Scary music plays.
The book, however, is able to say:
Beyond the door, the animal sounds of destruction went on and on, accompanied by thick shouts that they would "take their medicine"....
There was nothing of the real Jack in that howling, maundering, petulant voice, though. It alternatly whined in tones of selfpity and rose in lurid screams; it reminded her chillingly of the screams that sometimes rose in the geriatrics ward of the hospital where she worked summers as a highschool kid. Senile dementia. Jack wasn't out there anymore. She was hearing the lunatic raving voice of the Overlook itself.
The mallet smashed into the bathroom door, knocking out a huge chunk of the thin panelling. Half of a crazed and working face stared in at her. The mouth and cheecks and thoat were lathered in blood, the single eye she could see was tiny and piggish and glittering.
It would be impossible for the camera to convery all of that information, and to do so in such a disturbingly poetic way. Camera's can't make prose. They don't have cool adjectives. They can't describe anything, all they can do is show. Writers can use words, and if they use their words in vivid, poetic ways, they can probably achieve something greater than a camera.
Thanks for helping me realize this.
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Originally Posted by Hodge
Books also don't rely on several people to make it work. In a movie, a bad actor or a bad director or a bad screenplay can ruin a movie.
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True...
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Originally Posted by Bika
There's another thing books have that movies don't: freedom of imagination.
With a book, it is entirely up to the reader to interpret and imagine the scene, promoting thought, as opposed to a movie where every detail is force-fed to the viewer.
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So how can a writer
use that to his or her advantage?
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Originally Posted by Besh
Books take you deeper. They give you an opportunity to really get to know the characters. It's rare that I'll feel for a character in a movie, but I tend to become far more attatched to characters in books. I feel closer to them, I know what they're thinking, and I know what they're feeling, so I can come to understand them better than I would from just watching the way they interact with other people.
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Hmmm...I can't say I agree with this 100%. I've never found it hard to care for a character in a film. It doesn't take
that long to establish character sympathy in a story. Some movies (for example, "Lost in Translation") are very character-based, and succeed at creating complex people for the viewer.
However, you are definetely right about becoming attached to characters in a book. I've had times where I've finished a book and felt sad because I wasn't gonna get to spend any more time with that character. It feels like a good friend is going away. I'll actually
miss characters in books. I've yet to experience that with a film.
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Originally Posted by Besh
And when you're writing a book there are no limitations. There's no budget. You want something? You got it. It's your world.
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Very interesting point. I suppose that in this sense books level the playing field. If an amatuer filmmaker wants to create a Sci-Fi film about an alien war on a planet of fire, his film is probably not going to turn out very good, due to the fact that he won't have the budget he needs to make it look as cool as he'd like. With books, beginning writers have an equal oppurtunity to create worlds as complex and imaginative as veteran writers.
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Originally Posted by mwd
Stories are better at conveying abstractions, i.e., things that don't necessarily fall into the realm of one of our five senses.
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I see. Can you think of an example of this?
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Originally Posted by mwd
Stories are also better when the thoughts of the characters and what's happening inside them is as important as what's happening outside -- internal dialogue doesn't work that well in film, since constant voiceover can get very annoying.
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That's true. I had thought of that one already actually. Internal thoughts aren't an issue for books like they are for films.
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Originally Posted by mwd
Books are also better at showcasing minority viewpoints and ideas which are too fringe to be used in mainstream film. There are many more novels published each year then there are movies made, simply because of budget issues. If you think publishers are careful about the marketability of the books they take on, I'm guessing movies are at least ten times worse, and for good reason. If the average book fails, the publisher might lose $100,000 (I don't have any statistics here, I just pulled that number out of the air, but I think you get the basic idea). Whereas an average movie can lose what? Millions of dollars?
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Yeah, that's a
really great point. I often write stories that are satirical criticisms of our society. I love writing stuff with really dark humor. I also like exploring bizarre and disturbing subject matter on occasion. With films you have that whole marketability issue to contend with. Your film has to get approved by hundreds of people (studios, distribution companies, public screenings, the MPAA, etc). Where as your book only has to meet the approval of your agent, your editor, and some people at your publishing company. That's like 10 people at the most. Way less than a movie.
So yeah. With books it's a lot easier to make stuff that's unconventional, contoversial, experimental, risky, etc.
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Originally Posted by KyleColorado
A movie can convey a scene with visual and audio sensory, but what about the other senses? I've never seen a movie that made me SMELL a scent, or FEEL the touch of something, whereas written prose has the ability to do just that.
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Good point. If you think about it, scriptwriters have a hard time showing how a place smells, or how something feels. They can try to do it through dialogue, but that's still very limiting, cuz the situation may not lend itself to that. Where as a writer can just say:
The smell of damp, old wood filled the air... or:
the glass of the window felt cool to the touch.
So. To summarize...If you're a writer and who wants to take advantage of the things books can do that movies (and everything else, for that matter) can not, you must:
- Use words and language to create vivid and poetic images.
- Take advantage of adjectives; lay on the description.
- Take advantage of all five senses
- Create deep characters that readers finds themselves attatched to.
- Show the internal thoughts of characters
- Feel free to create endlessly complex and imaginative worlds
- Feel free to write stories that are unconventional, controversial, experimental, risky, etc...
Thanks a lot everyone.
