Mantra

What advantages do books have over movies?

I ask this because, it seems to me that movies have so many more advantages.

In a movie, you can have music for instant. You can have those strings hold the tension at just the right moments, for dramatic effect. You can hit those heartbreaking minor chords when the characters start crying. Basically you're able to make the viewer feel what you want them to feel at any given time (provided that you have a decent level of talent), with music.

There's also the camera to guide the viewer through the story. It shows them exaclty where to look, where to focus. It zooms in on important details. It gives them breathtaking imagery. Rather than having to work and imagine all the details in a book, movie watchers have all that work done for them. They just sit back, look into the screen, and bam! There's a whole world painted before them.

It seems to me that movies are able to utilize several forms of art at once. There's the storytelling aspect of it, the musical aspect of it, and the visual/photgraphic/cinemagraphic aspect to it. Not to mention the art of acting and performance. Movies offer the viewer several forms of art at once. All books have is the written word, offered on paper and ink.


So the question is....Do books have anything that movies don't? What can they do that movies can't? Is there anything?

I ask this because I'm an aspiring writer, and I sometimes feel as though I'm trying to compete with films. I ask myself, "Would anyone preffer to experience this story in written form, as opposed to experiencing it through a movie? Why would they?"

I feel like I've got to find out what books can give readers that movies can't. I want to use every last one of those strengths to my advantage.


Any thoughts? (Hope I posted this in the right forum)

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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.

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.

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.


And as they say, the book is almost always better than the movie.

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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.

For movies which address contentious (sp?) issues, the same provocation of thought is required in botth film and written version; however, again, the book here, as noted by hodge, has vastly more freedom in time to express and address said issues.

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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.

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.

I don't know if that's the response you're looking for, so my advice would be to read a whole lot, and find out what you think are the advantages of books as opposed to movies. If you can't find any, maybe you should try script writing.

mwd

Stories are better at conveying abstractions, i.e., things that don't necessarily fall into the realm of one of our five senses. 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.

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?

In the past, films were restricted by special effects and budget, which put limitations on them. This is becoming less of an issue, although it's still a consideration--you can have as many settings or characters in your story as you want, without needing to hire more actors or pulling out the CGI trickery, or building new sets, or anything. So there's that as well.

Length is also an issue. Think of how many things need to be cut from the average novel to turn it into a movie. In fact, short stories are what can most readily be adapted to a movie without needing to change the length, whereas novels need to be cut down. The longer the novel, the worse this gets. Imagine someone trying to make a movie out of Infinite Jest, Underworld, or Gravity's Rainbow. Or older novels like Don Quixote, or Moby Dick?

I mean, it's been tried. Moby Dick wasn't necessarily a bad movie at all, in fact it was good for what it was, but I don't think anyone can say they captured the whole of their source material. Not that they didn't try, it just wasn't possible considering the length and breadth of the original work, unless they wanted to make the movie six hours long, or move into miniseries territory, or something. And even then, all the best parts of that film would have been when they were quoting the original book, LOL.

Anyway, just my two cents. If you're honestly not sure what advantages words have over movies, I'd suggest either reading more, or reading denser, subtler books.

edit: All these replies weren't here when I first started posting. So this all seems a bit redundant now. Oh well.

aspiring

Plus you can take a book to the beach, on a bus, to the doctor's waiting room.

Books are unobtrusive and don't cause aggravation to others, unlike mini TVs.

With a book, you can see the film in your own head, just the way you would do it. When you watch a film you are seeing someone else's interpretation.

Hodge

Plus, you don't have to quickly turn down the volume and hope no one heard when you get to that steamy sex scene.

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Fixed

books are deeper and make the reader think more
You get to feel a type of relationhip with the characters and you can imagine what they do how they do it, whilst in movies it is shown to you how they do things.

You can bring a book anywhere for a cheap price and read it anywhere you want, when you got a lot of free time reading is very constructive, besides TV isn't that interesting apart from series and news and sports which have very little to do with books. Besides TV is bad for your eyes lol

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Mike C

Books have the same advantage over movies as chalk has over cheese. They're different art forms, which is why movies from books seldom surpass the original material, and books from movies never make the best-seller lists. They are two distinctly different ways of telling a story.

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CroZ

Movies turned books have to be the single most redundent thing ever, for a varitey of different reasons.

'Roar,' the T-Rex said, chasing Allen Grant.
'Oh, no,' the pitiful human replied, his jeep about to swerve over a cliff.
The jeep swerved off the cliff.
'AAAA,' the man desperately cried.
'Roar,' the T-Rex yelled aggresively, staring at the human from the cliff above with nasty big greedy eyes, and sharp pointy teeth.

I exagerate?

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.

Movies may seem like better versions of books, but I think a really damn good book (one that changes the way you think about life.. one that you want to give to your kids so they can read when they grow up.. one that makes you say "wow" and re-read every page, every paragraph, every sentence twice just to savor the wisdom of the prose) is much more profound than any movie.

mammamaia

wow, there's nothing left for me to say!... i would've said all that, but it's all been said for me... thanks, gang!!!...

so, mantra... did that answer your question?

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imrhati

i fell both have advantages and disadvantages. i don;t favor either myself, but f you're targetting a market movies win defintely.

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Hodge

Ironically, your example, Jurassic Park, is a Michael Crichton novel that was later turned into a movie...

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Mike C

I wonder... has there ever been a book of the movie of the book?

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