Novel Movies and Novels - are comparisons useful?

Discussion in 'Genre Discussions' started by BayView, Jan 21, 2017.

  1. Mumble Bee

    Mumble Bee Keep writing. Contributor

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    I've always found it hard to pull writing inspiration from movies/T.V. Mostly because on video you can do everything at once; show a beautiful landscape, have dialogue, show multiple reactions from characters at the same time. Trying to live up to that standard in writing is maddening.
     
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  2. Spencer1990

    Spencer1990 Contributor Contributor

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    Well yes. Again, though, there's a need to define terms here. Are we talking about prose or story?

    If we're only talking about crafting prose, then yes, analyze prose, almost solely. If we're talking about story, I think we're missing a valuable resource to look predominantly at prose.

    But, (and this is obviously arguable, not easily quantified), I think a lot of average readers are more compelled by story than by beautiful prose. Good prose is necessary to deliver a story in novel form, sure. But I think we've seen by 50 Shades, Twilight, Hunger Games, Divergent, etc., that we don't necessarily need to be Oscar Wilde. Which is where I draw my personal conclusion that analyzing all forms of narrative is equally as important as analyzing prose.

    Though both are necessary.

    I guess my point is that inside the long, complicated process of writing a novel, a lot of components are necessary at different times and that level of importance fluctuates as you go through. For example, when we're editing a completed manuscript, it would do us ZERO good to analyze film editing techniques for inspiration.
     
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  3. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Yes. IMO. That's why I mention movies when I'm discussing plot and character points. If I want something that most people have heard of, I can go with (1) movies, (2) TV, (3) Harry Potter and maybe (4) To Kill a Mockingbird. But (4) is a stretch. If I had read Twilight and Hunger Games, I could refer to them, too, but I haven't.
     
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  4. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    Prose can't be used. You can't learn how to frame a shot from a book, the same way you can't learn how to construct a sentence from a movie. So there is a limit to comparison. It looks like this is one of the rare threads that has reached a reasonably universal agreement.
     
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  5. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    Not totally. It's not super useful, but there are editing techniques, such as length of scene, perspective, and story structure (yes, still part of post) that are universal and can be used between the two. Do you cut away from a character? Do you go to flashback now, later, or at all? Editing is more than just cutting shots, so some, yet I agree few, useful comparisons could be drawn from one skill to another.
     
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  6. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Anybody read the The Godfather Notebook yet? Basically it's Coppola's bible he used to make the movie. He sliced out every page from the novel, pasted onto a larger sheet, and filled in all the margins with his notes for when he made the movie. He noted all the little cues and signposts he wanted to use, as well as some of the defining imagery he wanted to capture on screen. And there were little scene blocks where he wrote out the main points he wanted to capture from each chapter, and the things he would likely to screw up if he wasn't careful. I'd seen several things about his notebook over the years, but just recently they published it into a massive textbook. Very, very, very cool!
     
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  7. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    I try to use examples from literature when possible. Virtually all the writing topics on WF are about novels, not screenplays. It doesn't matter if the example you use is known to others or not- authors of how to books reference other authors and novels all the time. You simply explain why the particular novel you are mentioning makes for a good example- as an aspiring writer, you should be able to do this.

    I think a lot of the flaws you'll find in the writing workshop, here, are in many cases caused by trying to emulate film. A good example of this is stage direction- the writer wants us to make note of every smile, every leg movement, every physical action it takes to make a cup of coffee.
     
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  8. Spencer1990

    Spencer1990 Contributor Contributor

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    No. That's just novice writing. It's a lack of understanding prose fundamentals. It has really nothing to do with trying to emulate film. Besides, stage direction doesn't even look like that.

    What you're describing is a hallmark of new writers. They haven't figured out how to, or why they need to manipulate narrative time.
     
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  9. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    I certainly have not read every single distinguished author, but most of us here should have read a high enough percentage of them (these lists are not hard to find and are pretty unanimous-Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Nabokov, even Stephen King) that there should be some overlap.
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2017
  10. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    @Spencer1990 - but technically, couldn't you say those who lack the fundamentals of prose writing would naturally turn to film to learn? eg. because you lack prose fundamentals, you think everything in film equally applies to narrative, and thus you end up emulating film, perhaps not necessarily deliberately always.

    @123456789 - I'm sorry to say I'm not sure I've read much of anything by any of those authors... :bigoops: Read MacBeth and Hamlet in school, and don't remember a thing of it except for the main plot and obviously, names of the protags! In the case of Shakespeare, my teacher once said that people's mistake with Shakespeare was precisely that people read it rather than watch it. It's supposed to be a play. Is it any wonder it's more dull on the page without the stage? I think I agree. That, and I find Shakespearean English incomprehensible.

    I've never read Tolstoy or Stephen King. Tried King 3 times and couldn't get past the first 50 pages (3 different books). I find his writing frustratingly meandering and utterly dull, as if I'm reading a report rather than a novel. Although since I loved the film Shawshank Redemption, I'd actually like to try reading it. Not read a word of Tolstoy.

    Nabokov - I've only read That in Aleppo Once and that's because I wrote an essay on it at uni :D I've been meaning to read Lolita...

    Yeah... it's bad. When I referred to lazy people who haven't read widely, I had myself in mind... :crazy:
     
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  11. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    But I think novice writing (even if inspired by other novels) is influenced too heavily by film, not novels. I agree with the idea that writers are trying to emulate the visual influences too strongly. That's why so often we have such a dedication to look, rather than feel. Amateur writing, in my opinion, more often than not is influenced by the look (and emotion) of film, rather than structure.
     
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  12. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    A movie has the advantage of being able to show clearly what characters and settings look like. And it's plain who is speaking any lines of dialogue, and the manner in which it is said. Film is also good at portraying action.

    Film is not so good at sharing internal thoughts and feelings or motivations of characters—or perhaps consequences of actions either ongoing or from the past. Conveying these intangible things boils down to the skill of the actors, directors and scriptwriters. A novel, on the other hand, can engage with this aspect of storytelling directly. However, a novelist needs to recreate the other aspects of storytelling that films do so easily.

    New writers who don't read, but only watch TV and films, often tend to write only what they would see or hear on film. They need to remember there are no actors in a book to interpret aspects of the story. A book contains only what the author put there. And a novelist also needs to learn how to convey setting, action and conversation, so the reader can visualise and keep track of what is going on.

    Film moves along at its own pace, while a book can be read at any pace. This also affects how a story gets taken on board. You can stop and re-read a passage in a book, maybe think about it a bit before moving on. However, unless you're watching a film at home with a remote control pause/rewind function in your hand, you haven't got that option. If you miss something, or don't understand something right away while you're at the cinema, that's tough.

    While both mediums are used for storytelling, they are different from one another, and require different skills to produce. I don't think one necessarily leads to the other.
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2017
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  13. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    Someone threw video games into the mix and while I don't want to spend too long on it, I'll say this:

    trying to emulate video games is the worst.

    Whenever someone starts describing their character in terms of race, class, and skills, I want to disconnect from the net
     
  14. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Oh gosh yes. This. Aargh....
     
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  15. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    Take a deep breath, slap yourself, and me - because they are fourteen years old - excited about writing a story, making friends on-line. Step back from the fray.
     
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  16. OJB

    OJB A Mean Old Man Contributor

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    This is why I tend to stay away from Character design threads.

    -

    In any case, to the original point, I've studied poetics, storytelling, prose, and film/scripts and I've found techniques and theory that I apply to all aspects of my writing. I agree with the storytelling is storytelling no matter the medium; however, I think it is important for people to read novels because, as Jannert put it, there are some things novels can do better (internal dialogue is #1 thing that comes to mind) vs a movie.

    I tend to give illustrations from poems, essays, novels, graphic novels, and films when I am doing critiques or posting an opinion on something. To be honest, I don't have any reason I use one over the other when I do, it just might be the fact that I've read/watched so much material and analyzed it that I just have a large library of information to draw back on.
     
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  17. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    slap.png
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2017
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  18. Spencer1990

    Spencer1990 Contributor Contributor

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    How can we say that's from film influences rather than not being able to parse out in the imagination of a writer which action is important to show? Novels are visual and emotional. The first lesson people learn is how to create an image in the mind of a reader.

    All I'm saying is that it's less about influence by film, and more about a lack of understanding.

    But neither of these points are quantifiable, so I suppose this argument has no end.
     
  19. Spencer1990

    Spencer1990 Contributor Contributor

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    To me, that seems strange for anyone with half a wit to not understand that prose and films need two wildly different deliveries. But, again, I'm not sure there is anyway to really know whether or not this is true.
     
  20. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    Sure, but from my experience of 'film-makers' or 'actors,' they are pricks relative to 'writers.' I mean they don't see the whole picture, ha...you know...they're dumb, I suppose, and that's not a crime, and also Kubrick and Bergman are excluded.
     
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  21. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    I think there might be an argument to be made that the pacing of novels has been influenced by movies, but like @Spencer1990 said there's no real way to quantify that. You could look at novels by era and compare the pacing to the where cinema was in its evolution at the time. Like for example you never would have seen a fast paced book written in the 19th century of even in the early 20th. A better analog might be hard boiled detective novels and detective film noir, which both developed around the same time and were eerily similar in plot and pacing, though oftentimes the movies were developed from books. But none of that would hold up to a counterfactual, so it's pretty academic.
     
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  22. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    You're right- it's a lot of guess work.

    My assumption is that a number of aspiring writers were sitting on the couch watching a movie or their favorite television show when an idea for a story sparked them. So they shut off their T.V and get on the computer and start plugging away on their idea. What they really want is to make a movie,but this requires actors, a multi million dollar budget, and blowing a producer, so they settle for Microsoft Word.
     
  23. Spencer1990

    Spencer1990 Contributor Contributor

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    I guess I don't understand the point of continuing to argue based on assumptions and cynicism. That seems silly.
     
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  24. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Yep, that's me in a nutshell. It was an episode of Hunter. I was 12 when I wrote it. Only we didn't have Microsoft Word yet. It was Multimate on my dad's 286 IBM, which probably cost $2000 at the time.
     
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  25. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    I think my big works are based off multi-platforms. While I can't rule out that a bit is from film, the two major types are video games and books of similar genre.
    Television has had such a minor role in my life, that it really is not a factor (and I choose to not watch it). Just find that there is a bit more imagination and inspiration
    in books and video games, where films are simply lacking. Perhaps because the former two are much more immersive in the overall experience.
     
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