: Re: What can a novel do that film and TV cannot? I have enjoyed writing prose for years and have a few short stories penned. I would like to build up to a novel but believe I have identified

@Sarah872

Vote Up Vote Down

Your problem is not unusual --we all grow up on a diet of visual media these days, and it affects the way we think and write. As someone who has wrestled with some of the same issues, here are some notable differences:

Length - This is one of the most crucial differences. An average length novel has room in it for a lot more material than an average length movie. It just simply takes longer to dramatize events than to describe them --plus the fact that people routinely take weeks or months (even years) to work through a book.
Telling, not showing - "Show, don't tell" is the great foundational dictum of visual media, but it's not always applicable to books. Telling, done correctly, is a valuable tool in the toolbox of a novelist.
Internal perspective - This is the big one for me, and I suspect for you as well. A movie is almost inevitably observed from outside the characters, who we see in third person perspective. A novel is always internal, even if written in the third person, because it has the presence of the narrator. For that reason, the descriptions can't just be dry catalogs of visual details, they must carry information about attitude, mood, and other internal states along with them.
Voice - Along the same lines as the above, every book has the narrator's voice --which, whether it is poetic or prosaic, needs to have a ongoing richness to it that is present in movies only in the dialog.
Unfettered imagination - Everything in a movie must be staged. In a book, anything you imagine can go on the page. This also means you can jump from scene to scene --flashbacks, flash-forwards, daydreams, allusions --in a way that would be both expensive and annoying in a movie.

It's worth noting that screenwriting is a perfectly valid form of writing, and that there's a demand for good screenwriters right now in this age of endless streaming content. So if that's what suits your talents, you might consider learning that format and making that your writing focus instead.

(0)

Login to post a comment!