 Drama: June 27, 2018 Issue [#8968] |
  Drama
This week: Film, Books, and Cinematic Fiction Edited by: Joy  
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“It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it."
Andy Warhol
“The book is a film that takes place in the mind of the reader. That's why we go to movies and say, 'Oh, the book is better.'”
Paulo Coelho
"Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life."
Barbara Kingsolver
“Any time a film scores a massive hit or gets uniform critical acclaim, it's a surprise. When a film does both, it's a miracle.”
Jeffrey Katzenberg
“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”
Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about the effects of movies on written fiction and vice versa.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Movies, plays, novels, and short stories are all vital expressions of creative people, and as writers, we enjoy them all. My personal preference is for reading the written works, but movies, when made well, can also evoke strong feelings as well as entertain and enlighten their viewers.
In general, novels and short stories are usually adapted into film since the early twentieth century, but with the onset of the popularity of the movies, the movie business has also influenced and inspired fiction writers. Then, sometimes, movie-making and fiction writing are inseparable. For example, Chinese filmmaker Dai Sijie resurrected his diminishing movie career in China after he wrote a novel. His semi-autobiographical novel, Balzac and the Little Seamstress, written in his second language French, was so loved by the French readers that Dai Sijie made his novel into a movie, later.
This is because we readers and movie-goers think of both mediums as stories brought to life, but there is a difference between the two mediums; what one can do, the other may not be able to, at least not perfectly. As an example, while a movie can visually show explicit sex or blunt horror, the author of a novel may choose to impart the same meaning through metaphors or roundabout word usage. In fact, good writing always uses the less-is-more angle while the film industry favors the stark visuals.
Most movie-makers shorten long novels or adapt short stories like Yentl to film. This is because literary fiction depends on the readers’ interpretation while movies try to show the story action on the screen. At times, these two interpretations of life get along just fine, but then, there are times when the novel’s central message is messed up in the movies like that of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. The same has happened to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, Hemingway’s, and Faulkner’s works.
Then, there are those authors like Dos Passos and Dreiser who use in their works techniques similar to those practiced in the film industry such as montage, jump-cutting from scene to scene, or using the camera angle or projection changes for emotional emphasis; although sometimes, these movie methods do not work well and can be annoying to serious readers who have read the book first.
A factoid for movies is that the most popular movie protagonists have become heroes whether their stories were adapted from novels or not. In addition, most of those heroes may spring from needy backgrounds or they are orphans such as Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Batman, Spiderman, Superman etc. Talking about characters in books and movies where characters are actors, movie actors are at a disadvantage as an actor cannot eat as much or at all especially after the several takes of a scene; whereas in books, any character can eat as much as the story allows. Then, characters may wear the same costumes in different movies showing the same or similar setting; whereas, each book character’s costume is unique as described by the author. Still, in both movies and books of fiction, portraying fully developed characters can be done to satisfaction.
The list of authors who have written for the movies is a long one, but then, there are instances when cinema becomes the inspiration for a work of fiction. While a historical movie may inspire a historical romance story, a screenplay may influence a novel to take a surreal turn or a biographical movie may be used in a fantasy setting.
There may be an advantage to thinking of fiction in cinematic terms because the book you write may catch the eye of a movie producer. While the character is usually the most important element in books, in the movies, a strong premise plays the commanding role, although without discarding the importance of the character. In addition, for a book that signals the promise of a movie, external rather than the internal action, an efficient building up of dramatic tension, thinking with the five senses especially the sight and sound, and using powerful moments and dialogue that lead to a climactic finish are crucial.
Until next time! 
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 Enjoy!
| |  | The Red Eminence (13+)
Quotation Inspiration entry (Sept 2013). Historical fiction set in 1600s France.
#1955477 by Jeff  |
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 This Issue's Tip: Theme is best introduced in beginning scenes through imagery, analogy, metaphor, talisman, and symbols; however, a writer may not be aware of the theme of his writing during the first draft. This means he or she should enter a hint of it in the beginning scenes during the revision process.
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Feedback for "Exploring the Types of Scenes .II."
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Azrael Tseng 
Wow, thank you for this week's newsletter. It really helped me with finishing up and editing my novella 'Dead Man's Grin'. I was quite worried whether it was too talky, or perhaps lacked some crucial element I had not thought of. Using your various types of scenes as a checklist of sorts, I managed to figure out whether I had the right scenes and used them effectively or not. It came at just the right time!
Nothing to worry about. Knowing the excellence of your work, I am sure you had the right scenes. Thanks for the input.
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ChrisDaltro-Chasing Moonbeams 
Dear Joy,
Thank you for featuring my short story: Moon Face - in your awesome May 30th. 2018 WDC Newsletter. I was so proud!
Christina Daltro
Well, it is a good story, I think. Glad you enjoyed seeing it featured.
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Quick-Quill 
This NL dragged me through a lesson. I continued to read to get all the points you made. The first ones were easy to understand once you read through those excerpts. Old writers like the Bronte sisters and such used a lot of description. In Today's world of instant gratification, there needs to be many scenes connected in an ascending pattern or you lose the reader. Books tend to be shorter or include a lot more action/drama. In the last examples; The Birds, Twister and even Rebecca the nuances gave me reason to take more care in my scenes. However In one book how many of these scenes can you reasonably string together before you lose your reader?
The best suggestion I can come up with is that we string them as needed. No need to count how many. Obviously, we can't use all the possible scene types. The idea is to vary them. The warning was and is for some newbie writers who may write all their scenes using the same template, which is what we should all be careful of.
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Quest-YELLOW-Thanks Schnujo
Thanks for this insightful newsletter. I never tried drama but magic realism is my pet interest area. I would to read this in future too.
Thanks for the input. Magical realism can be used in all kinds of fiction because drama is an element of fiction, as long as the events occur seamlessly.
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