Yesterday my little MLS-holding self spent the afternoon taking pictures of pretty flowers for a webpage. I stopped in the library basement to rehydrate and found a kindred spirit.
I feel your pain, bottle. I feel your pain.
Yesterday I discovered that my local library subscribes to eBooks through Indiana Digital Media, which is powered through Overdrive. I went to town browsing all of the books I normally wouldn't look twice at if I had to pay for them through Amazon: horror novels, paperback romances, sci-fi and thrillers. Ultimately I landed in the Humor section, because that's where my next novel (temporarily dubbed Kagemusha, though there's nothing remotely Japanese about it) will likely be categorized. It was a tiny category with only five books by two authors—I presume because most comedic novels are filed under broader headings. I decided to borrow ghostgirl (lower caps deliberate) by Tonya Hurley.
It's a fun, bubbly read, bursting at the seams with pop culture references. The characters, especially the bullies, are more than a bit stereotypical, and I'm not a fan of the gross-out humor, but the grade 6–12 set probably loves it. But halfway through I realized something.
This story was in the wrong medium.
The book read like a movie. The characters' actions were highly physical and the gags were highly visual. A lot of the scenes might have been hilarious on TV but were tedious and difficult to follow in print. Looking up Tonya Hurley's biography, it's easy to see what happened—she comes from a Hollywood background. She was a filmmaker first and a novelist second. She wrote and directed several independent films, but her most recognizable project is the Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen sitcom So Little Time.
In other words, she thinks like a screenwriter.
I've been thinking ever since about the different strengths and weaknesses of novels vs. movies, and how easy it is to conflate the two in modern times. Growing up, I was exposed to about equal doses of books and audio-visual media, but for most people the balance is heavily on the AV side. Most 21st century writers probably think more like "auteurs" than they do novelists, directing their characters like actors and visualizing their stories through an imaginary camera lens.
But from my experience with ghostgirl and other contemporary novels, a lot of film conventions simply don't work in writing.
If you want to make a movie heroine likeable, you simply need to hire an attractive, likeable actress. In a novel, whether a character is blonde or brunette or petite or statuesque means diddly squat. The readers can't see her, so all of the benefits of sex appeal conferred by biology and psychology are undermined. Rather than looks, which a lot of modern authors waste a lot of time and space describing in detail, readers identify more with thoughts, actions, and character traits.
On screen, you can splice the actions of several characters in different locations together in rapid succession for a comedic or suspenseful effect. If you attempt this in novels, it just doesn't fly. It requires too much brain power to jump from one scene to another or jerk forward in time by leaps and bounds. Try to read this in a single pass.
Fred stepped out onto the dark street, the skyscrapers of Manhattan glittering behind him. His cell phone buzzed. He reached into the pocket of his blazer to answer it. "Yello."
Sarah held a flowing red dress up to her front and swayed before the mirror, cradling her Nokia between her shoulder and ear. "Hey, honey. You remembered to make reservations for my birthday dinner, right?"
Fred's leather shoes skidded to a halt on the sidewalk. "Uh...Yeah! Of course I did! How could I forget?"
He looked around frantically for a jeweler...a flower shop...anything. All of the stores were closed.
Sarah heard the baby crying. "Oh! I think Tommy's woken up."
She shuffled to the nursery and lifted the groggy newborn from his crib. "I knew I could count on you, Fred. I can't wait for tonight!"
Fred hung up and hurried towards the subway, dodging tired businessmen and fashionable twenty-somethings out for a night on the town. He prayed to God Macy's was still open.
Sure, you can technically follow it...but compare it to simply choosing one location or the other.
Fred stepped out onto the dark street, the skyscrapers of Manhattan glittering behind him. His cell phone buzzed. He reached into the pocket of his blazer to answer it. "Yello."
"Hey, honey. You remembered to make reservations for my birthday dinner, right?"
Fred's leather shoes skidded to a halt on the sidewalk. "Uh...Yeah! Of course I did! How could I forget?"
He looked around frantically for a jeweler...a flower shop...anything. All of the stores were closed.
Through the phone, he heard the faint cry of a baby.
"Oh! I think Tommy's woken up," Sarah said. The cries grew louder, undeterred by her soothing shushes. "I knew I could count on you, Fred. I can't wait for tonight!"
Fred hung up and hurried towards the subway, dodging tired businessmen and fashionable twenty-somethings out for a night on the town. He prayed to God Macy's was still open.
Isn't that much smoother? Filmmakers can get away with intercuts because a wealth of visual cues tells the audience who's talking and where they are in a split second. Achieving the same effect in print is impossible because of the set-up deadweight required and the amount of effort a reader has to exert on mental gymnastics. The only time I can think of in which literary intercuts might be effective is at the end of a book, after all characters have been well established, and the rapid scene cuts tie them all together and build up to the climax.
On a related note, filmmakers can hop heads with ease using camera angles and close-ups of characters' reactions. This scene from ghostgirl would work perfectly well in an after school special:
INT. BUSTLING HIGH SCHOOL HALLWAY
SCARLET walks down the hall. She is surprised to see DAMEN leaning against the locker next to hers.
DAMEN
Hey.
(Reaches into his backpack)
I burned this for you last night. Thought you might dig it.CLOSE ON a bootleg Green Day CD. SCARLET accepts the gift indifferently.
SCARLET
(coolly)
Thanks.CLOSE ON DAMEN's disappointed face.
But in a novel...
As Scarlet headed to her locker...she saw Damen standing in the hallway, leaned up against an adjacent locker.
"Hey," he said as she came into view. Damen reached into his backpack and pulled out a bootleg Green Day CD.
"I burned this for you last night. Thought you might dig it," he said as he handed it to her.
"Thanks," she muttered, not really trying to hide her ambivalence.
Scarlet's tepid response suggested to Damen that he was off the mark.
So whose head are we in? Scarlet's? Damen's? No, Scarlet's. No, it's Damen's now.
The annoyance is minor in this short scene, but in other parts of the book we'll be in one character's head for an entire chapter until suddenly we're in someone else's for a single paragraph. It disrupts the flow and prevents a reader from sympathizing wholeheartedly with the protagonist (whoever they might be).
Again, this works in film because humans can impart a barrage of information with a single expression. We're also stuck, for the most part, in third person omniscient—filming from a first person point of view is a rare gimmick for the likes of The Blair Witch Project—but we stopped writing novels in third person omniscient somewhere around 1900. That isn't to say that one POV is objectively better than another, but if you choose one, you need to stick to it. ghostgirl was third person limited 90% of the time but all mixed up for the remaining 10%, which was very jarring.
The Humor section of Overdrive and even Amazon is tiny not just because it's less popular than the romances and thrillers—comedy is darned hard to write.
If you watch centuries-old stage comedies or black and white films like His Girl Friday or The Thin Man, the script can stand alone. You could read out The Importance of Being Earnest in monotone and it would still be hilarious. But the only post-Technicolor Hollywood movies I can say that about are remakes of old favorites, like Oscar. Nowadays, most comedy is strictly physical. It's all about expressions, timing, and delivery. The Colbert Report wouldn't be half as funny if Stephen's lines were read out by Jon Stewart (sorry, Jon). And I love Jim Gaffigan's stand-up routines, but I previewed his book on Amazon the other day and...meh. The funniest people publish the dullest memoirs.
In a novel, you can't put (BEAT) between sentences to emphasize the punchline. You can try paragraph breaks or ellipses, but it's just not the same. And physical comedy is difficult to describe...and often falls flat if you try. There's a reason that most people end "funny" anecdotes with "you just had to be there."
Books can still be funny. I certainly hope Kagemusha will be, even with a few slapstick scenes. But in general they work better with a softer brand of humor. More wit, less Punch and Judy.
There are a lot of ways in which writing for the screen and for the page are very similar. But bizarrely, it's precisely in these situations that screenwriters-turned-novelists think they aren't and overwrite the heck out of their scenes. Take this bit from ghostgirl.
"What do the Orientals call that?" she asked, showing just how politically incorrect she was.
It's obvious that this woman is politically incorrect. If the term didn't offend people on sight, it wouldn't be politically incorrect. Stating that she is politically incorrect is like explaining a joke after you've told it. If it wasn't funny the first time, it won't be funny after clarification.
However, I very much doubt Tonya Hurley would have made the same bad call in a screenplay.
MISS WACKSEL
What do the Orientals call that?CHARLOTTE (V.O.)
Miss Wacksel is now demonstrating just how politically incorrect she is.
In cases like these, visualizing your story as a movie can help weed out what you need and what you don't.
One or two times, I've set stories in countries I've never visited and given characters English dialects I haven't heard in person. The results are embarrassing. No matter how pure your intentions, when you try to write about something you don't know well, falling back on stereotypes is inevitable.
So for now, I'm sticking to contemporary America. If I ever need a reminder of the dangers of writing about cultures I don't know well, I just need to tune in to an international movie, TV show, or other media and see how they portray us. Foreign writers have some very bizarre ideas about Americans.
First, the creators of Korean and Japanese fiction seem to believe that people in America go around kissing each other constantly. A kiss on the lips between strangers is, according to mangakas and drama writers aplenty, "a simple greeting." I can't count the number of times a kiss has been explained away in a story line because the initiating party "studied in America."
Speaking of studying in America, if a Japanese or Korean citizen goes to the States for a year or two, they will inevitably come back arrogant and aggressive, with no manners or sense of propriety. They'll dress like gangsters, shrug a lot, insult the elderly to their faces, and speak exclusively in English to make everyone around them feel inferior.
Even our good friends across the pond aren't much better about the way they view us. Amazon has licensed a lot of BBC shows for Prime members, so I've been watching a few lately. In an early episode of Inspector Lewis, our heroes run into an American suspect who claims to be from the Bronx, but he sounds like a Scottish Bostonian who reads too many Agatha Christie novels (note to British screenwriters: the word "vicarage" is not in our standard vocabulary). When the police ask him if he owns a handgun, he gives an inspiring speech.
"In my country, I have a constitutional right to bear arms. But I've always chosen to ignore it. Like my father, I have an enduring love of the music of Duke Ellington. Nobody can love that music and be a party to the taking of human life."
Apparently, Americans never pass up the opportunity to extol on our constitutional rights and love of jazz to foreign law enforcement, when a simple "yes" or "no" would suffice.
In a later episode, the teenage daughter of the U.S. Secretary of State pops up. The paparazzi tail her like crazy, reporting her every fashion choice and romantic rendezvous like she's Princess Di. She opines to Inspector Lewis that she had hoped it would be different in England...she could blend in with the masses and have a normal life...she could let loose and fall in love...poor rich, beautiful, famous me, etc.
But here's the thing: most American adults don't even know who the Secretary of State is, let alone who his children are. (Does John Kerry have a daughter? Just a sec...Wikipedia says yes. Two of them.) American politicians aren't like European dukes and duchesses; the tabloids don't gleefully publish pictures of their daughters sunbathing in bikinis or their sons kissing women at parties. We only care about the kissing partners and exposed bodies of pop singers and reality TV stars. Sorry, Alexandra and Vanessa Kerry.
Here are some other tidbits I've learned about America from foreign media:
Sure you are, buddy. Sure you are.