Benefits of Writing a Story Than Showing It

[VulcanMindBlown]

I've come to realize that there are some benefits to writing a story in a novel or in a comic book than making a show or movie shown on a screen. First, let me say that there are some definite hang-ups for just writing a novel or short story:

1. You don't actually see the events on screen (obviously)
2. You don't get to hear the sounds or dialogue
3.You may get the wrong idea about what is happening

However, I believe that the positives are bigger in number:

1. You use your imagination
2. Not constricted by budget
3. Not constricted by actors
4. Not constricted by recording on camera
5. Not constricted by the technology of the day
6. You can put out your stories faster and in greater number

Am I missing anything....??

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

8. Not constricted by canon.
9. You can get inside someone's head, not just go by what they say to others or do.

 

[F. King Daniel]

10. Novels can go into infinitely more detail and depth about anything than you could ever have on film.

 

[Christopher]

8. Not constricted by canon.

Other way around. Professional tie-in authors are required to stay consistent with canon. But the creators of the actual shows are making the canon, and they're perfectly free to retcon or overwrite or ignore past canon in ways that tie-in creators could never get away with. Fans have this bizarre idea that canon is some higher-up policy that's imposed on the creators of a show, but it's the other way around -- anything they create is the canon by definition, and so they're completely free to throw out any part of the old canon that they want. Tie-in writers are the only people who actually are constricted by canon.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

^I was kidding. I've heard that early stories contradicted it in many places.

 

[JD]

11. Books can get into the characters heads, and explore their thoughts and motivations.

 

[Christopher]

^I was kidding. I've heard that early stories contradicted it in many places.

The goal is always to stay consistent if you can, but in the early days, it wasn't as easy to check the original source as it is today, so more unintentional errors got through; also, the universe was less well-defined, so there were some idiosyncratic interpretations of it. Also, a lot of books that were consistent with canon when they were written got contradicted by new canon later on. But deliberately contradicting canon is not something tie-in authors are free to do.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Does it bother anyone else that there's no #7?

(And really, aren't 9 and 11 the same?)

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Does it bother anyone else that there's no #7?

(And really, aren't 9 and 11 the same?)

1) My mistake. Oops.
2) I intended as much.

 

[Idran]

1) My mistake. Oops.
2) I intended as much.

You intended that JD's number 11 would be the same as your number 9?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

No, silly. My intention was to express the same thought first that 11 ultimately did as well. (I'm a writer, not a time traveler. And even if I was, I wouldn't waste such awesome power on something so trivial.)

12) You can explain how something works in a descriptive passage rather than having the characters tell the consumer everything in dialog.

 

[Jinn]

Does it bother anyone else that there's no #7?

(And really, aren't 9 and 11 the same?)

"Am I missing anything....??" is number 7.

 

[JD]

Does it bother anyone else that there's no #7?

(And really, aren't 9 and 11 the same?)

Oops, I didn't see 9 when I did 11.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

13) It's fun to imagine how somebody looks when you read a story. Sometimes when you see someone/something which was heretofore unseen, only spoken of, it fails to live up to expectations.

 

[revolution22]

14) Any vessel or form of transportation looks infinitely cooler in your imagination than anybody can create physically.

15) Characters can be played in your imagination by anybody: relatives of yours or anybody you're sexually attracted to.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Wasn't it Dragon's Honor that had a species who communicated primarily through scent? That was something that could only be conveyed to the audience through narrative text, which is absent in visual medium.

There's also the way to withhold some information that on-screen versions would give away, like a character's identity being hidden. Rather than recognizing a voice or a face, the audience has no more than the clues given in the narrative text about the identity of a mystery character.

Also there's the simple advantage of how in writing, the actors never age out of a role, or die before the story is completed when it comes to prose - the Kelvinverse recast the characters because the actors alive who could reprise their roles were all too old to portray these characters in the prime of their lives, and we can have iconic characters like Harry Mudd, Trelaine, Tomalok, not even getting to McCoy, Scotty, or Spock, just as examples, reappear despite their portrayers having passed away.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

There's also the way to withhold some information that on-screen versions would give away, like a character's identity being hidden. Rather than recognizing a voice or a face, the audience has no more than the clues given in the narrative text about the identity of a mystery character.

Without having to resort to silhouettes and voice-altering filters...

Also there's the simple advantage of how in writing, the actors never age out of a role, or die before the story is completed when it comes to prose - the Kelvinverse recast the characters because the actors alive who could reprise their roles were all too old to portray these characters in the prime of their lives, and we can have iconic characters like Harry Mudd, Trelaine, Tomalok, not even getting to McCoy, Scotty, or Spock, just as examples, reappear despite their portrayers having passed away.

Yes. And without the restriction of a timeline, you can write any number of stories that apparently all take place at the same time.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

16) You can cover a long span of time without having to cast younger/older actors or do makeup aging.

17) You can revisit familiar events from a different character's perspective, as well as peripheral events.