Monday, November 12, 2012

Wishes, Fishes, and Sky Pirates

I wish I could draw. Draw well and draw quickly. Why? Because I'd love to be able to make webcomics.

I adore writing. But some stories are best told in media other than the written word. There are advantages to being able to draw, things people do that can be better told visually than in words. Some jokes aren't funny when they're explained.

If I could draw, I would tell the story of the sky pirate four, the worst sky pirates in all history. There would be incompetent kidnappings, and hostages turned into captains, and ghost cats rescuing people; there would be daring fights and daring flights and not-so-daring fleeing.

But I cannot draw, and I have neither the time nor the will to invest the time into developing this talent. Because I can write. And because I can write, there will be assassins and wizards and poisoned muffins; there will be magical storms and vicious monsters. There will be romance, and there will be love, and it will be written.

Every story has a method that tells it best. Because the method I have learned is the written word, I tell the stories that are better written than shown. Sometimes which idea I write is decided, not by which one I like the most (because I love them all), but rather by which one I can do the most justice.

One reason that "the book is better than the movie" is that the book was written. It had to be adapted for film, rewritten to a different form of expression (some stories translate better than others). But there are movies that are better than the book, too, because the story naturally lent itself to a screen translation.

Every story has a form that tells it best. In the age of remakes and book-to-blockbusters, there are still movies written from the very beginning to be movies. Because movies made to be movies are stories told like they were meant to be told. There are very excellent film adaptations of books, many of them. But to get that way, they had to become adaptations: the story had to be rewritten in another form.

Every story has a form that tells it best. Unfortunately, most of us don't have access to every story-telling method. So sometimes we pass on good ideas, because the way we see them, is a way we couldn't do them justice.

If you had a film crew, or an artist, or any media available to you, what story would you tell? What stories have you passed on, because they don't lend themselves to the resources you have at hand?

4 comments:

  1. I would take a film crew to various Civil War reenactments because I have this yearning to write a love story (more like Women's Fiction, but druing the American Civil War) because of letters we have from my husband's great-great-great-great grandfather who died near the end. I hope to get to it someday. Back to writing scottish time travels, now...

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    1. Battle scenes are always so hard for me to write because I always feel like I'm missing half the impact without the visual. That would be an interesting film, and a good media for a story like that. Hope you get the chance to write it sometime!

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  2. Honestly, I wish I could write poetry. It seems to me that poetry is the word form that gets closest to a picture. But, sadly, I don't seem to be cut out for poetry. Oh, well, I really thankful I can write stories.

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    1. I've got the same poetry incapacity. Used to write it a bunch when I was younger, but never was any good at it. Oh well! Toast to stories.

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