[In an attempt to get me back into the same timezone as the rest of you, Alex has kindly written some articles for me. Hope you enjoy them!]
Kubrick didn't enjoy the process of adapting the novel Red Alert. Too much of the plot had to be thrown away; he felt that it had basically become a farce, things just suddenly happened for no reason. Of course creatively this worked quite well for him and us as we got Dr Strangelove. After this experience Kubrick concentrated on adapting short stories believing that they were an easier fit with the cinema. (Obviously he made an exception for Barry Lyndon, resulting in Kubrick's longest film – it has an interval). Personally I feel novels are more akin to a television series, the chapters of a book representing the episodes.
The immutable laws of medium are thus:
Film / Television : Show don't tell
Plays: Tell don't show
Novels: Think
The last one might not be obvious, but the greatest structural advantage of the novel is that the author can explain something that happens within the head of a character.
When telling a story one must choose which medium fits the story the best. The question we must ask is why then would anyone ever adapt anything? I'll talk about the reasons tomorrow.
4 comments:
I don't know if they're immutable, but I do agree they're fairly robust.
Although, my PhD and the novels I intend to write are an attempt to take the psychology aspect out of art, in a way.
Drama, I think, is also exactly that 'drama': it is the interaction of characters that's important (although there are soliloquies, and Beckett undermines most of its conventions).
All I'd say is that I'd like to see you try.
I can imagine you can do it, but it's very hard to be sucessful.
Of course Becket broke convention left, right and front (little staging joke for you there), but he couldnt actually have a sweeping visa on stage, he couldn't actually have aliens sweeping into the audience. He'd have to have somebody describe something if the audience is going to believe it.
The weakest one of the laws seems to be thought in the novel. You could write a novel without saying the words "thought to himself", but could you actually write a novel where nothing happens which isn't dialogue or scene setting? If you do that are you not mearly writing a play or a film but forgetting to change the format?
Anyway, talk about underming conventions, here's your blog on film and here you are commenting on my post! It's backwards crazy!
My theory is that most stories involve a traumatic event happening in the main character's past, or at the very beginning of the story, and them then spending the rest of the plot trying to overcome it. This is a very Freudian method, I think, and I'm going to try something different hopefully. Not that I think being different is necessary, but it sometimes helps.
Well indeed. It's not always traumatic but, almost every story follows the "wizard of oz" format.
Show main character at home, take main character away from normality, character tries to get back home, gets there and realised that while home has stayed the same they've changed.
This of course is already at a level of detail where its far easier to break these conventions, but a surprisingly wide variety of movies / stories have this format.
The most common trick is to start after they've left home (start with the action). But you'll notice Speilberg follows it down the line every time because the convention is pure cinema. War of the Worlds, Jurassic Park, Jaws, they all have it.
It is a great way of showing character development without spelling it out I guess.
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