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You've already gotten quite a few good answers, but there's one important point that I didn't see in any of them: You can easily omit visual and aural details. If you don't want to tell the age o...
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#5: Post edited
by
celtschk
·
2020-11-20T09:22:26Z (over 3 years ago)
Slightly corrected/expanded the post
You've already gotten quite a few good answers, but there's one important point that I didn't see in any of them:You can _omit_ visual and aural details.If you don't want to tell the age of the protagonist, or the hair colour, or the type of clothes, or if you don't want to tell it _yet,_ then you can. In film and TV that's not possible; the protagonist is right in front of your eyes, complete with apparent age, hair colour, clothing, everything.Another example: In Orwell's 1984, Winston Smith is tortured with a machine that is described by the torturer as machine that can apply a defined quantity of hurt (I don't remember the exact wording, and I read it in German translation anyway, but that's roughly what was said). There's IIRC no further description of that machine, and that's a good thing. In the movie, they didn't have the luxury of not showing the machine, and that mysterious machine turned into a rather mundane torture instrument.
- You've already gotten quite a few good answers, but there's one important point that I didn't see in any of them:
- You can easily _omit_ visual and aural details.
- If you don't want to tell the age of the protagonist, or the hair colour, or the type of clothes, or if you don't want to tell it _yet,_ then you can. In film and TV that's not easily possible; the protagonist is right in front of your eyes, complete with apparent age, hair colour, clothing, everything. Unless you manage to arrange it that the protagonist is never seen, which is not _entirely_ impossible, but difficult to achieve, and limits your choices otherwise — for example, if you don't show the protagonist, then how do you show his smile? Especially if you want to hide something close to the mouth, like an unconventional beard. No problem in a novel: Just describe the smile, but gloss over (or simply don't mention) the beard. In a movie, showing the smile but hiding the beard is definitely not an easy feat, if possible at all.
- Another example: In Orwell's 1984, Winston Smith is tortured with a machine that is described by the torturer as machine that can apply a defined quantity of hurt (I don't remember the exact wording, and I read it in German translation anyway, but that's roughly what was said). There's IIRC no further description of that machine, and that's a good thing. In the movie, they didn't have the luxury of not showing the machine, and that mysterious machine turned into a rather mundane torture instrument.
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-13T09:04:47Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46383 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T12:21:13Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46383 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
You've already gotten quite a few good answers, but there's one important point that I didn't see in any of them: You can _omit_ visual and aural details. If you don't want to tell the age of the protagonist, or the hair colour, or the type of clothes, or if you don't want to tell it _yet,_ then you can. In film and TV that's not possible; the protagonist is right in front of your eyes, complete with apparent age, hair colour, clothing, everything. Another example: In Orwell's 1984, Winston Smith is tortured with a machine that is described by the torturer as machine that can apply a defined quantity of hurt (I don't remember the exact wording, and I read it in German translation anyway, but that's roughly what was said). There's IIRC no further description of that machine, and that's a good thing. In the movie, they didn't have the luxury of not showing the machine, and that mysterious machine turned into a rather mundane torture instrument.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-07-01T19:00:47Z (almost 5 years ago)
Original score: 69