# Stories that cannot be told as novels



## Gryphos (Sep 15, 2014)

Often you get people talking about how some books should never be adapted lest the story be ruined, etc etc. And often they're correct, because some stories are just better written than seen and heard. But then I started thinking about the other side to it. Surely there are some stories that simply cannot be told through the written word, or at least are much better suited to a visual medium, whether that's as a film or game.

A few that come to mind:

The video game _Journey_ absolutely cannot be told as a written story. My reasoning is that the entire game is devoid of any dialogue. In a way it transcends language. because of this, even translating the events of the game to a written medium completely ruins that aspect.

Then there's also the game _Dark Souls_, a major strength of which is its ability to completely immerse the player in a world without them even knowing. This is done through everything from the background design to the item descriptions the player may or may not bother to read. This ability to put things in the background is something books can't really do.

I also though about the film _Gravity_ that came out fairly recently. This film totally relies (more than most films) on atmosphere and tension being created through things like ambient sounds, which isn't really possible with the written word.

In fact most horror films I can think of, I can't imagine would work well written. Sure, there have been plenty of scary books, but there have been far more and far scarier films IMHO. And again, that's mainly due to how a visual and audible medium better allows the creator to create atmosphere through sound design.

So those are my thoughts. I just thought it was interesting to think about. So what do you guys think? Can you think of any other stories that cannot be told in a written medium? What are some strengths of visual mediums over written ones?


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## skip.knox (Sep 15, 2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy

The unique strength of a movie is that it is brief. Seriously, you should look at how many words are in a two-hour screenplay. Movies are really just short stories, with all the strengths (and weaknesses) of that form.

But since I mentioned GotG, I have to say comic books have their own strengths, one of which is length. They're also good for placing a particular story inside a larger context (e.g., the Marvel Universe). And especially, they benefit from being able to have returning characters. Comic books can invoke their own past. That's tough to do even in a series of novels.

All that said, each medium has its strengths. There's no such thing as a story that cannot be told in any particular one of them.


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## KC Trae Becker (Sep 16, 2014)

I find that movies and theater are much better at telling comedic stories than print is. The actor's timing and hitting the right beats in the telling are much harder to do in print.


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## wordwalker (Sep 16, 2014)

I think much of this is overstated; it's hard but still possible to make print as playful as Guardians or as awesome as Gravity. 

But, it does mean creating at best a similar experience out of different tools. Especially, big budgets (including quality acting) can put more wow into a minute than almost any wordsmith... but they have to wind down after 90-120 minutes, or pace themselves after a few episodes, while a good novelist is just getting warmed up.

The biggest difference, though, might be in games. The whole experience of building up a character and struggling through its tests is _nothing_ like reading or watching a story even though many of its parts are. In fact they're so different that most game-based movies seem to make sure (even more than most adaptations, anyway) that they throw a _lot_ more in than the game's storyline, on the grounds that the game's fans have _lived_ that story and need a lot of newness. I think it's a sign that nobody's really figured out how to bridge between stories and games, except for the occasional movie-to-game that's worth remembering because the game itself works.


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## Incanus (Sep 18, 2014)

The only kind of stories that cannot be told as novels that I can think of are short-stories, novelettes, and novellas!


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## Gryphos (Sep 18, 2014)

Incanus said:


> The only kind of stories that cannot be told as novels that I can think of are short-stories, novelettes, and novellas!



Well, I still stand by my points that Journey and Dark Souls' stories would both seriously suffer if transferred to written form. Journey had me more immersed and invested than any book playing it, which is a massive strength of games over any other medium.



			
				KC Trae Becker said:
			
		

> I find that movies and theater are much better at telling comedic stories than print is. The actor's timing and hitting the right beats in the telling are much harder to do in print.



That's also another point. Comedy (I feel at least) can be done so much better with visual mediums, mainly because comedy is such a precise art. Yes, I have read some funny stories, but (much like horror) I've seen far more and far funnier films. The main issue with trying to do comedy in a written format is that comedy requires precise timing. Actors don't just say funny lines, they say those lines with such exact inflections and such precise timing. Whereas in writing, you can't really convey the exact way the character says that one line, and thus it's a lot more difficult to convey comedy.

And here's another idea. In written stories, nothing is ever in the background, because there is no background. Think about it, everything in the book, when mentioned, becomes part of the foreground. It is impossible to miss something. Yes, things can have double meanings that will only be noticed upon rereading, but no detail will pass the reader by. Because of this, I find that visual mediums are so much better at grand spectacle. Reading about Middle Earth's scenery is one thing, but to have those swooping shots over the travelling fellowship with the bombastic music playing, is something entirely different. This also comes apparent with battle sequences. With the background to play with, filmmakers can have all sorts of details going on to fully immerse the audience in the events. You can rewatch the scene, but focus on the soldiers in the background, which a writer would find difficulty be able to even mention.


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## Incanus (Sep 18, 2014)

In general, I find books to be the best medium for storytelling, although the different mediums all have their strengths.

Lord of the Rings is my favorite book and I think it is light-years better than any movie version.  The Game of Thrones show does a little better but still falls way, way short.

Offhand, I can think of one story that was better in movie-form:  The Shining.  (not the mini-series though!)  There may be a few more...

A truly talented writer ought to be able to handle just about anything, but I admittedly acknowledge that they are rare creatures indeed.

In the end, this is all a matter of personal taste--


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## Legendary Sidekick (Sep 20, 2014)

I just watched the second half of _Fight Club_ with my wife last night, as it happened to be on and she never saw the movie. I told her that was one of the very rare films I preferred over the book. (I never read the _Watchmen_ comic, but my brother said the changes made for film were better.)

I would say that a video game made into a book wouldn't _necessarily_ be a bad story… just different. What made you enjoy it would be how the game immersed you through decisions you made yourself. I know when I played _Monster Hunter,_ there were times I'd laugh like crazy as a monster knocked me off a cliff into the sea far below, and if I were to write my hunter's adventures, the reader would put the book down.

What a writer could do is write a story that takes place in the world of, or a world like that of, _Monster Hunter_ or _Journey _ or whatever. The problem with going from one medium to another is that people who already know the story have expectations. A book based on a game might sell because of the game's popularity (though likely not as well as book-to-film since not all gamers are avid readers, but pretty much everyone watches movies), and the book-from-game might disappoint because the author can't convey the experience the reader had as a gamer (giving a book-from-game more potential to disappoint than a film-from-book?).


I guess I'm agreeing with Incanus' premise that a talented writer could write anything, but I'm also agreeing with Gryphos' expectation that a book about a game will be a flop.

…unless it's from _Street Fighter! Street Fighter_ movies are awesome! (The 1994 film is especially pathetic for one who had seen Raul Julia's talent on-stage.)


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## OzonE (Sep 20, 2014)

Inception. its impossible to tell as a novel


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## Incanus (Sep 22, 2014)

OzonE said:


> Inception. its impossible to tell as a novel



For the life of me, I can't image why not.

(extremely cool movie, thoroughly enjoyable.)


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## Gryphos (Sep 22, 2014)

Incanus said:


> For the life of me, I can't image why not.
> 
> (extremely cool movie, thoroughly enjoyable.)



I think it would be theoretically possible. However, that is one where I do think that the overall experience would suffer a lot if it was a book. You wouldn't get all those cool jumps between the dream layers with the slow motion and stuff.


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## Addison (Sep 27, 2014)

Stories that can't be converted or told to any degree of resepect in a novel form, in my opinion, are comedies, thrillers and horrors. 

For example, Home Alone (1,2,&3). You can not, no matter your skill, translate the holy crap, falling from your seat crying laughing comedy in those movies. Like in Home Alone 2 when Kevin's throwing the bricks at Harry but keeps hitting Marv. That's my favorite scene. 

Horrors are the classics (I'm not counting the "re-makes" as I call them rip-offs). I dare anyone to try and turn Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play, or Boogeyman into a novel. I doubt Stephen King could do justice, no disrespect. Like in Halloween there's no narrative that can give the same sense of fear and desire to run as the high pitch piano music. There's no writing that can make the spine chill as effectively as seeing the big guy hold a machete on his shoulder with dead eyes staring through his hockey mask. No dialogue can match Chucky's high pitch laugh. 

Thrillers will be tougher or easier depending on circumstances. Thrillers are more mind-games, keeping guessing adrenaline roller coasters. For literary examples, see Alfred Hitchcock. For cinematic examples see "Snakes on a Plane", maybe, "Olympus Has Fallen", "Paranoia", "The Fugitive", "Gravity", and of course "Silence of the Lambs". 

There's only so much that a novel can convey, sadly it's done to a better degree on a stage or t.v.


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## Jabrosky (Sep 27, 2014)

Addison said:


> Stories that can't be converted or told to any degree of resepect in a novel form, in my opinion, are comedies, thrillers and horrors.
> 
> For example, Home Alone (1,2,&3). You can not, no matter your skill, translate the holy crap, falling from your seat crying laughing comedy in those movies. Like in Home Alone 2 when Kevin's throwing the bricks at Harry but keeps hitting Marv. That's my favorite scene.
> 
> ...


I feel the same way sometimes. Storytelling media with visuals and audio do have a special power that's difficult to convey with mere prose. 

On the other hand, literature has existed for far longer than cinema, video games, or TV. Before those other media popped onto the scene, books were for many people the only or at least the most economic means of escaping to another world. I often speculate that the reason some older prose tends to be wordier and more flowery is that, since most readers back then couldn't use a search engine on Google or Youtube to find out how things looked or sounded, they needed elaborate descriptions to experience those sensations. If humans were able to get so much out of books back then, why not the same today?


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## Steerpike (Sep 27, 2014)

i think comedies would be the hardest. I have to say, though, I read a lot of horror and thrillers and the books are invariably better than movies in the genre


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## T.Allen.Smith (Sep 27, 2014)

Steerpike said:


> i think comedies would be the hardest. I have to say, though, I read a lot of horror and thrillers and the books are invariably better than movies in the genre


Yeah, the problem with the comparison in horror above is that we're talking about movies that employ the jump scare for most of their frightening bits. Jump scares, as far as I know, can't be done in literature. That doesn't mean visual media is just plain scarier than written. It's just a different way of getting the result.

Visual media and written media have different strengths and weaknesses. You can't really compare the two with a set of standards that apply only to the strengths of one. The same is true of comedy, I think, where visual media has the advantage of character facial expressions, inflections in voice, and things of that nature. Written media can still be quite funny when utilizing strengths like internal thought. I do think the written form requires more humor derived from the concept though. Still, dialogue in either form can be quite funny.

Thrillers aren't any different. You can build a great deal of suspense with the written word. It all depends on execution & using the tools/strengths of literature.


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## Penpilot (Sep 28, 2014)

I don't know if anything is impossible. Difficult? Yes. But impossible? No. 

Someone mentioned Home Alone. Well, it's not Home Alone, but it's Home Alone 2

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York : A Novelization/Movie Tie-In: A. L. Singer: 9780590457187: Books - Amazon.ca

I won't argue the quality of the book, but it's just to make a point. 

There are plenty of novels etc. that people claim can not be made into movies, but I think it just takes the right person with the right vision to do it. Watchmen many claimed would be impossible to make into a movie, and well, they did it, and it was very faithful to the Graphic novel. 

Here's a list of books that were thought impossible to film. 10 ‘Unfilmable’ Books That Made It to the Big Screen – Flavorwire.

So with that said, I don't see any reason any film can't be made into a book. It just takes the right person and vision to do it. I think the difference is there isn't a whole lot of money to be made in translating a film into a book, where as there's tons of money to be made going from book to film. So there's a lot of motivation and talent willing to go this direction. 

I think most writers talented enough to translate a story from film to novel probably aren't interested. They're probably more interested in writing their own stuff.

Again, difficult? Yes. Impossible? No.


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## Gryphos (Oct 7, 2014)

If there's one medium I think it would be inherently hardest to translate to written form, it's games. Mainly due to the fact that games are an interactive medium, and thus a lot of the storytelling potential is through that interactivity.

For example, take horror games and compare them to books. Imagine a book that contains a passage detailing how the protagonist walks down a dark corridor, before being jumped by a hideous monster and fleeing in panic. It can be exceptionally well written, get the reader's heart pumping and all that. However, now imagine a game with that same scenario. You control the in-game character, you walk down that dark corridor. Maybe you yourself decide to stop and examine the environment, or hesitate before turning a corner. And when that monster jumps out at you it's you who has to make that split-second decision, you who has to run away, not the book's protagonist.

Or take games like _Shadow of the Colossus_. It's you who's forced to figure out how to defeat your enemies. You can't just rely on the character's ability to solve the problem. That means that when you do defeat the colossus, you feel phenomenal, because it was _you_ who did it, you who can take credit.

It's all about immersion, something any storyteller should strive for in their work. Any storytelling medium can be incredibly immersive, but none as much as games.

Now, obviously games can't tell every story, no more than a film or book can. For example, games' stories usually require some form of physical conflict, in order to satiate gameplay requirements. Thus, slow paced stories are probably better told in book form.

Though, as several people have naturally stated, nothing is impossible. Theoretically, some extremely skilled writer could try to adapt _Shadow of the Colossus_ to book form, and it would probably be a damn good read. However, I don't think any writer today can do it to the same standard as the game, and I doubt there ever will be one who can.


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## SeverinR (Oct 7, 2014)

Any movie can be told in a book.
Any book can be made into a movie.
That said, a great movie would be tough to do well in a book. They have so much more to dazzle an audience with.
But a book can be costly to make into a movie and do it well. The writer doesn't have to pay the thousands of extras that make the book. But the movie budget is limited.
One scene from a movie would take a chapter minimum to describe well. It would also be quite boring if the writer tried. Possibly even one scene could be a whole book.
You can hide things in movies easier then you can in a book. In a book you have to gloss over mentioning the one thing your trying to hide, but in a movie it can hide in plain sight.


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## Steerpike (Oct 7, 2014)

Penpilot said:


> I don't know if anything is impossible. Difficult? Yes. But impossible? No.



I think this is correct.


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## wordwalker (Oct 9, 2014)

Penpilot said:


> I don't know if anything is impossible. Difficult? Yes. But impossible? No.
> ...
> I think the difference is there isn't a whole lot of money to be made in translating a film into a book, where as there's tons of money to be made going from book to film. So there's a lot of motivation and talent willing to go this direction.
> 
> ...





SeverinR said:


> Any movie can be told in a book.
> Any book can be made into a movie.
> That said, a great movie would be tough to do well in a book. They have so much more to dazzle an audience with.





Steerpike said:


> I think this is correct.



Well said, folks. Thanks for putting things in perspective, despite the clumsy title of this thread-- translating mediums isn't "impossible," but we can't expect it to be easy, or exact, or even a good use of the effort sometimes. 



Gryphos said:


> If there's one medium I think it would be inherently hardest to translate to written form, it's games. Mainly due to the fact that games are an interactive medium, and thus a lot of the storytelling potential is through that interactivity.



I still think this is different. Games may borrow stories' trappings (and vice versa), but they aren't primarily fiction in the same sense. Watching or ready Harry Potter isn't the same as playing Quidditch either.


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## WogglebugLove Productions (Jul 31, 2015)

SeverinR said:


> Any movie can be told in a book.
> Any book can be made into a movie.
> That said, a great movie would be tough to do well in a book. They have so much more to dazzle an audience with.
> But a book can be costly to make into a movie and do it well. The writer doesn't have to pay the thousands of extras that make the book. But the movie budget is limited.
> ...



Well said! I couldn't agree more. 

For the record, I remember reading the novelization of Steven Spielberg's_ E.T._ by William Kotzwinkle that was published just when the film was originally released in 1982. This was before the movie was received and so that is likely why it was so different. I don't know why but the novelization included so many concepts that were considered for the film by screenwriter Melissa Mathison but were dismissed and the film was a success without them, of course. And  the novelization by Kotzwinkle had a lot of elements and concepts in it that were so inappropriate for a novel meant to be based off of a family-friendly movie. Also, E.T.'s characterization was inconsistent and arrogant.

However, the "sequel" Kotzwinkle wrote _E.T. and the Book of the Green Planet _was much more kid-friendly and had E.T. in a characterization relevant to the character type he was perceived as from audiences who loved him and the movie. This book was published in 1985 when the movie was first re-released. It's very imaginative and intriguing and blends sci-fi with gentle fantasy quite splendidly.

I read the "junior" novelization of E.T. when it was re-released for its twentieth anniversary and found it more satisfying as a novelization. Yet having read so many other movie novelizations, and different points of view on them, and including about E.T., I still felt it could have been done better.

I also think some books do better as standalone books than being made into movies for many reasons. Such as the Harry Potter novels. After all, about 90% of what was eliminated from the movies was vital to it bu the ending. Many have agreed the filmmakers should have waited until all the books had been written before they started filming them.


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