In Praise of Movies (a post about novel writing) don’t judge me
When I was looking at and applying to colleges I think my most interesting meeting was at what turned out to be my second choice college.
I sat down with the head of the creative writing program along with two other prospective students and he talked about what we could expect and what they expected from us. What really caught my attention back then was him saying that we wouldn’t be allowed to take creative writing workshops until our third year.
His problem with workshops is that you’re being helped / reviewed by your peers. And us little frosh pissants, we simply didn’t know enough to help instead of hurt each other. We required a significant amount of education and “professional” example before we would be in a position to help each other.
In some ways, I regret not going there, simply because in retrospect I can see more of his point even I still don’t really agree.
Why bring this up?
Tumblr and all our creative writing tips and practices that we share with each other are not so different from being in a workshop environment. There is a significant amount of sharing between people at the same general level of creative writing knowledge. Much more of that than there is of people of significantly greater expertise handing down what they know.
I would argue that this is a good thing overall. But like the head of that creative writing program I can recognize that there are some problems with that approach as well and some compensatory benefits from the top down approach.
The good news is that you don’t have to sacrifice one for the other. There are plenty of great books on creative writing that you can purchase for the top down approach. And reading them provides a great grounding for the use of the equals approach that Tumblr excels at.
There are plenty of wonderful lists of creative writing books floating around but I want to give a general tip that is based on this same logic, of looking to expertise over equality.
The (possibly sad) fact of the matter is that novels are not the dominant art form anymore. Movies are. Novels wish they could do the sort of business that movies do. To date, The Harry Potter series are the only novels to accomplish the feat as novels instead of as adaptations. Though being turned into movies didn’t hurt its success at all.
I’m not saying that everyone should drop novels and go make movies. What I am saying is that from a certain point of view, cinema as an art type is the expert in our broader field. Hollywood puts out an average of about 600 movies per year. That is significantly less than the number of books published. To give a one year example (because, honestly, it is hard to find book numbers without paying far too much money) in 2011 347,178 books were traditionally published.
In that same year, 2011, the best selling novel was The Help, in part because the film adaption came out. By years end it had sold over 5 million copies in total over its lifetime. Now some quick scratch math. The average price of a trade paperback in 2011 was 16.70 (note that most sales of The Help in 2011 were probably mass market paperbacks which sold around 8.70 - so I’m being generous). Being overly generous, we can guesstimate The Help to have grossed something like 83.5 million by years end 2011. By years end 2011, the movie version had made over 169.7 million. Which put it at number 13 for the years grosses. The best selling movie of that same year made over 381 million. So we’re talking about something like movies outselling books by about 456%. And that’s using numbers that don’t really quite match up. Reality is skewed even farther in film’s favor.
Are sales all that matter? No. I would argue that yearly sales are ever increasingly less important in our digital age. And honestly, I don’t think anyone goes into books for the money. It’s kind of like being interested in the biology of apples and I’m talking about the sales differences between red apples and crab apples. What gives?
While money earned is probably the least important element to creative writing it does reflect a reality that people are more interested in movies than novels. They are willing to pay more for most movies than they are for most books. Which does mean they are valued higher in some respects. They are willing to see more movies than they are willing to read books. Which does mean they are more desirable in some respects. As a percentage, more books fail than movies fail. Which does mean, in some respects, they are more reliably satisfying. As a percentage, more movies succeed spectacularly. Which does mean they blow the bell curve.
What this means overall is that movies know how to engage better with the audience. It’s easy to say that movies require less energy investment - you can take in a movie in about two hours while books might take a day or more of your time. But people often don’t just go see a movie. The movie is the centerpiece of a day’s activities. In terms of total energy invested, from earning the money to go to talking it out after, I don’t think they are actually that dissimilar.
If that is even partly correct, it would mean that movies know something that novels don’t know. And since we are actually in competition, it’s probably worth doing a bit of espionage and learning what it is they know. There are plenty of books on screenwriting and while I don’t recommend they be your only source of instruction, all of the above should tell you they should be some of it.
Even if you never write a single script, what script writers know about making successful fiction is worth adding to your writing toolbox.
I know some people will argue that this is metaphorically like suggesting learning about junk food in order to make healthy meals. You want to make healthy organic meals that contribute to your audience’s overall health. Fuck Mickey D’s. In the real world - corporations that make healthy options have stolen an unbelievable amount from junk food creators - because people like junk - the healthy options want to sell the same.
But alright. You really want to categorize. Junk vs. wholesome. Novels that stay forever versus movies that are a flash in a pan. It’s true that more people will, this year, seek out the book Pride & Prejudice than the movie The Thin Man. But that gives you more of a problem, not less of a problem. That means that you are not just competing for space with all the writers of this year - you are competing with all the best writers of yesteryear.
Which really does mean that you’ve got to be the best you can be. What is best? Who knows. It depends on your book. It depends on you. It depends on the tastes of the day. It depends on where you are. It even depends a little on luck. But you might as well stack the odds in your favor and have as many tools at your disposal as you can.
