How can you create the sound, costumes, sets, and landscapes on a page?

English: Lesson 140

Is it easier for skilled authors to manipulate movie viewers or book readers?

Good writers will never be out of work. If you can write effectively, you can think effectively, and thinking leads to the creation of good books, articles, speeches, and movies. Movies have taken off like wildfire in the last 100 years. In 2021, Netflix released a blockbuster movie every single week. If the average movie is about 2 hours long, that would mean over 104 hours of new film was released by Netflix alone. More people are watching videos and movies than reading books. Why? The simple answer is that it is easier to watch a movie.

Movies are designed to sweep the viewer off his feet and into a completely different world. Not only do they have multiple plot lines wrapped up into one big story, but they have music, sound, animation, beautiful sets, incredible landscapes, locations, and a ton more. The audience doesn’t have to do anything but sit back, relax, and watch the show. That is very little to do. The imagination takes a back seat and doesn’t have to do anything.

Books, however, require a lot more imagination. For some people, this is very easy, and they can be swept away by a good book as easily as a movie can. For some, it is a lot harder. There is no fancy stuff on white pages that the movies have. No sets, music, actors, costumes, or landscapes. All of this has to be imagined. A really good writer can make this easier for the reader by writing incredibly descriptive chapters, and with the use of the right words can paint a picture right on the page. This is a talent that few possess and takes years of practice. In a book, finding the right words are essential. If a character is travelling from Rome to Egypt and describes both places as simply beautiful, that wouldn’t be very helpful. Of course, Rome and Egypt are beautiful, but that does not help the reader paint a picture of what it looked like. Why was it beautiful? What was the feeling? What colours were in the temples of Rome and the Nile in Egypt? What did it smell like? Was it hot or cold? All these questions and many more must be answered by the author and with the right words.

Writing a good movie and a good book are both hard and take a lot of talent. But, it takes a certain skill to write a book that totally sweeps a reader into the story. There is no help from all the components of a movie. Therefore, I think that it is easier for a skilled author to manipulate movie viewers.