It’s hard to compete with all the noise out there, particularly all the yelling, booms of fake explosions, and other types of fireworks shrieking out of people’s screens on a daily basis.
With so many wild distractions at everyone’s fingertips 24/7, ready to be viewed and absorbed with no mental exertion, you may be wondering how many people are even willing to read a book these days.
Actually, there are plenty…if the book has what it takes.
How can words on a page beat out a cinematic blockbuster?
If you think about it, a novel is a lot like a book. There are characters, dialogue, a plot, and action and/or drama that develop. The main elements are the same.
Movies open with an “establishing shot,” which shows viewers the environment or scene the characters are currently in. Does your book do the same? Are you, as an author, using your superb imagination to paint a crisp yet brilliant environment that really immerses your readers in your character’s world every time they change location in your story?
Film production companies employ location scouts and set designers to find and create rich, striking, or thematic scenery in every scene. Do you put effort into making your scenes come alive? Are you “painting” or at least carefully “sketching” scenes? Or are characters talking right at the beginning of the scene, without any mention as to where they are, giving off the impression that the people speaking are essentially floating in the air or speaking against a white background?
Movies employ (hopefully) talented actors who are constantly animated, moving about organically as the action unfolds and expressing just the right emotion in their tone, face, and body movements. Are the characters doing this in your book, or do you just have line after line of dialogue with no movement or emotion from your characters? To readers, such inanimate characters begin to feel like mannequins after a while.
Movies with great pacing capture the attention of viewers from the start and easily hold it for ninety minutes or more. Are the characters in your book getting their points across quickly, helping to move the plot along (as characters always do in a good film), or have they been making small talk for nearly the entire chapter? Or have you, as author, been explaining technical problems for the last ten pages instead of providing just enough information for the reader to grasp the issue before moving on?
In a well-made film, revelations unfold, characters change and evolve, and storylines are resolved. Are these elements all satisfied in your novel?
True, as an author, you can’t lean on actors, set designers, or a talented director to pull a lot of the weight for you. Then again, there aren’t other people or departments around to drop the ball, either. The buck starts and ends with you and the words you fill your pages with.
By baking in the same elements movie-goers expect from the big screen, you can create a vivid, unforgettable experience for your readers that will outshine any movie. It’s that simple.
So…what are you waiting for?
The world is but a canvas for our imagination. —Henry David Thorough