The concert was today? My father's gonna kill me!

The title to this post started off with a quote from a childhood film. If you don't get the reference then it probably won't do any good to explain, so I'll just jump into the meat of this post.

Music.

There is plenty of music in the world today. I think that's a good thing. I like music. I love the almost mystical power it has to move us directly to an emotional state. Really if you think about it, that's the power of music. But why? How? How is it that sounds cause an almost universal reaction? My son was playing a video game and he said, "Dad, this part of the game kinda makes me want to cry because of the music." Bing! Right on son. You have discovered the manipulative tool. And it's not just melody. Rhythms can increase or decrease our heart rate. Harmonies or dissonance can make us nervous or relaxed. And I'm sure there's more that I don't even know about. What am I saying? If you want to experience real life magic where John Williams is the musical equivalent of Howell Jenkins, then get into composing. This music is powerful stuff.

So, what does this have to do with writing?

Well, if music is such a powerful facet of the human experience then we want to tap that. We want to capture the experience that music brings to our lives in a way that shows its power. But how do we do that? One of the strengths of music is that we can experience it as a background to anything else we are experiencing. Working out? Put on some music. Watching a movie? Listen to the soundtrack. Having dinner? Throw on some tunes. Driving down the highway? You get the picture. As an experience, music ties itself to whatever we are doing in a non-invasive way. With few exceptions, we don't listen to music just for the music's sake (this is not always true, and enjoying music on its own can also be a powerful experience). Music is magic funneled into our ears and through every cell in our body that feels the vibration of sound waves.

Unfortunately, when reading a book we don't have sound. Books don't have the sheer aural power that even one single note can bring. We can read the book out loud, but the magic of books is in the words, not the music.

This causes problems for writers in a few ways. First, since we can't draw on the aural strengths of melody, rhythm, syncopation, harmony, disonance, etc., we often rely on lyrics. I mean, lyrics are words right? All I have to do is put the right words in and my reader will be drawn into the song, right? Wrooooong.

In novels, at least the novels of today, we don't write in poetry. Our entire purpose as authors is to draw our readers so far into our words that they simply absorb the experience. Poetry, though writing, has different goals. Poetry is all about imagery, rhythm, and hidden meaning. We can use all of those tools in storytelling, but when we switch from engaging prose to occlusive lyric the sudden shift in style can jar us out of the experience. In my own reading, when I am presented with lyrics or poetry (especially when not directly necessary for the plot or story) I skip it. I jump down to the next line of prose and say, "What next?" Now this is not always the case, but more often than not it is.

So how can we harness the power of music in our stories? How can we limit the jarring effect of lyrics? I've seen it done before, and in the next post I'll posit a few ideas of my own on how we can use music in our books.

Books to Movies

The process of writing a book is very similar to the idea of creating a magical scroll. The words on the page are inert until a reader pronounces them (either verbally or in their mind), and then suddenly the conjuration begins. The words form pictures and images unbidden in the reader's mind. The dismal planetscape or lush jungle stake out immovable claims in the reader's psyche, crowding out space that might be better used for other more intellectual endeavors. The symbol and spell is complete and the reader now bows in some little part to the mind control of the writer. Ooh, I think I just spooked myself out a little bit.

What does this have to do with movies? Well, I'll tell you.

Movies based on books are often panned as poor attempts to cash in on an intellectual property rather than holding any artistic merit of their own. Though things have changed a bit over time, I often heard the phrase, "The book is better than the movie." It wasn't until I was in 9th grade that I heard someone say of then popular Jurassic Park, "What? No way. The movie was way better than the book." I disagreed, but instead of dismissing my friend's comment as the ramblings of an unintelligent mind lacking creativity I had a thought. Someone could think that a movie was better than a book. This was a world shattering revelation to me.

Some time later the Harry Potter books came out, followed by the films of the same designation. Talk about public outcry (though not enough to stem the ebullient flow of cold hard cash to deserving series creator Joanne K. Rowling). I knew many people who watched the movie numerous times (see cash statement above) to point out how poorly the movie had been adapted. How the very core of the book had been torn apart and lost in the film. The writer's mind control had been challenged in the faithful readers, and the readers gathered their pitchforks in defense of the images and ideas now firmly rooted in their souls.

The revelation that these two experiences gave to me was quite simple, and you may even laugh: movies and books are not the same. They are two separate mediums that have two very different powers. In the same way that a story may be told by two different storytellers, a film and a book have disparate and distinct voices.

I have since experienced movies that I enjoyed more than their books (2007's Stardust based on the novel by inordinately talented Neil Gaiman) and books that I have enjoyed in a completely different way from their movies. I still get chills every time I think of the Miyazaki film Howl's Moving Castle. And I gush for different reasons for the source novel by Diana Wynne Jones (Actually you should read many of her books. Her ability to entrance and entertain borders on the mystical. Seriously, look her stuff up.). Both of these adaptations had one thing in common. They were very different stories at the core from their source novels.

I wrote this post specifically so that I could gush about Howl's Moving Castle, because I loved both the book and the movie so much and for very different reasons. The artistry involved in either project just blows me away. The magical whimsy and visual style of Miyazaki's work compliments Jones' literary style in a way that I never would have taken from a simple reading of the book.

So what's my point? Perhaps as readers we can loosen up a bit. Movies are not books. We should expect different things from them. We should expect quality art from both mediums (unabashed cash ins should not be permitted), and enjoy them both for what they can add to the spell the author wove by simply placing letters together  on a page.

**Oh, and I would be remiss to mention the Lord of The Rings trilogy which I also enjoyed very much both as books and films. Those are also great.