I’m a visual reader and writer. I see what I read, and I see what I write. I have no idea if this is odd (don’t tell me) but it’s fact. Sometimes when I write I close my eyes and the scene plays out in front of me. I’m merely the transcriptionist. It’s a little creepy. It’s very cool. When I read I see distinct, detailed images. Not so much faces as essences, but settings are very clear. And it’s always fascinating to me to find out that the layout of the house I imagined, let’s say, when writing The Glass Wives, is not the layout some readers imagine. I guess I should have included blueprints.
When I see a movie that was adapted from a book, I don’t mind when it’s different. Like Deb Susan said yesterday, these are not the same methods or media for storytelling. I can appreciate both. But the thing I love, is when exactly what I imagined, is exactly what I see on the screen. I have not yet decided if that means the author did a fabulous job with descriptions, I am extra-crazy intuitive, or something more. 😉
Here are a few examples.
I read TWILIGHT after my daughter read it. She was fourteen or fifteen at the time and I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I’ll admit I read it in a day, loved it, but loved more that I was able to share in her excitement and chit chat about the characters. And the Volvo. I loved reading Twilight (do not judge). I didn’t read the rest of the series, although my daughter did. One was enough, and I knew the characters and enough of the story to be able to understand whatever she told me. Which was the point.
Then, on opening night of the movie, at midnight, I took my daughter and her friends to see Edward Cullen and Bella come to life (so to speak). In a room full of screaming teenage girls, some boys, and many moms and dads, the biggest thrill for me was this:
This was exactly the way I’d envisioned Bella’s house. Amidst the excitement (in my own mind) I asked my daughter if it was what she’d imagined. The answer was no.
Not only was the house the right house. The kitchen was the right kitchen.
That was weirder to me than a movie about a vampires in the middle of the night in the suburbs.
Another book that had a very similar situation was WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. It wasn’t the circus or the train or the characters that matched up in my head and then on screen, it was the perspective of the aged Jacob. How he looks out the window and what he sees. Like I was standing behind him as I was reading, and placed behind him seeing the same images as I watched the movie–when he looked out onto the circus.
And yes, I JUST realized both of these movies star Robert Pattinson.
I am not going to try to see any meaning in THAT.
