The telling of stories, in a big way, is about working emotions. A major reason stories have the power they do is that the great ones wring emotions out of us, and take us through some kind of emotional journey.
In a movie or TV show, things are different than in a piece of prose or a comic.
The strengths of film/video is seeing action. The kinds of stories that depend on seeing things play out, from an outsider's point of view - that's the strength of that medium. Great pieces of film can take us into the pov of certain characters or even see things from an “unreliable narrator” position. Of course, this format has sound effects, and music to emphasize whatever feeling a scene needs, and the performance of actors to bring these beats to life. In a podcast, we have the use of time, and sound and music as well.
Prose has the strength of being able to go deep into characters' psychology and thoughts. A story that plays out largely in a character's thoughts is perfectly suited to prose. Again, literature can be action packed and full of external plot activity and physical movement and all that - but prose fits the internal stories alot more easily and naturally. And to present a story from an unreliable narrator's point of view, or being subjective - I think it's done VERY easily in prose, rather than in film/video. The passage of time is created artificially, but the skill of the writer in laying down the words. Passages can be written to feel slower, or faster, or to build excitement in the reader, making them flip through pages faster.
Comics have the visual component of film and the “timelessness” of a piece of written fiction. We can spend as long as we want on a given page, or panel. Emotion plays out with facial expression and body language, thoughts and dialogue (though getting too wordy in a comic might be a mistake…at least normally. There are plenty of exceptions I'm sure). But seeing the perfect moments, captured in each panel, with the emotion and stance of the characters, placement in the frame, and all the skill with color and lighting the artist can bring - that's where we get the emotional moments in a comic.
Everything from drama, to action and suspense, to comedy - there are similarities in how they operate, no matter what the medium. But I think there are big differences in what kind of stuff works well in film, vs. prose, vs. comics.
I wish I knew enough to explain those differences!
Nevertheless, have a good one! See you next time.
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Video, Prose, and Comics
Banes at 12:00AM, Nov. 7, 2024
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Ozoneocean at 5:56PM, Nov. 7, 2024
We've talked about this a lot on a few different Quackcasts. But you know I was thinking a lot about the difference between a serialised story in a TV series VS a movie- There you have two different formats that are quite separate but essentially the same in a lot of ways. Storytelling in a film HAS to be very compact and succinct... fully compressed so it can take you on a rollercoaster ride that's all neatly contained in that small package, while big hulking TV series need to spread out and dilute that same story do, mixing in filler and expanding certain bits... I think I like the TV serial approach better when it's done well, but it's certainly much more of a commitment than a movie.
dragonsong12 at 7:17AM, Nov. 7, 2024
It's honestly this sort of division that really drew me to visual medium rather than just telling prose stories. I love writing, and do it quite a lot on the side, but having that visual component is such a great asset. I love watching a piece of media and seeing some little expression, some small action, some little habit that clues you in to what's going on in a character's head without any dialogue or narration to point it out. It makes you feel a little like you've uncovered a mystery. These little things make up many of my very favorite moments, and I try to incorporate things like it in my own stories.
PaulEberhardt at 4:03AM, Nov. 7, 2024
The bottom line of this wild theorizing is that much of it depends on the amount and importance of abstract concepts you need to transport for readers to get emotionally involved in the story. Again: there's plenty of ways to push the boundaries of how much abstraction you can get away with, as movie makers have been demonstrating basically right from when film was invented, and there's a lot of overlap with the visual vocabulary of comics (decidedly all comics, not just cartoons). So an actual, proper explanation has yet to be found, and I certainly don't know enough to find it either. This is just my guess at what it might look similar to.
PaulEberhardt at 3:44AM, Nov. 7, 2024
This has a lot to do with levels of abstraction, even if that's never going to explain everything. In such a model view (please note it's a model - I'm sure you'll be able to find plenty of examples where parts of this aren't quite true), film would have the lowest level of abstraction, because it tends to directly show what happens. Prose would have the highest, because all it gives you is more or less abstracted symbols: letters are symbols, the words they form are symbols, human language in general is a code of symbols. All the images etc. you get from prose have to be re-created inside your own head. Comics are on a sliding scale somewhere in between from ultra-realistic 3D renders to stick figures (which you realise border right on the edge on being a writing system); that's their beauty. Cartoons show the action directly but are pretty high on symbolism, actually requiring for quite a lot to go on inside your head to read and enjoy them.
marcorossi at 12:39AM, Nov. 7, 2024
I once read a manual of the early 20th century for scriptwriters for theater, and it is clearly the ancestor of modern day movie scriptwriting manuals. Even the so called three acts story structure was initially conceived for theater. So I think the big division is between "narrated" stories and "acted" ones (theater, movies, and also comics).