Further to the post below, about how every reader pictures the characters in a novel differently, daveg asks:
if someone played Evan well in a film, really nailed the character, do you think *then* that it would affect the way you write about her in the future? Is she enough a part of you that you could still ’see’ her the way you do now?
Authors handle this issue differently. Tom Clancy complained when Harrison Ford was cast as Jack Ryan, because he saw his character as a younger man. (Though Ford is by far my favorite Ryan.) Sue Grafton, who wrote for television before becoming a novelist, didn’t want Kinsey Millhone brought to the screen, precisely because she feared that Hollywood would mess up her heroine.
Michael Crichton, on the other hand, revised his narrative to accommodate a successful screen casting. (Spoiler alert for the three people on the planet who haven’t read Jurassic Park.) In the book, mathematician Ian Malcolm dies. In the movie - the fabulously successful movie - Jeff Goldblum’s Malcolm survives. So how did Crichton handle this discrepancy when he wrote the sequel The Lost World? By completely eliding the events of the first book. Malcolm walks into the plot, still talking fractals and women and dressed in black. He notes as an aside that he’d been injured down at DinoDisney, and that there was even a rumor in some quarters that he’d died. Good, that’s sorted, then. Bring on the raptors!
Which brings me back around to my characters. I live with these people day and night for many, many months at a time. I see them, hear them, try to know them. And, frankly, I’m possessive about them. I want them to be mine, all mine.
But I can’t. And it’s actually good to hear others’ opinions about your characters. Because one of the dangers for any author is that characters will become static - that they won’t change. Characters who don’t change become one dimensional. Character development is a good thing.
Time out while I write that down and post it above my desk. Character development is a good thing! GOOD thing!
Long way round to the answer: I’ll always see my characters my way, but through feedback I hope I can see into them more deeply. If an actor helped me do that, more power to ‘em.
8 responses so far ↓
Rob McCann // January 31, 2007 at 10:08 pm
I would say yes that characters can and indeed should morph. Although I do agree that it would depend on how much the actor nails the role. This being so that they emphasise and magnify what would already exist within the mind of the reader prior to a screen version.
A side issue worth mentioning is that the only problem with allowing people to view rather than imagine a character is that you give that character a specific appearance. To use visual media you then solidify someones internal view of how that character looks and acts from a physical persecptive.
My being a Stephen King fan is the reason for this train of thought because I’ve read previously that he feels there is this down side to allowing books to become films.
To do so allows the viewer to switch off the visually creative part of their imagination because they are no longer required to envisage their own versions of the characters portrayed. They now ’see’ what the characters look like so they no longer need to use their own imagination to paint the written picture someone has spent the time and effort to create.
susan // January 31, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Wow, character development is one thing, but Resurrection?
Snart // February 1, 2007 at 12:57 am
I could never have plowed my way through Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov” without first having seen the movie (Yul Brynner, William Shatner, Richard Basehart, Albert Salmi). The actors gave me faces to attach to the unwieldy character names. So that was a plus.
The same with Melville’s “Moby Dick.” Had I not had Gregory Peck and Richard Basehart or Friedrich Ledebur (Queequeg) in mind, I’m not sure I could have sustained my interest, and what a grave loss that would have been.
Of course, not everyone agrees on which actors should play the roles of good fiction…but that’s part of the fun. It can cause consternation, see above, but also cause surprised delight (think of the Ring trilogy).
There are some writers, however, who write such bland, beige characters that it doesn’t matter who portrays them on the screen…at least there will be some characteristic attached to them that way. John Grisham is a case in point. Great storyteller, bad character creator. Same with Dan Brown.
daveg // February 1, 2007 at 10:16 am
Thanks for the very detailed answer Meg.
The Tom Clancy story about Harrison Ford reminds me of the opposite that happened with Anne Rice - she complained loudly about Tom Cruise being cast as Lestat in the film version of Interview With A Vampire, but when she finally saw his performance she couldn’t praise him enough.
And I’d totally forgotten about Crichton’s sequel with Ian “Lazarus” Malcolm! Less ‘lying for a living’, more ‘taking the p*** for a paycheque’…?
Ken // February 1, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Most of the books mentioned are one-offs as far as the characters are concerned, Jack Ryan being one exception. A character can evolve in a single book but a series gives so much more scope for character development.
I hate it when a book ends and I’ve really enjoyed one of the main characters. In a series the reader becomes more intimate with the character and begins to predict how the character will respond to situations and stimuli, this all adds to the enjoyment of the book.
Some authors get very involved in convoluted plots at the expense of characterisation, this doesn’t necessarily make the book less enjoyable, but given the choice, I much prefer good characters and a good plot in equal measure.
Meg // February 1, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Speaking of Gregory Peck, does a single person in the world see Atticus Finch as anybody besides him?
susan // February 1, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Ah…. Atticus Finch. I believe he won some people’s choice award as the greatest ever (Hollywood) movie hero. And he is. Strong-minded, tender, courageous, quietly righteous, intellectual. Greg and Atticus are inseparable in my mind.
It restores one’s faith in the movie-going public’s taste, if just for one brief, shining moment.
And then Little Miss Sunshine got a best picture nomination….
Meg's Webmaster // February 2, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Meg, gotta agree - Jack Ryan IS Harrison Ford, no doubt about it. And he’s one of my all-time fave actors.
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