Books are a little better movies than just screenplays because there's more fat on the bone. There's more character development. There's more stuff to pick from.
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In many ways, it's easier to write a book. You have more latitude with structure, and you have the freedom to luxuriate within the internal lives and musings of your characters. But where a screenplay does not always demand great prose, a novel lives or dies by it.
Books are better than movies because you design the set the way you want it to look.
Writing has certain advantages; film is another way to tell a story. An experienced filmmaker will take what she needs from the book and leave out other things. With adaptations, you never get the texture of the writing: it's a different mode.
Books provide context and allow you to think about things over time. Film is like writing haiku; there is an immense amount of pleasure in paring down and paring down. But it isn't the same.
Television and film are such streamlined story mediums. You can't really meander about, whereas a novel is an interior experience.
Obviously there's a lot more to a TV show than just a book... I think adaptations are a bit tricky for the screenwriters because they're worried about upsetting the author.
A novel, of course, is a fully self-contained work of art. You pick it up off the shelf, open it, and there it is - a whole universe waiting for you to enter. A screenplay is just a blueprint for making a movie. Until the movie is actually filmed, the script really means nothing.
Really, when I write a book I'm the only one I have to please. That's the beauty of writing a book instead of a screenplay.
The difference is this: If you write a good book, it'll get published. If you have a great screenplay, there is no guarantee.
If you're writing a novel, you can afford to see where the spirit takes you, but in terms of structure and engineering with a screenplay, you have to be quite pragmatic; otherwise, it will run away from you.
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