On Tue, 13 Feb 2001 Ashton7@aol.com wrote:
Yes, but this is the way written fiction has to work. In a play or a tv show or a movie, so much more can be said with an *expression* or body language that *cannot* be conveyed in any other way than with words in written fiction. Ask any professional writer who has written both forms. A writer on the Highlander tv series wrote a novel about the show and she mentioned in her afterword that she couldn't *believe* how unbelievably different and difficult it was to write the novel as opposed to a script. She pointed out the fact that she had to be so much more wordy and that she couldn't rely on the actor's being able to get the feeling and the meaning of the words across. She had to *explain* everything.
This is because a book is like a cake and a script is like a recipe for a cake. A script which actually contained all the worked-out detail of a finished artistic product would look hellishly overwritten, with nothing for the director or performers to do.
Iain