We have now officially kicked off our weekly mini writing contests.
This week’s contest question is “Should books be made into movies and why?”
As before the winner will receive a free copy of our Freelance Writing Career Guide (A Rs. 450 value).
We will be having these contests every week, so you have many more chances to win. More importantly, many more chances to express yourself and be heard by a group of like-minded writers.
Contest prize:
Responses to this week’s contest question:
We’d like to say a heartfelt Thank you to all the writers who posted their entries. We hope you will continue to actively participate in our weekly contests.
This week’s question was interestingly debated by book lovers and movie buffs and made for fantastic reading. It was tough call coming up with the winner this week!
The winner of this week’s contest is Pamela Sinha.
Pamela’s entry: An author bares his thoughts for interpretation by strangers and whether this interpretation remains in the recesses of the mind, to be discussed and debated over steaming cups of tea, or is splashed onto the canvas of the silver screen, its true flavor is not lost upon the connoisseur, who can respect the viewpoint of others without losing sight of his own.
Congratulations Pamela! Our editor picked your entry as it beautifully expresses the idea that the essence of a book is open to interpretation in any medium and is always appreciated if it is well presented.
The entries were all wonderful, without exception!
In any case, since we are going to have these contests every week, you have many more chances to win. More importantly, many more chances to express yourself and be heard by a group of like-minded writers.
How to submit your entry to our contest:
Login to Facebook. Visit this page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chillibreeze/115106728508816
“Like” this page by hitting the Like Button on top. You will then be able to post comments on the page. Read the contest question and post your reply as a comment on the contest question post. Each week, one lucky winner will receive a free copy of our book “Your Freelance Writing Career: A Complete Guide for Indian Writers” (A Rs. 450 value).
If you see a winner announcement on this page, this week’s contest has been closed to entries already. Watch our Facebook page for next week’s contest question.
Hitting the “Like” button on top of our page will ensure you see the contest question as soon as it is posted.
What if you don’t have a Facebook account?
It is super easy to create one. But if you do not want to do this, go ahead and post your entry as a comment under this post.
You can see the previous week’s contest entries here
Any questions? Write to writers@chillibreeze.com.
Related posts:
- Weekly Writing Contest on Facebook: Week 2
- Weekly Writing Contest on Facebook: Week 3
- Weekly Writing Contest on Facebook
- Weekly Writing Contest on Facebook: Week 5
- Weekly Writing Contest on Facebook: Week 6
Comments:
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“Should books be made into movies and why?”
Yes, it is great to think that the characters in books be turned into real characters really playing their respective roles in movies.
In books, we imazine different characters to be alive in our imaginery thoughts. On the contrary, we are actually seeing people playing their different characters. Their mannerisms, habits, how they talk with other characters, their dressing up, and the place around them; everything becomes lively.
Besides this, the picturization, background music, and the overall settings in the movie makes one feel great and love to see all the characters alive and talking and breathing just like us.
Books are no doubt a man’s best friend.But,what if a book worm who has to spend hours slogging at work ends up in barely pinching out time for one?
So he takes the other way out, that is watch a two and half hour movie which is a blockbuster,proving it to be lesser tedious than buying a book and reading each page one at a time.
I feel that in general we connect better with the visual media,something or some people like us which we are able to see on the screen and not something we imagine while reading a book.So the answer to the question whether books should be made into movies is that it should depend on how good the director or the scriptwriter is able to visualize all that a book is trying to say and make his film accordingly.This can be best explained by comparing two books of Chetan Bhagat one is One night at the call centre and the other Five Point Someone.While both the books by the same author were made into movies,only a few people might have heard of the movie Hello starring no less good actors like Salman Khan.At the same time Hirani’s 3 Idiots is a blockbuster and every layman know that it is based on a book written by Chetan Bhagat.
There is a flip side too in making a book into a movie as some book lovers may feel that the true esence of a book is lost in the process.But in this busy world which is getting busier in leaps and bounds with each passing day,who has got the time? Nevertheless,to quote Francis Beacon “Some books are to be chewed,some books are to eaten and some books are to be swallowed…”,I feel that there is no harm in making some books into movies.
As a complete book addict, the idea of putting a face to a favourite character is very tempting. But more often than not, the movie turns out to be not quite what the reader had in mind. In other words, they often get it all wrong, and the reader comes out wondering if he/she was at the right movie.
Usually, the more I love a book, the more protective i get of it, especially when it comes to the movie version. Whether its Forrest Gump or Harry Potter or the Blind Side, I feel strongly.
But with the way pop culture grows and functions today, there’s no stopping the whole books into movies syndrome. So avid readers have a choice to make: go find out if the movie lives up to your expectations, or simply choose not to mess with your imagination and skip the movie version.
Yes, it is good to give life to the words and characters of a few famous novels and novellas. Present day of hustle and bustle life need this kind of movies as some time even by knowing that a particular book is amazing, people do not get time to take and finish it. Interpretation of written words in the form of visuals is not only amusing for the audience but also for the writer who thaws his time and labour in giving shape to the words and characters. Sometime it’s better for the reader to create their perception of the characters and then its always interesting comparing them to those in the movie.
But, It is a small part of the fact that whether books should be turned as movies or not. Maximum portion of the question focused on the negative side of this kind of ideas to made books in to movies. If we analyze the movies that based on books or novel so far, it is very rare to get a movie that maintain the purity and real essence of that particular book. There is a vast difference between a movie director/producer and a writer. A writer gives shape to his content with the ink of his heart but a movie maker is bound to think about the content with his brain only as it is his professional needs but the result is complete distortion of the story. Many times when movies are based on a particular book, the movie does not end up like the book did. Here we can take a simple example of the movie “Devdas” originally written by famous writer Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay but the movie script of “Devdas” that claimed to be taken from the original novellas is written by the director Sanjay Leela Bhansali. The film has totally failed to keep the purity of the original book. It was a disappointment to see the screen interpretation of the real book. Just to get the TRP the director shoot a dance number by Paro and Chandramukhi but in original book they never met that way. Even the famous movie Harry Potter also failed to maintain the originality to a great extent. Some time movie makers feel good to work with novel the writer of which is no more because in that case there is no risk of diverted originality. However some would congratulate the director and his screenplay for not following the book and to add modern material on that.
Although film can not work properly with a book, the book turned in to a TV series may be a great idea. This way the originality of the book can be maintained nicely as there is no time limit to concise the story horribly with a touch of maximum worst changes.
Each and every book has a unique storyline that may/may not make it suitable to be made into a movie. Some books are very complex in their thought and emotion and even the best actors in the business cannot capture the book’s true essence, in its entirety–on screen while some books touch minds, hearts and souls only when they’re made into movies. For example, the movie ‘Fountainhead,’ can never be as good as the book Ayn Rand wrote. However, on the other hand, the movie,’A Beautiful Mind,’ introduced John Nash to a worldwide audience.
yup..Definitely books should be made into movies, to cater larger group of audience who otherwise would doze off at the first page of the book
Books are masterpieces that record every human endeavour be it civilizations,wars, creative faculties of mind,philosophy.But a book is written in a definite language and it appeals to only those people who knows the language and also have a reading habit.Thus there comes the need of translations and making movies out of it-but never has any variant been able to capture the real intent of the author-closest in this case was Mario Puzo”s Godfather.But if you see it in a financial angle -it makes good sense to make a movie out of books-as the finncial returns are very high compared to hard copy sales .This is due to the reason that a movie is a vivid and visual expression of the contents of the book and it is a 3 hour entertainment-a much less time than needed for reading a book.Besides you can enjoy with your family & friends-which in a wider sense is not possible reading a book-but movie cant give the cognition and erudition that a book imbibes in the authors mind.
Books are a great source of knowledge but they are generally written in a literary way and authors have their own ideology to pass through. Though many authors understand the pulse of the people and try to write in their language. Authors’ cliché makes it difficult to understand the books for many, and above all people require more time to read a book. While movies reflect the real language of the people, they are not difficult to understand.
Additionally movies are made with an intention of entertainment. Hence movies attract more audiences: there are more audiences than readers. All readers can watch movies with great passion and pleasure, but all audiences cannot be readers with the same verve.
Audiences may include people of all ages, classes, and qualifications; while reading a book inhibits many because of inherent reasons. Therefore books should be made into movies so that the stories and the idea behind are reached to the largest number of people.