An interesting thing about your A/B/C examples is I do find the A examples are very strongly evocative but because the distancing is so strong, what they're most evocative of is a dream/nightmare sequence, dissociation, or (in a sffh context) mind control.
It captures an experience but only if the experience is the experience of total alienation. The lack of interiority is so complete it only feels like it makes sense if it's making a point about its absence.
This is very thought-provoking, having had a similar bias...
Something I might add is that the likes of Hemingway and McCarthy, with their famous 'iceberg effect' style, do something cinema can't (or does through other techniques than narrative) -- that is, gesture to very large shapes and shadowplays in the narrative backdrop, almost impossibly big and able to be made so because of the (frequent) lack of direct access to them. McCarthy's best characters (that is, all of his most menacing ones, and the Kid) feel like cosmic principles operating in some kind of deterministic universe... and No Country for Old Men, for instance, that directly filmable novel, is able to get some of that across, but there's a reason Blood Meridian is considered unfilmable (that reason being almost 100% the Judge). It's not quite interiority as you're describing it, the interwoven Woolf-Joyce-etc thing, and it's also not character driven because it feels definitionally impersonal, but it's also uniquely literary in its way.
I really appreciate this talk and the chance to read it, Brandon. I love examples too, A B C yes yes. I do like both Bs the best, I confess.
I just read this screenwriting book where Robert McKee writes: “The unique power and splendor of the cinema is the dramatization of extra-personal conflict, huge and vivid images of human beings wrapped inside their society and environment, striving with life.” I think this fits with what you say about the role of incidents in cinema. You write: "It’s not that cinematic writers eschew character. It’s more that character comes by way of observation of action. We come to feel for the protagonists of cinematic stories only through watching them do and act."
Although I don't know much about this really (a lack of exact knowledge has never stopped anyone from posting upon the internet before!): I find it very interesting how, in the history of the novel, cinema's emergence occurs at the same time as the interiority-exploring Modernist novels (Joyce and Woolf and so forth). It does feel like there's this bifurcating in 20th century books, where the literary novel takes this inward turn as cinema develops? Like, when I think about Brothers Karamazov or A Tale of Two Cities, for instance: they're so incident-dependent, they wouldn't make sense as 20th century capital-L Literature; but they'd make intriguing mini-series. This does feel true to me. Although I always worry about how if I overly rely upon such categories, even if these schemas help me organize the world, they will also calcify my brain.
i really enjoyed this, as i do all your craft talks. tbh, i never really knew what "cinematic" meant when applied to literature either, so i lazily attributed it to a certain visual lushness (not flatness!), which i perceived as "good." much to ponder here, and looking forward to the next installment.
This made me go back to my own writing to see if I could find moments I had unintentionally used poorly orchestrated cinematic writing (the verdict is yes). Your posts are so generously written and challenge me to reflect so much! I have one question about this one: in your opinion, do you think cinematic choices like literalizing interiority through dreams or breaking the fourth wall can add that narrative depth? I realize your specialty is not cinematic theory but I’d love to hear your thoughts regardless. Thanks for writing this newsletter!
Wow. I am trying hard not to say, Brandon, I appreciate you. But by golly I do really truly deeply appreciate this brilliant post. And your generosity in sharing it here. Thank you.
loved this and I’d note that in Portrait of a Lady, remember, the crux scene is when Isabel Archer is sitting in a chair and thinking, so it’s all in the background -- I think James actually talked about that. Also, I think you have to talk about Madame Bovary when Flaubert kind of introduced the camera eye and Hem learned a lot from that. I feel like James Wood wrote about that? But I also think the cinematic vibe is being mastered in a way that it never has before (I think of that wonderful scene in Beautiful World where Rooney shows us the empty apartment before Simon comes into it and then Eileen comes in and they have sex but then Rooney shows us the empty apartment afterwards with the light different)
I think the misuse of the term "cinematic" (as something that refers mainly to narrative pace) indicates how poorly some writers and readers engage with film. I mean, one difference between film and books is that they move through time with us at a different pace. But there isn't one set pace for films and another for written words. Good films are so visually and aurally attentive to everything in their purview: locations, production including set and costumes, cinematography, music, etc. – a hundred different things converging to create one unified effect on story, tone, etc. I feel like I'm just iterating what you said, but it grates on me when writers ignore the visual because they're not used to giving it consideration. So anyway, thank you for this new, and better, and more interesting reflection on what the cinematic is and can be in writing.
This is so concrete, if you will, and thus so helpful to me as a writer. I am going to reread the “Snow” chapter in Magic Mountain, which I find amazing, and apply your analysis to it. If I was 40 years younger I would take your craft classes and write a great novel. Thanks for another evocative post. Wonderful exercise for one’s mind.
"...Great cinema has that same shimmer and force that great poetry does, that thing that lives in the gaps and the silences. It is this more than anything that cinematic fiction achieves. The power of negative capability. That multiplicity of things achieved through compression and condensation of image and heat and light and sensation. Cinematic fiction is simply selective pressure taken to extremity. The right image in the place in a sequence of images. A series of moving tableaux that accrue meaning not through comment or exposition but through the linkage of many such images..."
Cinematic writing is aligned more to music than to literature
Thank you, that was wonderful. I am sufficiently old and cranky to think that the younger generation of SF fans expects from prose fiction the kind of pleasures that they would expect from the SF cinema that they watch, even if SF cinema is usually much worse because there is only so much worldbuilding that can be done in one installment and only so much VFX budget outside of a planned blockbuster. (The daemons in His Dark Materials even today were sacrificed to the visual effects capabilities that could be put into the show.)
An interesting thing about your A/B/C examples is I do find the A examples are very strongly evocative but because the distancing is so strong, what they're most evocative of is a dream/nightmare sequence, dissociation, or (in a sffh context) mind control.
It captures an experience but only if the experience is the experience of total alienation. The lack of interiority is so complete it only feels like it makes sense if it's making a point about its absence.
My god, this is so good.
This is very thought-provoking, having had a similar bias...
Something I might add is that the likes of Hemingway and McCarthy, with their famous 'iceberg effect' style, do something cinema can't (or does through other techniques than narrative) -- that is, gesture to very large shapes and shadowplays in the narrative backdrop, almost impossibly big and able to be made so because of the (frequent) lack of direct access to them. McCarthy's best characters (that is, all of his most menacing ones, and the Kid) feel like cosmic principles operating in some kind of deterministic universe... and No Country for Old Men, for instance, that directly filmable novel, is able to get some of that across, but there's a reason Blood Meridian is considered unfilmable (that reason being almost 100% the Judge). It's not quite interiority as you're describing it, the interwoven Woolf-Joyce-etc thing, and it's also not character driven because it feels definitionally impersonal, but it's also uniquely literary in its way.
I really appreciate this talk and the chance to read it, Brandon. I love examples too, A B C yes yes. I do like both Bs the best, I confess.
I just read this screenwriting book where Robert McKee writes: “The unique power and splendor of the cinema is the dramatization of extra-personal conflict, huge and vivid images of human beings wrapped inside their society and environment, striving with life.” I think this fits with what you say about the role of incidents in cinema. You write: "It’s not that cinematic writers eschew character. It’s more that character comes by way of observation of action. We come to feel for the protagonists of cinematic stories only through watching them do and act."
Although I don't know much about this really (a lack of exact knowledge has never stopped anyone from posting upon the internet before!): I find it very interesting how, in the history of the novel, cinema's emergence occurs at the same time as the interiority-exploring Modernist novels (Joyce and Woolf and so forth). It does feel like there's this bifurcating in 20th century books, where the literary novel takes this inward turn as cinema develops? Like, when I think about Brothers Karamazov or A Tale of Two Cities, for instance: they're so incident-dependent, they wouldn't make sense as 20th century capital-L Literature; but they'd make intriguing mini-series. This does feel true to me. Although I always worry about how if I overly rely upon such categories, even if these schemas help me organize the world, they will also calcify my brain.
Anyway, have a lovely evening all.
i really enjoyed this, as i do all your craft talks. tbh, i never really knew what "cinematic" meant when applied to literature either, so i lazily attributed it to a certain visual lushness (not flatness!), which i perceived as "good." much to ponder here, and looking forward to the next installment.
This made me go back to my own writing to see if I could find moments I had unintentionally used poorly orchestrated cinematic writing (the verdict is yes). Your posts are so generously written and challenge me to reflect so much! I have one question about this one: in your opinion, do you think cinematic choices like literalizing interiority through dreams or breaking the fourth wall can add that narrative depth? I realize your specialty is not cinematic theory but I’d love to hear your thoughts regardless. Thanks for writing this newsletter!
Wow. I am trying hard not to say, Brandon, I appreciate you. But by golly I do really truly deeply appreciate this brilliant post. And your generosity in sharing it here. Thank you.
loved this and I’d note that in Portrait of a Lady, remember, the crux scene is when Isabel Archer is sitting in a chair and thinking, so it’s all in the background -- I think James actually talked about that. Also, I think you have to talk about Madame Bovary when Flaubert kind of introduced the camera eye and Hem learned a lot from that. I feel like James Wood wrote about that? But I also think the cinematic vibe is being mastered in a way that it never has before (I think of that wonderful scene in Beautiful World where Rooney shows us the empty apartment before Simon comes into it and then Eileen comes in and they have sex but then Rooney shows us the empty apartment afterwards with the light different)
Craft and simultaneously crafty.
I think the misuse of the term "cinematic" (as something that refers mainly to narrative pace) indicates how poorly some writers and readers engage with film. I mean, one difference between film and books is that they move through time with us at a different pace. But there isn't one set pace for films and another for written words. Good films are so visually and aurally attentive to everything in their purview: locations, production including set and costumes, cinematography, music, etc. – a hundred different things converging to create one unified effect on story, tone, etc. I feel like I'm just iterating what you said, but it grates on me when writers ignore the visual because they're not used to giving it consideration. So anyway, thank you for this new, and better, and more interesting reflection on what the cinematic is and can be in writing.
A. Van Jordan (poet) thinks a lot about this intersection with poetry--https://archive.cortlandreview.org/features/07/winter/
This is so concrete, if you will, and thus so helpful to me as a writer. I am going to reread the “Snow” chapter in Magic Mountain, which I find amazing, and apply your analysis to it. If I was 40 years younger I would take your craft classes and write a great novel. Thanks for another evocative post. Wonderful exercise for one’s mind.
"...Great cinema has that same shimmer and force that great poetry does, that thing that lives in the gaps and the silences. It is this more than anything that cinematic fiction achieves. The power of negative capability. That multiplicity of things achieved through compression and condensation of image and heat and light and sensation. Cinematic fiction is simply selective pressure taken to extremity. The right image in the place in a sequence of images. A series of moving tableaux that accrue meaning not through comment or exposition but through the linkage of many such images..."
Cinematic writing is aligned more to music than to literature
Thank you, that was wonderful. I am sufficiently old and cranky to think that the younger generation of SF fans expects from prose fiction the kind of pleasures that they would expect from the SF cinema that they watch, even if SF cinema is usually much worse because there is only so much worldbuilding that can be done in one installment and only so much VFX budget outside of a planned blockbuster. (The daemons in His Dark Materials even today were sacrificed to the visual effects capabilities that could be put into the show.)