Never in history has the storytelling perspective been more important than now. No longer can we simply tell what happened. That’s just boring news.
Remember the good old days.
A shrinking number of today’s readers can remember life before television—when the family sat around the radio and listened to stories. That was the first evolution from having to read books.
Listeners heard the door slam. They heard people shouting. The sound of thunder shook them in their seats as pictures formed in their minds. They only heard the loud boom. For the picture, they had to imagine streaks of lightning flashing across the sky and getting soaked from the rain.
They had no idea what life would be like with moving pictures in color.
Our modern world is different.
Today, movies provide setting, sound, and action. The music sets the mood. Action and dialog show the emotion. Virtually nothing is left to our imagination. We don’t need a message across the bottom of the screen to tell us when someone is angry. We see it. We feel it. We are changed by it because we are there. In the intensity of the moment, we forget that we’re sitting on the couch, watching a Netflix movie.
If you want your readers to have a boring story that will put them to sleep, tell what happened. If you want to keep them awake, holding their interest, you must “show,” not “tell.” A life story can be shown in a two-hour movie or told in a book that could take two weeks to read. Which is better?
Books can be better, but without a deep point of view that delivers an experience more real than a movie, most people won’t invest weeks when they need only a few hours to experience what happened.
Time is money.
Do the math. Suppose a two-hour movie is worth the viewer’s time at fifteen dollars per hour, or $30 total. A 100,000-word novel takes the average reader about seven hours, or $105 total. As a writer, you are competing for your audience’s time. For your book to be worth three times the value of a movie, it must deliver an experience that is three times better. How is that possible?
Nothing is more real to readers than the pictures, thoughts, and feelings from their own imaginations and experiences. Since movies leave virtually nothing to the imagination, your book has the potential to be more-engaging and well worth the extra time.
A huge difference exists between reading about a car crash, seeing a car crash, and being in the car crash. Movies let us see the car crash, which is better than reading about it. But a deep point of view puts readers into the character in the car to experience the crash. Nothing can be more engaging, so that’s your goal.
