Books or Movies?

Separating genres is difficult. For the most part, when I reference “Horror Fiction” I include anything falling under that category, but I also tend to take into account anything labelled as “Thriller,” “Suspense,” or sometimes even “Speculative.” I am obsessed with anything scary. Books or movies. However, there is something about a book that makes the whole experience come full circle. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never pass up a late night filled with terror and panic on the TV screen. Yet watching and reading are two EXTREMELY different adventures. For one, with a movie, what you see is what you get. While the director can leave some things up to imagination, ultimately the interface between you and the horror depends mainly on how much you can take or how much the director wants to show.

On the contrary, a book is practically on the opposite end of things. While the author creates a framework and a plot, your mind (your subconscious even) fills in all the details.

If a director points the camera at a room during a crazed man’s fit of insanity ending in a violent massacre that leaves an innocent bystander dead, the viewer is subject to only what the camera shoots. Suppose a writer, on the other hand, portrays that same episode in a novel. In this case, the scene, when read, will look surprising different to all who read it. In my opinion, this intensifies the fear factor greatly. Suddenly, the readers are viewing the frenzied outburst through their personal filters, implanting their own fears and apprehensions.

No two people will undergo the exact same experience.

This, to me, is the magic of books. They are unfinished, incomplete works of art.

In his book, On Writing, Stephen King argues that telepathy is quite a normal occurrence. King writes, “All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing offers the purest distillation” (King 95). He goes on to explain by using On Writing as an example. “I’m writing the first draft of this part at my desk…on a snowy morning in December of 1997. … So let’s assume that you’re in your favorite receiving place just as I am in the place where I do my best transmitting. We’ll have to perform our mentalist routine not just over distance but over time as well, yet that presents no real problem;” (King 95, 97).

King goes on to explicitly describe a table supporting a cage that contains a rabbit, using distinct detail. After the illustration he asks, “Do we see the same thing?” (King 97). He states yes, in fact for the most part everyone who reads that will see the table upon which sits a cage housing a rabbit. (To enforce my point that no two experiences are the same, King also says that minor details will probably have changed, such as the exact shade of the red table cloth.)

For books to be concluded, they need to be read and experienced. The images must come alive in the reader.

If you’re not a big reader, then by all means, continue satisfying your horror addiction through the TV screen. I have no objection to a dark room, the aroma of popcorn and Chinese food. The wafting light of silver screen-nightmares nurturing short-term fixes. However, to the truly fear-wrought adrenaline junkies, the suspiciously devout bookworms, and the read-between-the-lines aficionados, may your habit never be kicked and may your desires never be completely indulged.

SOURCES:
King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York, NY: Scribner, 2010. Print.