Book Club

[Allthingsgirly67]

I posted under a thread regarding a particular thread. Usually when reading a book you form an idea of what the characters look like by the description. Sometimes when they turn a book into a movie or tv show they are pretty much a good match to the description of the character. One great example is Gone With The Wind. The movie character is spot on. Right now Im reading a the Aimee LeDuc series set in Paris. In my mind when I think of chic Parisian women I immediately think of Catherine Deneuve. In this series the character has spiky short hair and I can’t get past it. I know it’s me but anyone experience this?

[Zhills]

I do that with people on this board!

[icezeus]

 Whenever I read a book and then see a movie or TV show that has been adapted, rarely do they make good casting decisions in my opinion. 

[smoky22]

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@Allthingsgirly67 wrote:
I posted under a thread regarding a particular thread. Usually when reading a book you form an idea of what the characters look like by the description. Sometimes when they turn a book into a movie or tv show they are pretty much a good match to the description of the character. One great example is Gone With The Wind. The movie character is spot on. Right now Im reading a the Aimee LeDuc series set in Paris. In my mind when I think of chic Parisian women I immediately think of Catherine Deneuve. In this series the character has spiky short hair and I can’t get past it. I know it’s me but anyone experience this?

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@Allthingsgirly67 

I know the books are set in Paris, but isn't the main character supposed to be sort of a hacker, and the short spiky hair?  Sounds more like the main character in Girl With The Dragon Tatoo.

But I get your point.  I rarely watch any adaptation of something I've read, because they hardly ever look like I think they should. 

[Allthingsgirly67]

Yes she a hacker with spiky hair but I just can’t form a vision in my head. Maybe it’s in another book but there is no description of her eye color or hair color. Just having an odd issue with it.

[blueroses47]

Two examples come to mind.  Both happened years and years ago, when I was a preteen or young teenager.

One of my favorite books was The Good Earth.  I had a definite vision of the wife Olan, and I was really disappointed when I saw the movie.  The actress Louise Rainer who played Olan was far too delicate and pretty, I thought.  The whole premise of the book was that Olan was unattractive, coarse featured and large and clumsy.  Lousie was definitely none of those things.  

Another one was Lawrence Olivier cast as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.  I had read the book in 8th grade, and really envisioned Heathcliff as a brutish character, almost a Neatherthal type.  Lawrence Olivier was far too refined and handsome to qualify as Heathcliff in my mind.

Oh well, that's Hollywood.  I think things are more realistically portrayed these days, but back then, everything was glamorized.

[Tinkrbl44]

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@icezeus wrote:

 Whenever I read a book and then see a movie or TV show that has been adapted, rarely do they make good casting decisions in my opinion. 

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@icezeus 

ITA ....   and I can tell you why that happens.   We have a character developed in our mind, based on whatever the author gives us to work with.

Making a film is an entirely different medium (duh!) and there are many other considerations, such as how does any actor sell at the box office globally.   

Another important consideration is where did the financing come from?   If the investors are Israeli or Australian, for instance, actors from those countries often get first consideration.   

Hope that makes sense, although it often doesn't to the readers of that book or series.   I've also said to myself "what were they thinking???".  LOL

[Allthingsgirly67]

No I agree with what you said. I think because there is so little information on how the character looks it’s throwing me. It’s hard to get past it.

[gardenman]

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@Allthingsgirly67 wrote:
No I agree with what you said. I think because there is so little information on how the character looks it’s throwing me. It’s hard to get past it.

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It's always tricky for a writer to know how much detail to give. We know our characters to the nth degree, but do you spend time in the book describing the character to that extent if it has nothing to do with the story?

Some writers get so lost in the descriptions that by the time you get back to the story, you forget what the story was about. Victor Hugo in Les Miserables is a good example. He goes into great length (and I mean great length) about the colors of the bricks in a building and how they achieved that color due to a battle that had been fought on the ground long ago where the clay had later been harvested and the blood of the many war dead gave the bricks that color. By the time you finally get back to the story you're like, "Who's this Jean Val Jean fellow and what's he doing in this story about war and brick making?"

YA authors, in general, get lost in descriptions. They want you to know every single detail about a character. I've seen character descriptions in unpublished books that go on for ten or more pages. That's often why the books are unpublished. In the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards, you got to read the first 3,000-5,000 words of submitted novels and it wasn't unusual in YA works for those first 3,000-5,000 words to be nothing but a description of the main character. No story at all, just a long, very, very detailed description of the character.

As a reader, I want stuff left up to my imagination. Give me a general outline and I'll fill in the blanks. I'm reading for the story more than to create a police artist's sketch of the characters. Other readers want every possible detail. Writers can't please everyone. 

When a black actress was cast to play Hermione in the London stage production of Harry Potter people were outraged. JK Rowling pointed out that her only real description of Hermione was that Hermione had bushy, black, curly hair. The stage actress fit that description. Harry was described as small with unruly hair, and a lightning scar. The Weasleys were largely described as having red hair. Nothing much else. JK focused more on the story than on character descriptions. Readers filled in the rest.

[Lilysmom1]

@Allthingsgirly67 @icezeus , I have the same problem.  When I saw the character chosen for Bosch, I couldn't watch the series.  He was nothing at all like I imagined.  Funny isn't?