Advantages of Different Artistic Mediums

Not quite sure if I have this in the right place, but I'll go ahead anyways. What are the differences between different artistic mediums, that help along storytelling? What I mean by this, is the ability to place songs into literature, where it would be too wordy in a comic, or a visual medium having to depict something that could have been described in a laconic style in a novel, and adding a sort of detail that can add to a story.

Just going by an example you gave us, a song could be portrayed more easily in literature by way of describing the emotions it evokes, while comics have to settle for lines of music drawn all over the panel and minimal description to avoid clogging up the flow.

Every medium has its own quirks associated with its nature. What I mean is that they're all different, and we could be here all day listing them off.

So, what are you asking us to do? Should we just start listing? What are you planning on using our feedback for- your own work, or are you just curious? I'm just trying to find a place to start.

I'm just curious, really, because of what I've noticed. What I was thinking of was things like pacing, the ability to have faster fights in a film than a comic because of all the intermediate happenings, and happening in real time. Does that help clear it up?

Probably one of the ones I hear about most is internal monologues and thoughts. They tend to be really clunky in movies and television, slightly more accessible in comics, but it's something that really stands out in prose.

Books can do internal monologues better, of course, and they're better at drawing the reader into the story than visual media—with visual media, it's more like you're watching other people do things, but you can really identify with the protagonist of a novel if the novel is written to allow that. (One obvious exception is video games, which directly includes you.) There are also certain tricks possible in written media, like deliberate ambiguity. And for all that people throw around "show, don't tell", obviously telling still has to happen at some points, and books can probably get away with it more easily. You can more easily control how much time is spent on any one thing than in comics. You control the voice, which will colour how the reader sees everything that happens.

One of the things visual media can do better than books is simultaneity. You can have things happening in the background that might pass notice the first time, for whatever purpose: background gags, foreshadowing, scene-setting, whatever. It's easier to show scenery and other visual things in a shorter period of reading-time than in a book, and you can do it to your desired amount of detail. Showing over telling is generally easier. Rather than struggling between describing someone's expression or just coming out and saying "he looked angry", you can show people's expression and body language; this may or may not make up for a lesser ability to get away with internal monologue. It's also easier to jump viewpoints, since you're not actually in anyone's head, without confusing anyone. You might also choose things like painting the fourth wall or whatever. You can show things being awesome or epic in a way that the most hyperbolic words would struggle to achieve; I think the potential for subtlety is more interesting than that, though.

Animate media (like live action, animated anything, video games, etc) can have atmospheric music and such—more things happening at once, essentially. Everything associated with visual media happens here too. More control over pacing, with the real-time happenings, but trying to show subjective time might be harder to pull off (slow motion can look silly if you don't do it right).

I don't know much about music as a story-telling medium, but its primary thing is probably atmosphere over the literal story it tells—you don't need words or anything to invoke an emotion, or a sequence of emotions, even though any part of the told story would be in words.

Video games are kinda different from anything else as a story-telling medium because of the interaction between the player and the story, and the control the player has over the amount of information or story they get, depending on how much is optional. It's not really an area I know a lot about, though. Of course, it's a lot of work, and generally requires a lot of teamwork.

A skilled enough artist of whatever medium could probably compensate for the strengths not inherent to their medium, and (especially now that computers are a thing) you can intersect the strengths of various forms of media, or combine them, but I think those are the general things.

Literature is probably one of the cheapest media to produce in terms of money, if not in time. *

With words, you can create a story that would require millions of dollars to do justice to on the screen.

edited 10th Dec '12 7:40:42 PM by chihuahua0

If you're counting time then all mediums are equally expensive; Licensing a Game Engine, flash storage, amateur video/webcams, and such may be more expensive than a copy of Open Office, but making something in any medium is fairly labor-intensive (if you want it to be good).

I'm gonna play devil's advocate and say that no, no medium has any noticeable inherent advantages over any others. Some concepts may fit better in certain mediums, and the delivery does affect the tone, but any story, well-constructed, can fit in any medium. Memento could be a book and Fallout: New Vegas could be a movie and Watchmen could be a board game.

edited 11th Dec '12 11:01:36 PM by CleverPun

I'd have to say no.

You're right in saying that there's no inherent value in one medium over another, but some things are constructed to be in a certain medium and to take advantage of that medium and would be pale imitations in another medium.

Fallout: New Vegas gains a huge amount of what makes it special from the fact that it's a video game. If you just made it into a movie, it would be a pretty bad movie, because it deliberately makes a number of statements with its interactivity, and you'd lose all of that in a movie. You'd have to adapt it significantly to be a good movie, and then it might as well be just a Fallout movie and not Fallout: New Vegas: The Movie.

I'd say that music is a good medium for a lot of the things that literature is as well- intentional obscurity, coloring things through a certain viewpoint, conveying thoughts and emotions. Of course, it's not quite as good for telling long, complex stories, but it's great for short, simple ones.

Yes, I did point out that different mediums facilitate certain tones/concepts. Truly great stories take advantage of that fact. But just because most adaptations nowadays are terrible doesn't mean they are inherently impossible.

What made New Vegas special for me was the ponderous exploration and survivalism as you rummaged through old buildings and walked across an old highway to your next destination. The overarching political plot, and its Multiple Endings, are also a key factor in New Vegas' charm. Both those qualities could both be translated to Film wonderfully with enough care. (The Road almost captured the former, except it was painfully nihilistic, whereas Fallout is not. The Book Of Eli captured the atmosphere to a degree, although it didn't have a grand political plot)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that a story's defining qualities are not restrained by medium any more than plot or characters are. If the Fiction Identity Postulate claims that all fiction is equally true, it's not a stretch to say that all versions of a story have equal potential, and equal ability to convey themes.

Speaking as a games programmer/indie game dev myself, I'd say that while it needs more technical knowledge by default (although I'm quite confident that programming will be as common a skill as mathematics within a generation or two) a game doesn't take much more overall skill or resources to develop than anything else (in fact, independent game development isn't too different to being a novelist). You can quite easily program using free compilers and libraries^note professional programming consists of finding libraries to use as much as it does solving problems yourself. Roping in someone else to do the art/music might be a good idea if you aren't any good at it though.

As for story-telling;

Pros;

• Interactive elements with a possibility of multiple outcomes.
• Strong player attachment to their character.
• Even the shortest games are at least several hours long, giving you plenty of time to tell your story in.

Cons;

• Story limited by gameplay ("Story is not gameplay" is an important design mantra, or so I hear from designers).
  • The story must also be written around gameplay (so a Fighting Game is limited to stories/settings where there's a reason for everyone to fight everyone) and must take into account that the plot tends to bring games to a screeching halt.
• Technological limits (this can be a problem for character design, animations, etc. Nothing risks turning drama into narm like a default animation in a cutscene).