in this thread several people say they’d like to see Pratchett’s books made into films.
Whenever I am reading his discworld novels (ie as much of the time as possible) I am struck by the thought that they’d make good films, and more to the point, that they read like films. There’s something about the way they’re written.
I’m not sure if it’s the dialogue (snappy, which is what we’ve come to expect from movies) or the descriptions (which are somehow very “visual”) or something that I can’t grasp, but something about them just begs for them to be made into movies.
I know nothing about the craft of fiction writing. What is it about these books that makes them so movielike?
I dunno either but I’ve just started reading Discworld. I’ve played the computer games before, and I can see now why they made such good games. It also helps the books immensly cause in the game Rincewind is voiced by Eric Idle, so that’s who I hear whenever he speaks now.
Possibly the fact that most of them are based on certain movies. The recent Thief of Time is a mix of kung fu, James Bond, and Tom Clancy type movies, for example.
Except, jayjay that most of the books aren’t based on movies (are they?) and I’ve never seen a kung fu or Tom Clancy movie in my life. Nor silentgolfish have I ever heard them voiced by anyone.
So I don’t think my perception is based on these things.
I think it’s something inherent to the books themselves.
I personally think it’s because Pratchett isn’t a “writer” in the same sense as, say Hemmingway. Many writers “fluff” up their books with verbose descriptions and flowery wording. Terry gets to the point. When he describes a scene, it’s direct, or he even compares it with something existing.
It’s one of the reasons I like him so much. He is able to portray so much depth without having to spend pages doing it. Whe he describes a forest, he doesn’t go on for pages about every tree…he thinks his readers are smart enough to know what a forest looks like.
Just my thoughts. I should point out, that when I said he’s not like Hemminway, I ment it as a compliment…I hate Hemmingway.
I’ve enjoyed the audio book editions of several Discworld books. More info here. According that page, some of the Pratchett/Discworld audio books are available on MP3 CDs, which allows the entire unabridged version to fit on one CD.
Characters. Very good characters with distinct personalities.
To me that is the main reason why the Pratchett books provide the reader with such a good mental picture. Look at the three witches:
Magrat - the youngest and, in some ways, most naive of the three. The “wet hen” to quote Granny Weatherwax.
Nanny Og - the life and soul of the party (The Hedgehog can never be buggered at all). Breeds like a rabbit. But at times she can show a more caring side and understanding of the problems of the other two.
Granny Weatherwax - the no nonsense, “I am always right”, leader of the trio (at least in her own mind). The others acknowledge her greater skill as a witch while also recognising that she is not always the most pleasant person. She sometimes shows rare lapses of confidence.
You can also look at the characters who make up the Watch. Again, they are all different but they are all painted in such a way that you can almost see them.
I suspect that for the Pratchett fans out there they have a fairly clear picture in their mind of these characters.
Then again, this may work against them being popular films. Any film portrayal will show the characters as different, in some ways, from how we imagine them. This could make them less enjoyable than expected.
I found the animated DVD of Wyrd Sisters enjoyable but not as enjoyable as the book.
I’ll be the dissenting voice then. While I think that the plots might make good movie plots, the movies made would be a huge disservice to the books.
So much of what I enjoy when reading them are the asides, the footnotes, the throwaway lines, the very subtle jokes that I only find the second (even third) time I read through the books, the exposition that explains the discworld, but really isn’t absolutely necessary to the story. In order to make the movie work, those would have to be cut or overdone so the audience would be sure to get it.
It works on the screen in my head, but I don’t think that it would work on projection.
Hemingway? Verbose and flowery? Ernest Hemingway? You haven’t read much of his work, have you?
Anyway, I think Canyon Surfer got it right when he named the characters as the reason his books “feel” like movies. Pratchett is very good at creating strong, simple characters, much like you find in most movies. Likewise, his books usually focus on one, clearly spelled out, theme, and a simple moral scheme, again like a movie. He tends to avoid ambiguity and subtext: characters are clearly good guys or bad guys, and he says what he means and means what he says. For these reasons, I’d very much like to see a movie made from a Pratchett screenplay. I suspect Pratchett would be an excellent screenwriter, if he were so inclined. However, like Amarinth, I don’t think that the Discworld novels would translate particularly well to the screen. You’d lose the intimate discourse nature of the novels, with the footnotes and digressions into the trivia of life and culture on the Disc, which are a big part of the appeal of the novels.
Pratchett does sometimes make use of cinematic conventions in his descriptions. Some books begin with a “zoom-in” on the Discworld atop the backs of the elephants and turtle. I have often been impressed by his ability to write descriptions of what are essentially visual jokes (Nanny Ogg carefully measuring out one spoon of sugar, dumping the rest of the sugar bowl into her tea, and putting the single spoonful back in the bowl) without losing the humor.
i have to agree with amarinth on this one. the parts that really make the books for me, that define pratchett for me are the side bars, the mad tangents which dont really advance the plot or characters but which add a richness to the book as a whole.
those parts would be almost impossible to represent on film.
but then again there are elements, as mentioned which do have a more classic filmy quality, but they arent in the majority, so for me no pratchett isnt all that scripty.
I’d like to do a little movie of selected sections of Pratchett. Especially something with say Colon and Nobby wandering the streets of Ankh Morpork, chatting to CMOT Dibbler, or perhaps Death doing the Bill Door scene, or maybe the Witches nobbing it up at the Opera.
As character pieces, they would be gold, and so much fun to do and see!
Pratchett has a very cinematic way of writing because that’s how he sees the stories unfold in his head - he sees character archetypes (no doubt influenced by Spike Milligan or slapstick characters of his youth like Eric Sykes and Morecambe & Wise) and utilises them perfectly, in similarly archetypical settings.
Even the set ups and jokes are standard, but told with a new spin.
And he is the only writer I have ever encountered who can write with perfect comic timing. That is an unbelievable talent!
I think part of it is the fact that his books don’t have chapters. It turns the action into a continuous flow with quick scene changes, just like a movie.
The main stumbling block for adapting books to films is internal monologue, and there’s very little of that in the Discworld books. You know that old writing maxim ‘show, don’t tell’? Pratchett never just tells.
I’d have to agree with amarinth also, that the defining part of discworld books is the footnotes and asides, and these would almost certainly be lost in any film version (just look at what got cut from harry potter and LOTR!). On the other hand, I’d love to see a Discworld film - there have been several attempts - Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music both got made into TV-animations (And were very good too!) - but the only live-action one I’ve heard of is Mort - and that was apparently cancelled because the producers decided that a 7-foot skeleton as a central character wasn’t ‘family entertainment’…
A number of the books have been converted to plays, and are apparently very good (I’ve never been able to get to one)
Not at all. They read like something very difficult to film, because only so much of the narrator’s voice and exposition can be transported. Often, the narrator explains scientific, cosmological or societal aspects of the Discworld. Without that, you’d have to either use a voice-over to convey the ideas to the audience or you’d have to radically alter and contrive scenes to convey the same information. Reading Pratchett, I often think they could accomplish this by using the `anthropologist’ gimmick like in the Discworld game. That’ll work for explaning how the Discworld works in general, but often the narrator makes witty comments that are appropos only of the particular scene, or a particular bit of dialogue, and which cannot be smoothly inserted into anyone’s dialogue.
No, there may be cinematic moments in the books, but Pratchett’s books read like they’ll defy filming.
sghoul wrote:
Odd. You seem to have gotten it precisely backwards. Did you mean to do that?
Miller wrote:
You are seriously underselling Pratchett. Vetenari is a complete bastard, and that’s just what the city needs. Carrot is as clearly good as you can get, and this makes quite an asshole of him sometimes. There are no unqualified good guys. Sometimes you get characters who are bad without qualification, like Teatime from Hogfather, or the elves from Lords and Ladies. More often you get a lot of near-villains who are ultimately sympathetic. The people who are uncompromisingly evil generally get dead in the last chapter, but people who are compromisingly evil make out alright. What is the guards series about if not that good is not necessarily clearly good, nor that evil is always clearly evil?
And the subtext? “Discworld is a world, and a mirror of worlds.” Loads of subtext. Pots of it.
I think the answer to this is simply: Understatement.
Pratchett is truly a master of writing, but mucvh more subtle than many posts here make it seem. He doesn’t really put any flesh on his characters, on purpose. What does Carrot look like? We know he’s a bit over 6’. He’s got red hair and is very muscular. That’s it. We, as readers, fill in the blanks and therefore give the characters life, from our own experiences. By just sketching and hinting, he forces us to participate in the story, rather than just observing what he, as a writer sees.
I agrre with Johnny Angel, that very few of the main characters are all good or bad. The way some characters do cameos in other books show this very well. Neither Vimes, nor Angua some across as very nice in Thief of Time. Death is rather more sympathetic in later books, but can be a royal asshole, too. Susan Sto Helit, though my kind of woman, would be perceived as stuck-up in real life by most people. I can make the list longer, but I hope my point comes through clear enough.
What makes Pratchett so great (apart from jokes ASF) is that he’s such a good student of people. People are always people and that’s one reason he’s so good a writing dialogue, too. He can pinpoint a character with just a few lines, and we know exactly what he wants us to know.
Also, the way he’s constantly making fun of movie clichés make me wonder if he would like to see a Hollywood do a LOTR or HP of one of his books.