Would-

Novels are not movies.

Visual media has taken on the world by storm. It’s the next big thing in the evolution of humanity, maybe. It’s quite certainly changed the way we entertain ourselves. And with the recent spread of short-form content, visual media has also become cheap, disposable, and easily accessible to the masses—perfect recipe to make a product famous.

Alright, I’ve been a little too dramatic, lol. But for real, I’m one of those who’s severely addicted to Instagram Reels. Whenever I’m done scrolling, I feel like I’ve completely wasted my time—I could have read a novel, watched a movie, or caught up with my favorite mangas. But instead of all those ways to relax—and believe me (pwlease) that I only open Insta to relax, when I’m free—I just waste my time.

I love my novels and manga, mind ya, so when I catch myself wasting precious time that I could have instead used to consume them, I cuss myself. And then I go scroll some more Insta, because I’m an absolute idiot.

Anyway, back to the topic. Visual media has absolutely taken over our lives. I won’t go into the debate of whether this is a good thing or not, but we all can agree that it’s an undeniable fact. Video is everywhere.

Because—and lemme repeat myself—it’s cheap, disposable, and easily accessible today.

And because of such exposure to video storytelling, beginning authors forget that novels are not a visual medium. Yep, here goes my rant.

***

#01 - The Problem

The problem is simple—these kids have too much access to their smartphones. And these smartphones are filled with videos, like a dustbin with its lid hanging on because of all that garbage overfilling it. (Damn, I sound like a boomer.)

And therefore, when these new authors begin writing, they can’t help but imagine a sort of movie or a TV show as their story. And that’s where the problem is—novels are not supposed to be movies.

Movies are a visual media. That means they’re composed of pictures. Images. But guess what novels are composed of?

Text. Words.

It seems pretty basic. I mean, everybody knows this distinction. But what they don't know, however, are the implications of this distinction.

Personally, I began writing with film-novels too. And those novels are bad. Genuinely. I cringe at the fact that I could even mail editors and believe they’d accept them. Good thing they never did.

What’s a film-novel, though? Well, the idea is pretty clear—it’s a novel, but imagined in the form of a film. So, it’s like a film, but in text.

It’s like you’ve written the film as a novel, instead of writing it as a screenplay or something, maybe.

But you’d ask me—why? Why is it even a mistake? Everybody has a different writing style. And to that, I’d tell you one thing—the audience. The audience is different. The media is different. You can’t expect a cinephile to read your book. And since it’s not like a professional novel, a (Googles the correct term) bibliophile certainly won't.

So, who’s gonna read your story?

No one—because it’s neither a film, nor a novel. It’s a film-novel, an illogical mix of the two.

Everyone drinks water, and everyone likes ice-cream. But you can't… No, I’m not even completing that sentence. Ew.

Anyway, you get the idea, lol.

***

#02 - Identify

So, what does a film-novel even look like?

And for that, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you,

The lean figure was standing on the other side of the railing three floors up on the ground of the school building where children below were shouting and kicking football upon each other, wearing white football jerseys. The figures, as they ran all over the ground, seemed very small as I looked at them. The goalkeeper of the right side, who was just beneath my white shoe, kicked the ball so hard that it flew in air and went directly to the other foot of mine. The other players shouted “Whoaaa!” as they saw the ball flying. But suddenly, two of them looked upwards and saw me. One of them pointed towards me and then shouted, “Hey, who’s he?!” All the other players started walking towards that boy who was in the middle of the field with their heads tilted up above on me. Another one shouted, “Hey! What’cha doin’, eh?!” My narrow eyes, which had dark spots beneath them, looked at the boys from behind my spectacles. I then moved my head a little up and saw my shiny gakuran jacket fluttered by my shiny yellow colored buttons as the wind started blowing from my left side. I was able to feel the wind dancing upon my soft skin as I closed my eyes and turned my head upwards. I took a deep breath, and then exhaled it out with my mouth. I then again took a breath. This time, when I exhaled it out with my mouth, I was able to feel the saliva of my mouth upon my lips. I tilted my head and turned towards my arm, which was trembling a little. Both of my hands were still holding the railing of the school’s rooftop. I then turned left and then looked on my other arm. “Hey! Get down!” One of the persons from beneath shouted. I turned my narrowed eyes towards the ground, the teachers, a large gang of footballers and students, and some even workers had gathered in a circle. I turned my head towards the front. I looked at a couple of brown colored and blue-green colored houses in front of me, which stood high and mighty. Beneath them was the clear blue sky.

A wall of text!

Warning: you don’t really need to read all of it. But you probably did, lol.

Anyway, it’s the opening scene from one of my first novels. And, as much as I hate to say this—it’s pretty sh*t. It has a lot of problems—no paragraph divisions, for example, as well as a lot of grammatical mistakes too. But the biggest problem with the text is that it’s just images.

Reading this text, I dare you to highlight one single sentence that might tell you anything about the narrator.

The narrator is narrating the motions, not the emotions.

(Damn, that was a dope line to say, man.)

The narrator is only telling you about the images and actions and dialogues and thoughts. Even though it’s in first-person POV, you feel distant from the narrator. And, even in third-person POV, authors are supposed to make sure the distance between the narrator and the reader remains at a minimum.

That’s how you get a film-novel—that’s filled with scene-descriptions, actions, and dialogues. There’s no narrations in it. The readers don’t know the thoughts of these characters.

***

#03 - Is it really a problem, though?

Well, you might ask me—is it really such a big problem?

Heck yeah.

The reason is pretty simple, actually—no one wants to read a film-novel. These novels are filled with only descriptions and actions—that’s too much of mental effort. these novels make their readers keep on imagining stuff, and no reader wants to do that.

Because it’s easier to look at pictures than to imagine them based on text. And that’s why your film-novels won’t work.

See, you need to understand this—novels are different than film. Sure, novels are a form of storytelling too, and they do include visual effort, such as descriptions, action, and all that. But, all that is not the main selling point of a novel.

The main selling point of a novel is the emotions. Emotions captured in words, in situations—caught in context like a butterfly in a child’s hand. Films can display emotions, but novels put those emotions into words.

Narration is what forms the greatest part of a novel. Narration is where a novel actually shines. Narration is what the readers come to read.

And, as you could guess, films don’t narrate. Consider this,

And rain made him feel like crying. He gulped down, trying to keep the lump of his throat in check. He couldn’t cry in the middle of so many other kids. They’ll ask questions, and what will he say to them, huh?

He was sorry.

For what?

For everything he did. And for everything he didn’t.

The day had just begun. It’d be long before it ends, y’know. He just couldn't wait for it to end. There was no lifting up his mood. Not until tomorrow.

How do you display this in a film? The answer—you can't. However hard you try, you can't.

Such narrations are where the art of novels shine. Such narrations are what differentiates a novel from a visual media.

***

#04 - Is it really a problem, though? (pt.ii)

All this talk constantly reminds me of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s a literary achievement and really experimental in a lot of stuff that it does. For example, the novel has no dashes or apostrophes—and it’s not like these punctuation marks were not needed, they’re just not used. So, you’d find a lot of grammatical mistakes throughout the text.

And also, one thing that McCarthy ignored—and that’s relevant to the discussion we’re having—is that there’s literally zero narration. Zero.

McCarthy adopts a style that’s similar to a third-person POV, and is kinda like how I used to write when I was little—just with paragraphs and better scene-descriptions and action-descriptions. A lot better, as you can observe if you read his work.

Anyway, he didn’t have any narrative elements in his text. So the readers don’t really know what these characters are thinking or planning to do. They just know that these characters are somehow surviving.

I don’t wanna give away most of the plot of the novel, but the basic premise of the novel is that there’s a father-son duo who’s been caught in this apocalypse-type situation, and are traveling down the road to the south part of the country to escape the harsh winters that the north experiences. The novel doesn’t reveal a lot—the readers don’t know the names of these characters, the thoughts of the characters are hidden most of the time, and you don’t know what actually happened that most of humanity is dead and society is completely gone.

Now, McCarthy did it for a reason. A scarcity of punctuation marks reflects a form of scarcity in the scenery around them. Because most of it is, well, gone. Humanity is gone, and stuff is decaying. You don’t find fresh food anymore. Scavenge all you want—one day, all the canned food will expire, and there will be nothing to eat. Except fruits and veggies, that need to be grown somewhere. And nobody likes the latter, honestly.

And the scene-descriptions are so tough to read. They’re an actual pain. I have had a really hard time deciphering most of it, because the vocab is too high, and probably the sentences do not flow into each other easily. I can’t say anything about the sentences if I don’t understand them, y’know.

But, man, maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. Maybe that’s why McCarthy wrote the descriptions in this way—to symbolize the mental stress that the characters go through as they experience this world, this form of reality that they were not meant to be in.

And maybe the novel is so lacking in narrations because the characters’ minds have gone numb. They’re forgetting language. With almost zero human interaction most of the time, they are forgetting how to think and interact in words. You lose the skills you don’t really use anymore, y’know. And these guys are so obviously depressed, so they don’t think about the world. They are used to the sad reality they live in. No point in complaining how bad the food is if that’s all you’re gonna eat all your life.

So, a scarcity of narrations tell you a lot about the story and its characters. It reflects something, it symbolizes something. The Road is a masterfully crafted piece of prose, please don’t get inspired to write in this style just because. This style won’t work on most of the stories.

Yeah, just because he wrote like this means you can too. Let me tell you, dear reader, that all of what we call rules are meant to be broken. Nothing is absolute. But here’s the catch—you can’t break the rules just because you don’t know how to apply them.

Authors need to learn these rules, because that’s what constitutes most of the written prose. That’s what forms the basics of the craft. So, learn them, understand them, and know how to use them. And then make a conscious decision not to use them.

See, these rules are like tools or weapons in your arsenal. And you need to keep your arsenal ready for everything. And then, you can decide which weapon to use, when to use it, and how to use it. Because you don’t know what sort of idea hits your head next and you’d suddenly need some of them.

***

#04 - Solution

So, how to make sure your novel actually comes off as a novel and not a film-novel? Unfortunately, the answer to that question… is that I don't know.

I know this sounds so absurd, but it is what it is. As someone who’s so recently started studying prose, I know this problem exists, but I still don’t know how to fix it. You could say I know my novels are film-novels, and I’m trying to fix it. But I, personally, am having a lot of trouble with it.

However, one way I can recommend is to write from your character’s POV, not your POV. You probably imagined your story as a film, but that’s now how you’re supposed to write it. Get into your characters’ head, see what they’re seeing, and write that.

But it’s tough. For me, at least. I always find myself going back to my old ways, and I think I need to re-write almost all of my scene-descriptions and actions because of it.

Lol, how ironic.

***

Conclusion

Yeah, and that’s it. I hope you liked this blog. Sorry I hadn’t posted in along while, I was going through a writers’ block. Stuff is happening these days, y’know.

Anyway, I’ll see you again in a couple of days, with something new. Bye-byee!

more Khori fluff lessgooo

kinda messily sketched but eh, I’m not aiming for perfection

This is like- EXACTLY how I see Khan’s character.

This is the number one thing that I’m planning on touching on in my post-canon continuation for his character arc.

Rebloggin this even tho I already commented on this lol-

Soooo.... Khan headcanon/thingy here

Since everything dangerous is over on copper nine, no dissesembly drones, no planet eating god, no abusive asshole humans, no constant stress of a whole colony on his shoulders, his wife comes back from the fucking DEAD, his daughter is alive/ok(physically) after fighting literal god

Now that he can relax, do you think that, all of the stress & grief of just, everything, hits him all at once?

How would everyone else react to this, he already could barely hold himself together and everyone could see it, now he's not hiding it at all. He's going through a grieving process of someone who was a live the whole time he thought she was dead

All of the PTSD + anxiety + etc piles on to him at once and he just, can't function

Just a thought I wanted to get out there lol

uhh, hi- random Khan sketch

bro is NOT impressed- 💀 /silly

Random info about Khan that I’m implementing onto his character in my Murder Drones continuation/sequel. Also sprinkled some Khori in here. >:3

Basically an info dump about a character that i have projected onto a lot. 💀

Just as a bonus so ppl can at the same time learn more about me as well, certain attributes that apply to myself are marked with this star! —> ☆

ANYWAY- here’s the actual info lol:

He’s an extremely anxious person.

Has panic attacks occasionally due to his PTSD :( It doesn’t help that the episodes happen more frequently than before.

He barely gets any sleep; has really bad dark-circles as a result.

Very skittish; the type of guy to scream like a girl when he’s startled. Also very clumsy.

Horrible at hiding stuff; especially his emotions. Thinks he’s doing a good job at it, but he can’t fool anyone; especially Nori.

He’s a nervous wreck; he has very low self esteem and barely has any self confidence. Has insecure body language most of the time— hands up close to his chest, always looking down, etc.

Very sensitive and highly sympathetic. ☆

Tries to act like the tough-guy, but secretly is a big softy.

Thinks that showing any other emotion than happiness isn’t okay. As a result, he bottles up and represses his true feelings/emotions a lot. Nori always tells him that it’s okay to not be okay.

Does a lot of self-soothing fidgets; arm, wrist, and hand rubbing. Crosses his arms a lot when insecure, and avoids eye contact when he’s upset.

Chews on or just holds his fingers (mostly just his pointer finger) in his mouth when he’s stressed or in deep thought. ☆

He’s autistic. >:3

Does hand/wrist flaps, is sensitive to loud sounds, and gets overstimulated very easily. ☆

Is iffy with touch or any kind of physical contact; feels uncomfortable when given direct affection; especially without permission. ☆

When he’s upset, he usually doesn’t want to be touched. It fully depends on the situation and his current mood; he needs consent for physical contact. ☆

Nori always asks him if it’s okay to touch his shoulder and/or back, or if she’s allowed to give him a hug. Nori wants to make sure that he feels safe, but also wants him to feel comfortable.

Extremely touch starved; is horrible at hiding it.

Blushes very easily. Not used to compliments; or any kind of praise for that matter. He gets flustered when Nori is physically close to him; mostly an effect from his touch starvation.

He completely melts in Nori’s embrace. He sometimes purrs when he’s really happy and content in Nori’s arms. He’s like a giant cat (HEHE, PURRING DRONES HEADCANON GO BRR 😈 ✨💅)

He is the little spoon and Nori is the big spoon.

He has multiple small scars across his body. Mostly on his back, torso, chest, and arms. Has small scratches on his hands and legs, but they’re not easily noticeable.

Very insecure about his scars. He thinks they’re an eyesore, but Nori reminds him that scars can be beautiful.

Has broken humor. He laughs at bad jokes and is extremely outdated with current humor.

Very sassy. Uzi gets her stubbornness and smart-ass attitude from him.

Crosses his legs when he sits. ☆

He doesn’t like to swear and prefers not to. He pretty much only swears when provoked first. And when he does swear, it’s on very rare occasions when he’s furiously angry.

He in general is a very chill guy. He is terrifying when he’s angry. When he’s mad, you just know that something really pissed him off. He doesn’t get ticked off for no reason.

When he’s upset, it’s common for him to shut down; he sometimes goes mute as well. Nori tries to communicate with him using her visor. (Like that one scene in Ep 6 where N and Uzi were talking to each other with text popping up on their visors).

Knows SL! (ASL specifically). Sign generally makes it easier and more comfortable for him to communicate (in certain cases where he doesn’t want to use verbal communication). Nori also knows SL! She learned it especially for him. :3

Is uncomfortable with eye contact in general. He only really makes eye contact when it’s necessary for certain social interactions. ☆

I think that’s it?? Idk- I’ll probably add more later if I remember anything else that I could have forgotten.

Uhh- anyway- yap over 💀

This has been sitting in my drafts for a while- 💀😭

Edit—(2/7/25): I added three more things at the bottom of the list. >:3

Edit—(2/16/25): I once again added three more things at the bottom of the list. >:]

apparently my blog turned 1 yesterday

and-

WHAT- /pos

Google Play search for E-Play free music software

I have Youtube Music along with YouTube Premium so I don't think I will need a free music software.

But thanks anyway for the suggestion and being my first ask!

m8, u are so real for this /gen

Another Hot Take…

I hate the meme going around now in the fandom where Khan has his feet cemented and he’s been tossed in the bottom of a river or lake.

Apparently people still ignore the fact that he actually grows throughout the series. Bitterly regrets what he did in the pilot.

Objectively…should be the Solver/Cyn in that position. But nooooo. “The Cylly did nothing wrong!!!”

Apparently leaving one person to die (and feeling horrific about it, trying to do better after…) is a FAR WORSE crime than torture, breaking all the Geneva Convention Laws, and omnicide!

But it’s ok! She was just a little silly!

I swear I hate this fandom sometimes….

i need to work on his design istg

just a quick. drawing i guess i dont know

I drew Doll for the first time.

No idea wft i was doing with the background- 💀

Uhhh.. anyway alternate version under the cut.

Hope ya'll like it.