Character descriptions, and the pitfalls of passive indulgent writing.

When I came across this picture I couldn't help but save it as an example of how I see Duncan. I always hated it when I'd read a story and then the actor they used to play the character was way off from the authors description.

A perfect example of this is the movie the Queen of the Damned. Lestat was described in the books as a blond, blue eyed hunk. In the movie they used Stuart Townsend to play the charismatic vampire. Needless to say no matter how good looking Stuart was, his dark hair and looks weren't anything close to what Anne Rice described.

There aren't many movies (if any) that ever live up to what we see when we read a book. It's transcending, you can journey to places in a story that have endless possibilities. So far though, I have to say that True Blood has done a pretty good job of casting the lead characters as they are described in the stories by Charlaine Harris. I don't always agree with the direction Alan Ball goes with the story, but at least he's using what the author started instead of losing it completely.

One of the worst books to movie I've ever seen was Blood and Chocolate. Wow did they screw that one up. The book was actually pretty decent, the story of a young were-wolf who fights against her nature only to learn a deadly lesson. You can't change what you are. For a YA novel it didn't fall into the same pattern a lot of other books have been following lately. That could be because it was pre-Twilight (yes I said the T-word) but it could be because the characters were better developed, and the story wasn't at all written in a passive voice.

Ohhhh the pit fall of passive voice.......(sigh)

It is something I fight with everyday when I sit down at my computer and write. It's so easy to fall into the indulgent prose, using the thesaurus like crazy until I can't even have a conversation without using words that are less then three syllables. It's so easy to fall into the fancy elusive yuck-fest. But I'm getting off topic, self-indulgent writing is different from passive writing. I just got caught up in the anti-Twilight prose. (That doesn't mean I disliked the books either, I just can't stand the over use of fancy vocabulary, and passive voice. I enjoyed the books, just wish the editor would have convinced SM that less is more sometimes.)

That being said, sometimes passive voice is unavoidable, especially when you are trying to create a mystery.

I guess the lesson is that authors, and editors make mistakes, and then movie producers completely ruin the story. I just wanted to share my example of Duncan, and ended up whining about passive, and indulgent writing.

Happy reading!!!