Tommy Collison

I was going to start off this post by saying how much I loved it, but that’d be kind of redundant, wouldn’t it? I mean, you’re reading this, aren’t you? If I didn’t then I’ve wasted a lot of my time writing this blog, haven’t I?

It would seem like the natural step forward, then, to want to write a novel. I could never do that though. I look at some of the books I read and marvel about how much detail goes into every single book, and it overwhelms me. I can manage basic plots but the depth at which some authors bring to their characters is, being honest, a little scary. I was never able to describe any of my characters past their superficial hopes, dreams and failings.

That’s why, I think, I went for blogging: I can write about a given subject one day, and once I finish talking about it – I leave it go and the next time I come back to write, I can think about something completely different, which is nice. My attention span for these sorts of things is a little bit lackluster, so this ‘love and leave’ blog thing I’ve got going really does suit me down to the ground.

One of my (many) aspirations in life, however, is to write a book. I think that a book is a wonderful imprint of the author, even if it’s fiction. Especially if it’s fiction, in fact. When I read a book, I want to be told a story. Good storytelling is hard to come by these days. Books, I believe, should be as easy as films to follow. Any less than that and I just get restless.

Does that mean that films that are based on books (for example: Harry Potter, Twilight, Lord of the Rings) should simply be the book on screen? No. Take the Harry Potter movies for example. I think I speak for the majority of people when I say that the Potter movies got better as they went on (disclaimer; I haven’t seen the 6th one) – but that was because the first and second were very true to the book- at the expense that they were only average movies. I think the new directors have realized this, and the later movies have steered away from the books, but are better stand-alone movies because of it. The best description of the later movies comes from my cousin:

“They’re grand movies if you don’t compare them to the books. They stand alone fine”

What do we think? Bear in mind I’m using Harry Potter only as an example.