Why do some people prefer watching movies than reading novels even if they are both based on the same source material (book)?
Last Updated: 16.06.2025 02:10
A story is just a sequence of events but storytelling involves a lot more. With words alone, it's already a handicap, but even there, not all authors are created the same.
Reading a novel, especially a fictional novel with immense imagery, and enjoying it on par with or more than you'd enjoy a movie requires you to:
Entertainment.
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Granted that the examples I might be citing here are as such not great works, but bear with me.
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Very hard to do the above very enjoyable couple/group/friends activity with books.
Even if one has the skill, many people lack the ability to imagine and visualize the scenes portrayed in words, which dampens their novel experience. It's just a bunch of words to them.
Turns out, the translation is not the slang you speak in real life but is a formal proper language and you suck at that as well.
A movie may have taken some creative license and given us a more feel good ending that is more appealing to audiences than the original book storyline.
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Twilight at least was somewhat decently written. The Grey series was not even good writing.
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Some translated books are just not good. Ponniyin Selvan is an example.
I gave up and enjoyed the movies, read the discussions on the original text and enjoyed it immensely.
The Grey series was steamy but I was still able to focus on the actual story in the movies.
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I don't have the patience to read Shakespeare and visualize the story because of the old lyrical English therein. Not much for poetic/dramatic words.
Unless you have a reading habit as such, you cannot read fast and comprehensively enough to not just process the words and sentences, but also to feel the phrase, sentence, paragraph, page or chapter as a whole.
Have the ability to visualize:
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The books, however, were insufferable. They were filled with “holy shit” and other moronic mind voices of the protagonist Anna. They effectively drowned out the story and I quit midway of 50 shades darker
Actually have some literary skill:
In the end, if nothing else, a movie is just a touch and earphones away. A book requires concentration. The lazier option is always more appealing.
Bella in the movies remained the eff shut up, so I could just use both my own imagination and enjoy the director’s vision.
The novels? I picked up Eclipse, and a few sentences showing the various ruminations of Bella were enough to make me hate her already. I didn't attempt to read.
Because reading is WORK. Period.
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Netflix and chill is a thing:
If you have to work too hard to get entertained, it may not appeal to you. And for some people, reading is too hard a work and watching a movie is simply easier.
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But take one of his plays and make me a movie and I'd love to watch. I loved “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”as a movie more than the play all because of the writing style. I am used to reading proper prose in novels. Not the script of plays. So the movie worked better for me.
But no one will have any problem in watching a dubbed version of GoT and all the titillating scenes in it are further incentive to brave through it effortlessly. No skill required.
Imagery, sequence, suspense, emotions. Some authors may not be able to bring the story out the way a movie director could.
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Many people do not have a comprehensive vocabulary in any language required to sail through a literary work in it, leave alone the one which their material of interest is printed in. Not all of us will patiently read with a dictionary by our sides.
Twilight was a fun watch - I suspended my brain and enjoyed the imaginary world.
Her orgasmic thoughts were thankfully absent in the movie so the movie was way better. Still bad enough that I just watched the first and passed the rest.
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How many of you found the Twilight franchise and 50 shades of Grey trilogy at least somewhat entertaining as movies? I did!
You'll not work to get something you can get by just paying for a Netflix subscription.
There is also the issue of translation and language barrier.
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I didn't like the English translated version at all and I am not that good at literary Tamil to read the original.
Many if not most, are in this category.
Many people just survive school and college just preparing their study material and do not have enough aptitude in any language to be able to read and comprehensively understand long texts.
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Outdated language but easily understandable presentation in cinema:
Or the movie script may have taken the source material and derived its own form of storytelling, which may prove to be more interesting than the novel’s storytelling style.
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Sometimes, maybe you aren't good at English so you find it hard to read an English book, say, Game of Thrones, in its original format. So you buy a translated version in your mother tongue, say Tamil or Hindi (hypothetically).
So a novel may be less enjoyable for them.
Sometimes the production team of the movie is just better than the author of the novel, correspondingly:
Let's be frank. What is in fiction for us unless we are forced to study it at school?
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There is an actual condition - aphantasia- wherein you lack the ability to imagine/visualise.
There are some books that just…suck!
This is often a mindset. It can be acquired and often comes naturally to those who have a reading habit as such, but there are a number of people who do try and are unable to carry this conversion out effectively - maybe something to do with the creative/imaginative centres of the brain.
So what you see on screen is fun, visually entertaining, well put-together as opposed to a novel that may have been tiring, boring and not well placed.