Oh, I do think that the pared down style is more than just the influence of movies, definitely. I think it's a combination of a lot of things (plus every writer has his/her own personal style too). I would bet that even without movies ever being invented we might have still gotten the same trends towards a different type of style because artists are always going to try different things.
I guess I mean, why did they have 'blanks', but we're okay with those blanks because we have images from movies to draw upon? Why do we draw upon the movies to fill the holes instead of something else?
When I was talking about blanks I was thinking more of just certain shorthands that we have now from mass popular culture that people might not have had as much then (though of course they had things that *they* would recognize with a hint that we wouldn't because every culture has those things). And one thing that did occur to me was that perhaps people can be more expected to have been exposed to a greater range of people through mass media than they might have been then. For instance, if Dickens had the character of Cho Chang in his book would he have described her as looking Asian more than Rowling does?
Adverbs aside, I do think that JKR has a pretty strong (and charming!) narrative voice, which is a large part of why the movies have never appealed as much to me as the books, and that would all be lost if she turned to screenplay. :)
I never think of her narrative voice much, now that I think about it. But I do much prefer the books to the movies. The narrative voice might be part of that. Even though I might never think about it in terms of being poetic or whatever she uses the narrative voice very well. It's fully in control of you as a reader throughout the book--in that way I do think about it.
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I guess I mean, why did they have 'blanks', but we're okay with those blanks because we have images from movies to draw upon? Why do we draw upon the movies to fill the holes instead of something else?
When I was talking about blanks I was thinking more of just certain shorthands that we have now from mass popular culture that people might not have had as much then (though of course they had things that *they* would recognize with a hint that we wouldn't because every culture has those things). And one thing that did occur to me was that perhaps people can be more expected to have been exposed to a greater range of people through mass media than they might have been then. For instance, if Dickens had the character of Cho Chang in his book would he have described her as looking Asian more than Rowling does?
Adverbs aside, I do think that JKR has a pretty strong (and charming!) narrative voice, which is a large part of why the movies have never appealed as much to me as the books, and that would all be lost if she turned to screenplay. :)
I never think of her narrative voice much, now that I think about it. But I do much prefer the books to the movies. The narrative voice might be part of that. Even though I might never think about it in terms of being poetic or whatever she uses the narrative voice very well. It's fully in control of you as a reader throughout the book--in that way I do think about it.