I just finished watching the movie, which I believe was based on a book. What a concept! Gifted readers can make characters come alive by reading aloud. (Brendan Fraser seemed out of place, but Helen Mirren and Paul Bettany were brilliant, imho. Seeing Jim Broadbent as the author of the title book from which all the characters came was weird after seeing him in HP6.)
It was a perfect adaptation of how we as writers feel about our worlds. They come alive for us and the characters are more than mere figments of our imaginations. They are real, alive and breathing. They have their own personalities and quirks and can make their own decisions.
When we joke about the voices in our heads, it’s not that we’re schizophrenic, but that the characters are as real as if we could reach out and touch them. They have stories that they want us to write. Although, I suppose one has to be just slightly crazy to want to sit down in the loneliness of one’s own private world and write as if it is real. Many of us are sensitive to the real world, because we’re already overstimulated by our own imaginations. But that’s what makes the most memorable stories, because the worlds do come off the page and almost interact.
But when we write, it’s not the world we want to express but the rich experience of knowing our characters intimately, as if we’re telepaths reading their emotions and thoughts. That’s what we express when we write it on the page. We paint with words so that you, readers, can enjoy it as we do. When we reach that point in our artistry of the written word, we find the greatest satisfaction. Knowing that readers can experience as close as possible to what we do makes the hard work worthwhile.
I read some negative reviews of Inkheart when it was released in theaters, but the movies never live up to the books on which they’re based (except one, er, trilogy–Lord of the Rings…Ironically, Andy Serkis, whose acting was the basis and whose voice was used for Smeagol/Gollum, played Capricorn, the bad guy in Inkheart). I’ve never read the book, but I found the movie captivating, and thought Dustfinger stole the show as the deepest, most complex character.
