In a recent conversation with Sir Emeth on this thread here, he suggested that I start a thread on the topic. So, what is the topic?

Have you ever noticed that some effects in movies are impossible to achieve in books? Such as being suddenly startled by a loud sound. A sound or event in a book can surprise you, but admit it, you never jump out of your skin. (That can happen, of course, when your mom or sister comes and says something when you're right in the middle of a tense part. )
And in books, we don't get the mood-altering effects of background music.

But:
Sometimes something in a book can have a very similar effect on you to what you would experience during a movie. You can be swept along, feeling what the character feels, doing what the character does, and walking away from the book---or out of the movie theater---in a sort of happy, shell-shocked daze, playing the scenes over and over in your head.

So I want to discuss that here. What books have gotten you so immersed that it was like watching a movie? How, exactly, did the author achieve it? (Do you know?) Have you managed to achieve it in any of your own writing?

(And did I get the topic right, O Sir? )

The Bones of Makaidos By Bryan Davis did that to me. It swept me along and I could at times feel and see it. The whole series was great, but that being the last, it just soared! I can't wait until I can read The Children of the Bard.

~Za

I think Dickens is very movie-ish. All his stories flow just like a film.

The Gammage Cup! Absolutely a lovely book. You feel with the characters and understand them, and you can see the landscape. Not only that, but is a story that is fit for both children and older people. As somebody once said (it was either Lewis or Tolkien, I don't remember which...) "There is no book worth reading at ten which is not worth reading at fifty."

Dickens is movie-ish in the sense that you can see everything and know most things, but I disagree that it is movie-ish in any sense beyond that.


I (hope) I have done movie-ishness in parts of my work. Some parts not so much.

The book I had in mind when I was starting this topic was Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis Mcgraw. It's set in Ancient Egypt and I loved the heroine. The beginning was slow, even a bit boring, but once I got through the first chapter or so, things started picking up, and by the final chapters I was lying on the couch, eyes wide, reading fast up until the very end. Then I got up and wandered away in kind of a daze.
I love it when books do that to me.
One book series I enjoyed was The Secret of the Rose by Michal Phillips. Some of the intense and/or climatic scenes really felt like a movie; I found myself imagining the dramatic camera angles and everything.

I would have to disagree. His plots unfold like a movie's plot does and you are revealed things in the way a movie does.
It's just something about his pacing I think....

Ted Dekker's "Showdown." Ted Dekker was descriptive in a way that lacked rambling, but got a very profound image ingrained into my mind. In it there is description of skin infection and I was able to see it all and it had me squirming like it was on me. And every scene, I could see it in my mind. It was probably the most disturbing Christian book I've ever read, but definitely one of the best.

Maybe I haven't read the right books then.

When I was in 5th grade my teacher read A Wrinkle in Time aloud to the class, and I picked up A Wind in the Door afterward. I found the scene where the school principal confronts Meg outside her house particularly intense for some reason - the room started spinning and I couldn't put the book down. I'm pretty sure I was having a panic attack, though at the time I was convinced that the book was just evil and I haven't read anything by L'Engel since.

Of the books I've read recently, Dandelion Fire and The Chestnut King have had sections that were completely absorbing, and Robin McKinley's Pegasus has some phenomenal scenes.

In N.D. Wilson's books, I think those scenes worked particularly well because of the very present danger. He uses a lot of sensory description - not just how things look, but how they feel, smell and sound - and he ties them to things that just about everyone has experienced. With his take on dandelions, he's taken something quite common that everyone is very familiar with and made it magical.

McKinley's work has a good bit of sensory description as well, but I think what makes it work so well in Pegasus is that she makes a big deal of the language barrier between the two peoples, and so as the main character drifts into a deeper understanding of the pegasi and their worldview, she starts experiencing things differently. Again, there's a lot of tactile description, as well as the visual.

I don't know if this counts, but Patricia McKillip's book "The Book of Atrix Wolf" felt kind of like a moving painting. Her details are interesting and she kind of has that elaborate style of someone who paints. At times I could picture it as if it was a movie.

Recently I've realized how much anime captures human movements (you know, those involuntary ones that we do during dialogue, or when we hug someone and they suddenly push you away after a few moments of pure silent stillness, etc.) and some things in real life remind me of anime sometimes. (but be careful of course, some anime isn't good at all but there are a few good ones)

For me it would definitely be Not Without my Daughter.

The Dragons of Starlight series by Bryan Davis totally did it for me. So did Eye of the Oracle, by the same author. The vividness of the descriptions, the fast-paced stories, the characters' actions and reactions, the way everything ties together...just...all the things!