Short Stories

Has anyone every wondered why there is a natural expectation that books will eventually become screenplays? Worse, I think, is that nobody seems to have any qualms about it when it happens.

The way I see books is like this:

If you take enough time out of your week to sit down and read a book, you are making a serious dedication. You are encouraged by this use of your time to connect with the characters, learn more about their lives and their personalities. You are encouraged to think things through, test what you would do in similar situations to what the protagonist is going through, psychologically probe their actions and the cause behind their actions, and in turn find a cause for your own actions.
Books, by my most accurate description, are longstanding relationships between the Artist and the subject. They are strong, lasting connections formed by ample time and understanding.

Films, or 'flicker shows', as I prefer to call them (I've never actually called them that in public, but it still sounds cooler to say 'Would you like to see a flicker show?' than 'let's go see a movie'), are vastly different. Most of the focus behind a flicker show is to bombard the human senses with immediate sensations, relying on an external source rather than an internal one (as with writing). During a flicker show you sit down for at the very most (except back in yonder days of 'War & Peace' and 'Gone with the Wind') three hours, usually without being able to pause and digest all the information that's coming at you.
In this way, movies are hardly more than first impressions to the human mind. They provide an oversight; the casual glance at an idea before brushing it away without giving it the chance to grow. I don't mean to say that flicker shows are necessarily wrong or evil - just that they are different to books.

It takes a very certain type of attitude to walk away with a lasting effect from a flicker show. The viewer has to be ready to sit down and contemplate the idea, form their own mental connections based solely on those 2 to 3 hours of sensation. In many ways this can be seen as a more intellectually fulfilling means; because the viewer cannot rely on anything but those brief sensations they are forced to think things through without any guidance (as a reader would have if they read a book), and through thinking alone, they are seen as 'stronger' individuals. The fault in this is that they are only elaborating ideas from one point of view; they are close-minded if they do not consider that there may be more to the story that what they witnessed during the brief flicker show.

There is much more than this, of course, but as with any story this one must include separate chapters so that the reader can pause, think, and return after reflection.