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You're Writing a Book. So Stop Writing a Movie.

rebeccamakkai.substack.com · 3,344 words · saved by 3 readers

We’re in a golden age of TV (if not quite a golden age of full-blown cinema), so I don’t blame anyone for consuming a vast proportion of their narratives on screens. But so many issues I address with my writing students stem, I suspect, from subconsciously internalizing what works on the screen and trying to make it work on the page. Here are 12 things that film teaches us wrong (and 4 that it teaches us right) about writing fiction or narrative nonfiction. Look at even the sappiest love stories of the 1900s, and eyes, eye color, and eye contact are barely mentioned. Jane Austen gives us the lovely dialogue “I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow,” but you’d be hard-pressed to find someone gazing deeply into someone else’s brown eyes. Yet do a Control+F on “eyes” in any mediocre modern novel and you’ll get not only “I stared into his soft green eyes” but also a constant commentary on where someone is looking.

Writing Craft You're Writing a Book. So Stop Writing a Movie. What film teaches us wrong about writing fiction Rebecca Makkai Nov 17, 2025 2,441 27 348 Share We’re in a golden age of TV (if not quite a golden age of full-blown cinema), so I don’t blame anyone for consuming a vast proportion of their narratives on screens. But so many issues I address with my writing students stem, I suspect, from subconsciously internalizing what works on the screen and trying to make it work on the page. Here are 12 things that film teaches us wrong (and 4 that it teaches us right) about writing fiction or na

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