Books have been portraying stories for thousands of years, and in the last century we’ve been able to communicate stories with visuals and sounds with the rise of video technology. We have movies, television shows, comics, manga, video games, and many other ways to portray stories in modern day, but regular old text-only books remain one of the most mainstream hobbies across the world.
Objectively there’s more to newer hobbies such as movies, comics, and stories with visuals and audio attached, but to some there’s less.
When you’re watching a movie, there’s a set of expectations your typical movie watcher goes in with: 1-2 hour movie length, a live-action or animated cast of characters all in a certain art style, and a unique score to go along with the movie. Sometimes if it’s a very popular movie, one would expect famous actors and actresses in lead roles.
All of these expectations become parts you could dislike about a movie; maybe Chris Pratt’s voice feels too samey, like he gets typecast as the main character for views, or the live-action art style looks ugly compared to a movie’s animated counterpart or vice versa. Since there’s a lot more to like about a film, there’s as much to dislike. Same thing with video games; maybe the gameplay feels repetitive even if the story intrigues you, or vice versa.
Regular books only have to worry about writing. That’s all there is, writing on paper. If the reader likes the story, they can imagine the visuals and audio how they see fit. If it’s not something you make as a creator, people will imagine their own parts how they see fit; it’s not a problem for you.
Any time someone consumes media, they make their own interpretations, but the less there is, the more open these interpretations get.
There are obvious budget concerns about all this; making a movie is way more expensive than writing a book, but for the sake of enjoyment, they still both tell stories.
I enjoy that visuals, sound, and other aspects aren’t considered objective upgrades to a story, nor are they considered limitations. People are willing to fill in the gaps for what they enjoy and interpret how they want to, even with the limitations of official visuals and sound. Sometimes official visuals and audio breed creativity with remixes and fan art; sometimes a lack of official visuals and audio spawns fan interpretations of what they think some visuals would look like.
Visuals, sound, and the absence of visuals and sound breed similar kinds of creativity with different parameters, and I will forever appreciate those interpretations from said creativity and how they change my own.
