Why do some people prefer watching movies than reading novels even if they are both based on the same source material (book)?

Outdated language but easily understandable presentation in cinema:

There is also the issue of translation and language barrier.

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Hello,hope y'all doin good, i came to Quora to share my strange story , a very weird one , a story when luck smiled at me ,maybe u will enjoy it , let's begin,have fun... A year ago ,I was a real porn addicted(btw I was 18) ,but never had sex before, I don't have a gf I didn't try to find one even ,always thinking to go to find a sex worker but then I just don't , everyday watching different bodies getting fucked and everyday enjoying. One day, I was watching porn, a big ass lady with big boobs ,just after seeing her the image of my female cousin poped in my mind, (let's introduce her : she's 35 years old , very big ass , nice boobs ,not very big but nice,always wearing tight clothes , she's divorced ) and I thought of me fucking her ,I never had sexual desires for her but now I do days went by and when I met her I was so horny ,I couldn't stay with the family cz my penis was clearly erected , I realized this is my first time I get horny for one of my family ,it not illegal in my country.well to make a long story short( if u want details just text me I will tell u 😊),I decided to give her signs that I want to fuck her,finally I decided to have sex and with my cousin , I thought it is the best beggining for me, i started touching her when I came across her in a narrow place , make her feel my hard cock when we hug , I thought it will hard and I will be ashamed but no , I felt nothing and she said nothing , probably she thought it was by mistake,anyways, I decided then to talk with her about sex, waited for her to be alone in a room and talk with her, I confessed everything about me watching porn and addicted..etc,she said it's normal and u are growing up and u must have sex,well at that time I was like whaaat????? Well I didn't control myself and asked her for sex ( horny like I Ve never been before) she said that she will think Abt it ,2 weeka went by then she called me ,telling that she reserved a room in a hotel and we meet tonight ,we met,and bruuhh, sex is great , I mean, I had to find a pirstitue ,what I was waiting for to have such a feeling ????, I will never forget that night, I started kissing her she was kissing hard ,she misses sex so bad , she sucked my dick and swallowed my semen ,I felt I'm in a dream , then when fucked ,her ass was very big and the anus was open ,didn't struggle to get my hard cock inside it , she was obviously missing sex , she was shouting ,fuck me yh fuck me , I go fast after every word until I cum , we did that 3 times , then we went to her pussy , using condoms I fucked her so hard the moans were higher , everything was perfect ,in the end I asked her to lick her body , licked pussy ,ass, boobs,then she sucked my cock until we sleeped ,all I know that she was dirty ,well before even having sex with her I knew she is an open minded woman , and a woman that looks that she donesnt know anything , but she knows everything, but never expected having sex with her ,well she was horny and that helped...but no one of us regretted that sex ever.. We still have sex from time to time ,and I started having sex with sex workers , joining threesomes..etc If u want pics of her text me.

Her orgasmic thoughts were thankfully absent in the movie so the movie was way better. Still bad enough that I just watched the first and passed the rest.

Unless you have a reading habit as such, you cannot read fast and comprehensively enough to not just process the words and sentences, but also to feel the phrase, sentence, paragraph, page or chapter as a whole.

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Sometimes, maybe you aren't good at English so you find it hard to read an English book, say, Game of Thrones, in its original format. So you buy a translated version in your mother tongue, say Tamil or Hindi (hypothetically).

But take one of his plays and make me a movie and I'd love to watch. I loved “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”as a movie more than the play all because of the writing style. I am used to reading proper prose in novels. Not the script of plays. So the movie worked better for me.

In the end, if nothing else, a movie is just a touch and earphones away. A book requires concentration. The lazier option is always more appealing.

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This is often a mindset. It can be acquired and often comes naturally to those who have a reading habit as such, but there are a number of people who do try and are unable to carry this conversion out effectively - maybe something to do with the creative/imaginative centres of the brain.

Many people just survive school and college just preparing their study material and do not have enough aptitude in any language to be able to read and comprehensively understand long texts.

So what you see on screen is fun, visually entertaining, well put-together as opposed to a novel that may have been tiring, boring and not well placed.

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But no one will have any problem in watching a dubbed version of GoT and all the titillating scenes in it are further incentive to brave through it effortlessly. No skill required.

Many people do not have a comprehensive vocabulary in any language required to sail through a literary work in it, leave alone the one which their material of interest is printed in. Not all of us will patiently read with a dictionary by our sides.

Granted that the examples I might be citing here are as such not great works, but bear with me.

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Many if not most, are in this category.

If you have to work too hard to get entertained, it may not appeal to you. And for some people, reading is too hard a work and watching a movie is simply easier.

So a novel may be less enjoyable for them.

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You'll not work to get something you can get by just paying for a Netflix subscription.

The novels? I picked up Eclipse, and a few sentences showing the various ruminations of Bella were enough to make me hate her already. I didn't attempt to read.

Twilight at least was somewhat decently written. The Grey series was not even good writing.

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Even if one has the skill, many people lack the ability to imagine and visualize the scenes portrayed in words, which dampens their novel experience. It's just a bunch of words to them.

Or the movie script may have taken the source material and derived its own form of storytelling, which may prove to be more interesting than the novel’s storytelling style.

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Very hard to do the above very enjoyable couple/group/friends activity with books.

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Netflix and chill is a thing:

Some translated books are just not good. Ponniyin Selvan is an example.

Reading a novel, especially a fictional novel with immense imagery, and enjoying it on par with or more than you'd enjoy a movie requires you to:

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I don't have the patience to read Shakespeare and visualize the story because of the old lyrical English therein. Not much for poetic/dramatic words.

There are some books that just…suck!

Imagery, sequence, suspense, emotions. Some authors may not be able to bring the story out the way a movie director could.

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Sometimes the production team of the movie is just better than the author of the novel, correspondingly:

Twilight was a fun watch - I suspended my brain and enjoyed the imaginary world.

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I didn't like the English translated version at all and I am not that good at literary Tamil to read the original.

Let's be frank. What is in fiction for us unless we are forced to study it at school?

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Turns out, the translation is not the slang you speak in real life but is a formal proper language and you suck at that as well.

A movie may have taken some creative license and given us a more feel good ending that is more appealing to audiences than the original book storyline.

Entertainment.

The Grey series was steamy but I was still able to focus on the actual story in the movies.

I gave up and enjoyed the movies, read the discussions on the original text and enjoyed it immensely.

There is an actual condition - aphantasia- wherein you lack the ability to imagine/visualise.

Because reading is WORK. Period.

Bella in the movies remained the eff shut up, so I could just use both my own imagination and enjoy the director’s vision.

Actually have some literary skill:

A story is just a sequence of events but storytelling involves a lot more. With words alone, it's already a handicap, but even there, not all authors are created the same.

How many of you found the Twilight franchise and 50 shades of Grey trilogy at least somewhat entertaining as movies? I did!

Have the ability to visualize:

The books, however, were insufferable. They were filled with “holy shit” and other moronic mind voices of the protagonist Anna. They effectively drowned out the story and I quit midway of 50 shades darker