“The book was better” always gets thrown around when readers compare a movie to its novel counterpart. And I admit that, with few exceptions, the novel version is superior. The reasons for this are many. Transitioning a story from one medium to another is often like translating a pun into another language. What works in print doesn’t work on the screen. Each reader imagines an event differently and focuses their attention on varying plot details. A book contains a richness of information that a two-hour film simply cannot convey. Perhaps most importantly, the written medium delves into the protagonist’s mind like no other medium can. There’s probably no better example of this than Stephen King’s Misery, the epitome of the expression, “The book was better.”
Misery is one of those rare books I didn’t want to stop reading. Much more than the simple psychological/body horror the movie conveys, Misery is a tale of addiction, mental illness, and the writer’s struggle.
The Art of Storytelling 
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