Banks go through the discovery process as she would if she were conducting fieldwork in human language. In "Story of Your Life," not only do we learn the rules that govern each language, but we watch Dr. The story, therefore, is much more straightforward about the chronology of Louise's experiences-the fact that events in the future use the future tense and evens in the past use the past tense help to clarify this.Īnother difference between the film and the story is that the linguistic properties of Heptapod A and Heptapod B are examined in more depth in the story.
Until that moment, we assume that time in the movie works as we know it to work in our lives: sequentially, with one event coming after another. We do not know that this event is yet to come until later in the film, when we learn that Dr. In contrast, in the film, we are made to assume that Dr. Banks will narrate, is waiting in the future. The heptapods have visited in the past, and the daughter's life, which Dr. In other words, when we are reading the story, we know that in the present we are situated in the night Dr. I'd love to tell you the story of this evening, the night you're conceived" (91). In contrast, the novella tells us that we are situated in the present, and the context of that present, within the first few paragraphs of the story: "Right now your dad and I have been married for about two years, living on Ellis Avenue when we move out you'll still be too young to remember the house, but we'll show you pictures of it, show you stories about it. For example, the movie does not specify precisely when the present is. The movie adaption, directed by Denis Villeneuve, remains faithful to Chiang's story but adds elements that keep the plot of the movie moving. "Story of Your Life" works for a novella, but it might be too clunky for a movie poster. The most immediately apparent difference between the two works is their title-this is probably because Arrival has more marketing appeal. You may have been wondering about the difference between Chiang's novella, " Story of Your Life," and the movie that is based on the story, Arrival (2016).