Special effects weren't invented in movies, rather in a novel writer's imagination. These ideas weren't able to be made into a visual story so they were written down by a novelist and put into books. These were dynamic special effects that are different for each reader which puts them above the possibilities of a movie.

In a movie these days it sticks out to use computer graphics to make points a novelist can make elegantly. Those details might best be left on pages though they can be rendered to film.

Metaphorical Descriptions

Walking on the sidewalk a character may remark that after the rain the street glimmered like a black sequin gown. This is an interesting detail that tells you something about what the character thinks about and gives an idea of what the setting is like. In a movie you can make the street glimmer but to make the street look like a black sequin gown would require cartoon-like techniques that would be a strong stylistic statement that wouldn't fit many films.

Metaphorical Characterizations

A man a character is introduced to may be said to have a beak. We know this means his nose resembles a bird's beak. We don't expect him to be able to feed hatchlings with it. This detail tells you something of the narrator or character that made the observation as well as an indication of what the nose really looks like. To get the same effect in film you could morph the nose into a bird beak and then back to the original nose but that is such a striking image that it can take the style of a movie in a drastically different direction. A novel can casually make statements like this but a movie cannot.

Metaphorical Action

If a housewife hosting a party fluttered about the room like a hummingbird in a novel it means she was busy and never at rest attending to her guests. This tells you something about the housewife and her desire to please and something about the observer and his or her mindset. It's a comedic detail that also gives us greater insight into characters. To get the same idea across in a film would require a scene where she would be moving in a sped-up motion with wings attached to her, maybe even feeding from a hummingbird feeder. This scene would likely jarringly change the character of the movie along the way.

Metaphorical Summary

Once the housewife declared the party over, the narrator could contend that it was like someone yelled "fire". That's how fast the guests left. To tell these details in a movie would require including a juxtaposed scene that is the fanciful interpretation followed by the what really happened. The problem would be this would stick out if it wasn't a convention in the movie and one of many instances in the same vein.

Novels have so many words in them that a few can be thrown in and not unsettle the whole. These words may evoke an image in the reader's mind that lasts ten seconds but the impression is still the five words that is took to read it: "The house burned all night." This is a short sentence but to communicate it on film would take longer and since a film is shorter than a book it would seem too important. Some details belong in a book even though they can be accurately portrayed on screen, choose carefully.