I saw the film The Artist last week. If you’ve been shackled to a rock inside a cave on the moon, feel consumed with holiday madness, have better things to do, or for some other reason have yet to hear about this picture, here’s the trailer:
I love it for all the obvious reasons—it’s beautiful, smart, innovative, romantic, with stunning performances, beautiful music, fabulous costumes, the cutest terrier since Asta, the whole schmeer—but what has stuck with me is the theme: The need to reinvent oneself at a time of cataclysmic change.
Or, as we writers are apt to say at one point or another: Change or Die.
Publishing is going through a metamorphosis every bit as profound as what occurred in the film industry when talkies left the silents behind, or what happened in the music business a decade or more ago, when major labels jettisoned “mid-list” bands, and those bands had to find new ways to reach their audiences.
And it’s not just the turn to eBooks that heralds change. The very nature of the book itself in digital format opens up new possibilities—and requirements—that are mind-boggling. The ability to embed photos, sound, even video into a digital book means that all too soon mere text will not be enough—not just in non-fiction.
Or, put otherwise, in the immortal words of he band Scissors Sisters: You can’t see tits on the radio.
If a heightened experience is out there, demand will shift that direction like iron filings to a magnet. The mere book, with its beautiful prose its only singularity, will become an artifact, a luxury, a boutique item.
I know, I know, you’ve heard this all before. “There’s something unique to the written word,” I hear you say, “that can’t be duplicated in any other medium. One way or another, the book will survive.” Well, I’m no longer drinking that particular batch of KoolAid. Stories will survive, sure. But call it intuition, call it midnight dread, but I’ve met the ghost of writing future, and he’s not a patient man.
The book will evolve into something more like a digital version of graphic novels, TV episodes, films, or even games, and writers will need to team up with artists from other media just to remain competitive.
Games are of course the great narrative frontier, and once computerized characterization evolves to where game avatars can assume real personalities that players can meaningfully affect or even change, the whole notion of what storytelling means will utterly transform. Stories will no longer be something a storyteller dreams up, then shares with an audience. They will be interactive narratives storytellers and audiences mutually create.
I find this exhilarating and terrifying. A generally solitary soul, writing suits me not just professionally but personally. I’m not quite at the Hell-Is-Other-People end of the bar, but I spend a lot of days largely by my lonesome. There’s no way around it, that ain’t gonna cut it no mo. I’m going to have to adapt to the notion of working with a crew, in one form or another. And pronto. If I can find one.
Alexandra has written about how hard everyone she knows is working just to remain artistically viable. Stephen and Gar have also posted about the intense, scattershot demands they face professionally. Pari just this Monday talked about the need to reframe these new demands so they’re seen as adventurous opportunities, not terrifying or numbing obligations. Zoë has written about her whole shift to eBooks, and Phillipa and Alexandra have chimed in on that front as well.
Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the tectonic shifts in the world economy—don’t worry I’ll restrain myself.
The new annum dawns and the message is not just clear but loud, louder than ever: Change, Buckwheat, or die.
The Artist reminds us we’ve been here before, and some made it through the transition, others didn’t.
So Murderateros: I wonder—what have you changed this year, in order to remain in the game?
How confident do you feel you’ll survive, make the transition, land on your feet?
What new or secondary talents have you brought to the fore? Which others do you need to develop?
Do you feel like you’re keeping up, or are you slipping behind?
What scares you more: changing or dying?
* * * * *
Jukebox Heroes of the Week: I’m going to do a repeat, here, the live version of “Tits on the Radio.” I have a serious crush on Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters, and I hope I can muster half the energy in my work as she does in this number:
Happy New Year everyone! Boogie on, to Babylon and Beyond.
Best wishes for a grand, transformative 2012!
"The book will evolve into something more like a digital version of graphic novels, TV episodes, films, or even games, and writers will need to team up with artists from other media just to remain competitive."
Nice post, David. You make some interesting points. But I think there will always be a strong audience for stories told via narrative, i.e. good old fashioned books. Readers read. It's what we do. We crave a good story told well. The experience can't be improved with a bunch of bells and whistles. Movies didn't kill the book. TV, video games, etc. There's no reason to believe digital devices will either, IMO.
Of course everyone's been telling me to see THE ARTIST but I generally avoid trailers, so this one was a shock. No one told me this was a DANCE movie – I'll be there ASAP.
I didn't exactly say that everyone I know is working harder than ever to remain artistically viable. I said people I know who are making a LIVING as authors are the hardest working people I know. It was a productivity observation, not an artistic one.
I think I'm with Jude – I don't think traditional narrative will disappear – at least, I hope to god it won't, as a READER. The prime characteristic of a mainstream book or film or TV show is its LACK of interactivity. The author or storytellers do ALL THE WORK FOR YOU. They present a fully realized experience that you can just sit back and let wash over you.
The multimedia – thing -that you're describing is just too much work. For the READER/AUDIENCE. When I'm reading or viewing a story, I don't want to choose my own storylines, and I don't want anyone or anything disrupting my experience of the narrative.
Now, features akin to DVD extras, I'm all over that.
"Change, Buckwheat, or die."
My God, David, what a depressing post. I'm looking at all my museum pieces – upps, the books on my shelves – with a terrible sadness. So the days of pure fiction as we've known it are numbered? Reading a novel in the near future will be an experience somewhat akin to watching a TV show or a movie? That, by definition, a work of fiction will henceforth be a collaboration? Lights. Camera. Action.
As someone somewhere once said, Don't count me in. I read novels because it's a unique and intimate experience. A good story is an escape from this crazy, 24/7 world around us. A good writer takes me on a journey that enthralls me while I read. And now you say the days of having that experience, the reader alone with an exciting story, and just the story, are slipping away?
And what will you tell your students now? "Oh, by the way, guys, no point in applying all you've just learned here about story structure unless you can find someone to help out with the bells and whistles."
E-readers are a fact of life, and that's fine. Authors are making money from e-books. That's great. But the thought of e-books – novels – having sound and vision and (why not?) smell-orama, and, while you're at it, make you a great cup of coffee (cream and sugar optional) well…thanks, but no thanks.
Jude, Alex & Richard:
Well, as you know, I often like to take an extreme position to elicit a good hearty debate, but this time I seem to have deflated the room. Which in itself is interesting.
I think secretly we all fear this — that the mainstream players with their megabucks will force this change because they can. It's an advantage they have over the smaller players, and sooner or later the economies of scale will turn the tide. My house is full of books, and I was reading philosophy last night, something I don't expect to get too many bells and whistles in eReader format — though who knows, maybe those books will begin to resemble online lectures, with video in conjunction with the text. (I'm feeling pressure from my agent to do this with my upcoming book on character.)
I think Alex has a good point — there may well be Extra Features, and eBooks with those will be priced accordingly (he says hopefully).
As for teaching — Richard, believe me, my heart sags every time I teach a class, wondering if I'm not giving perfectly good instruction on how to make a silent movie–or write sonnets. And yet as everyone has pointed out, including me, stories won't die out. But the story delivery system we've grown up with is under extreme pressure, and I think we need to see that, accept its limitations, embrace its possibilities — and stay light on our feet.
Which is a nice segue to: Alex, THE ARTIST isn't a dance movie per se, but there are some wonderful dance sequences.
Alex:
One other thing — I liked your point about wanting to have the story wash over you. And yet I fear that may take the form of an audio-visual delivery instead of mere text.
I don't know, maybe I'm playing Cassandra here, but the number of pure readers, unless I'm mistaken, isn't going up, and hasn't been for a while. Sooner or later a trend ain't a trend. It's the past.
First of all, I HAVE been living under a rock apparently, because I knew nothing about THE ARTIST. That trailer looks awesome, however. Is the film really entirely silent? Man, that's ballsy. I give the director kudos for that. And black & white, to top it all off. I can just hear the pitch at the studio – "Yes, silent AND black-and-white!" Producer – "Okay, but I want tits all over the thing."
What you speak of Davie-Boy is what's been tearing me apart for a couple years now. I just got in the game – two books published traditionally, hardback to trade to mass market paperback, when the shit came down. I think my post this week is going to be about motivation – motivation for my characters and motivation for myself. I simply find it hard to be motivated to write the great novel now, when I don't know its future. I don't want to see the novel as we've known it for, what a few hundred years or so, disappear. Sometimes I think we're just in a phase, like Sense-Around was to earthquake movies, and that the great tradition of written novels will remain in the background, to return in full-force in fifty years. There is a true and separate art to a novel that cannot be duplicated in a graphic-novel video-embedded on-line game. As a screenwriter, I am comfortable with the collaboration process – I understand it and I am probably better prepared than most to make this transformation. But the reason I love the novel is that I don't have to collaborate, I don't have to homogenize.
Regardless, this question continues to keep me up at night.
Well, one reason I'm so skeptical is I can remember sometime in the late 90s, when I first started screenwriting, interactive movies were supposed to be the next big thing.
Ever seen one? That's because the only couple that were made tanked big time. Moviegoers didn't WANT to choose. They wanted to be spoon fed. I want to be spoon fed.
Another example, I wrote last week about my binge on the TV series THE WALKING DEAD. Well, after I finished watching I wanted more and was moved to check out the webisodes on AMC's site. Never again. They were boring, cheaply made, and took too long to download. I'll wait for the series to start up again, in all its traditional TV gory. I mean, glory.
Actually, from what I read, numbers of readers ARE going up with e readers. Not hugely. But the reading populace has never been huge – it's a tiny fraction – but devoted tiny fraction- of the general public.
Stephen: Cracked me up with this: "Yes, silent AND black-and-white!" Producer – "Okay, but I want tits all over the thing."
Ahem. Well, don't we all. (Even on the radio!) To the filmmakers' inestimable credit, they cast a woman with a suitably flapper physique — and she's stunning.
As for the novel — I know, I know. I feel like just as I'm learning my craft, the room is emptying. I caught exactly the wrong train. But the novel itself keeps evolving. Milan Kundera returned to the example of Diderot, who rejected the realism that typified especially the British novel (and which became the norm). Modernism, Postmodernism, the novel itself is hardly static, and will evolve again. It may include some of the innovations I've suggested, or as Alex proposes, those "innovations" will get tried and discarded because they miss the point.
But I think interactivity can't work in a movie house setting. It's a computer terminal thing, you in your cave, communicating with anonymous players who became companions solely through the shared narrative — and yes, like a lot of tech innovations, it'll get embraced first by porn.
No, we all don't.
Alex: Yes, I know, I was thinking more broadly, as in: Don't we all want what we want, lots of it, and all the time.
Point taken, however.
"I just got in the game – two books published traditionally, hardback to trade to mass market paperback, when the shit came down."
The novel is alive and well; hardback and trade and mm paperback are not.
Ebook sales are booming, and they'll keep booming as long as there are people who love to read. In other words, forever. No bells and whistles required.
Great, provocative post, David. I love reading. I read pretty constantly. And although I like surfing the web, one of the things that drives me crazy about it is all the pop-ups and ads and constant distractions. Interactivity is great to a point, and then, yes, it's just distraction. My brain works best when I can focus, but I don't know if that's true with younger generations. I do think that modern technology is changing the way our brains work, problem-solve, or view the world.
I think some of the changes you discussed will become part of a new norm (as electronic readers seem to be becoming), but I think people will still want to be able to eliminate many of the distractions if possible and just focus on the text. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I do love the fact that modern blog posts can use visual and video clips, but when they are overused I don't bother reading through the whole thing. In a novel, I think this could be even more true. A little might help illustrate the plot, too much might be a turn-off.
I was thinking of getting myself a Samsung tablet or something like it for Christmas, but after talking to people about their I-pads and tablets and looking at some of the things my friends have, I've come to the conclusion they are an expensive toy. I think it's difficult and rare to be able to actually do any work on one. I guess my point is that the latest technology is great for some. But if I want to use my imagination to its fullest, accomplish anything of any worth, or focus with intensity, I like to eliminate all the distractions of the latest, greatest technology and go back to the printed word which always gives me the freedom to think through what I'm reading, put imagination and brain-power to work, look for the underlying meanings, and enjoy the beauty of the language. And that is difficult to accomplish when visuals force the images on the reader. It's like when you read a book and then watch the movie – the characters rarely look like what you imagined when you were reading, and a lot of times the movie doesn't capture what you thought was important about the book, the themes, the plot, or the characters. I tend to think that people will always want to create these ideas in their own minds as they read, not have the images or links or video clips directing the imagination in places it might not otherwise go. Does that make sense?
From Gordon Harries in Manchester, UK, who couldn’t post (as you’ll read):
Just read your latest column (which should have been entitled: “Once more, dear friends, into the abyss.”) In fact, tried to post this over there, but it again wouldn’t let me. That bastard site hates me.
A couple of years back a book was published that charted the course of 20th century music (called, I believe. ‘The Rest Is Noise’) and the author’s been trying for years to get a soundtrack to go along with the digital edition, so you could play the piece/sample and access footnotes via hyperlink. But the fiscal cost he/his publishers would occur by marrying themselves to specific pieces would have been immense.
Clearly, that’s got to change and hopefully change without publishers resorting to doing cover versions of songs because it’s too expensive to get the actual tune. (a friend of mine has a boardgame where you have to identify the tune and they’ve done just that, it always hits the ear wrong.) I keep thinking EMI or someone might get into the eBook game, become a multi-media house. Not to get all conspiritorial but it’s not like, when you trace it back, a lot of these companies aren’t all part of the same family anyway.
I hope it works out the way you envision anyway. I always think the type of music I like is ‘Immersive’, rather than bound by genre –although clearly I have a fondness/weakness—for downtempo/moody, murky, intense soundscapes—by which I mean I can just strap on my headphones and lose myself. I see no reason you couldn’t do the same for a book like CLOCKERS or THE CUT –particularly if you could make the music sound diegetic, but also if you could include ambient street sounds.
Given that TV has taken a turn towards the ‘novelistic’ (at least what’s commonly considered it’s best shows have) and novelists –at least over here—have been eager to express an appreciation of that– I keep expecting some A-lister to release a book serially at a rate of a chapter a week for 12-13 weeks and charge either individual incriments or a ‘boxset’ price upfront.
Interesting times.
Incidentilly, I first came across you was via an interview that was, I think, just after DONE FOR A DIME was published in PPBK (it must have been, because what prompted the google search that brought me to that was George Pelecanos’ review of Redhead.) Anyway, have you considered including a character dossier –which you mentioned in the interview—in the digital edition of the book? Or a retrospective essay about crafting the book or what you’d do differently now? Perhaps it’s just me, but I love process stuff and it could serve as a kind of advertisment for the book on writing.
I don’t know if you read the Reed Farrell Coleman reissues from Busted Flush Press, but he’s got these really interesting essays in the back of each one about where he was at when he was writing them and what his intent was with each volume. I just find that stuff fascinating.
Jude: I hope you're right, and I suspect you are, but I like playing the contrarian to get the juices going. As I said, I can see these things happening at the megaseller end, and they may or may not raise the bar for all authors. The book may remain an inexpensive alternative — but that may also mean less money to pay writers. I don't know — and anybody who says he does know is lying.
Jenni: I'm the same way. I want to concentrate on the text — which also means intuiting the subtext, the "thing beneath the thing" — and the more distracted you become, the less possible that is.
The book embraces a quality not much revered these days — quietude. To the extent people prize reflection, insight, and silence, the book will continue to thrive.
One wonders, is all I'm saying.
I'm not in denial about the uncertain future of the novel, as we know it. But I remain skeptical that people won't be reading plain ol' books, with nothing to offer but text, for decades to come, and in respectable numbers. Why? Because the beauty of the novel is that TEXT IS ALL IT OFFERS, and sometimes that's all you want. Part of the reason radio isn't dead is that it's NOT TV; when I want sound but no picture, radio's the ticket. Would most listeners convert their favorite radio show to television if they could? I doubt it. That would be like adding wings to fish. Fish don't need wings to fly and radio doesn't need visuals to entertain and inform.
When I sit in a hammock under a tree, I want to read a book. I don't want to watch a story, listen to a story, or click on hyperlinks to view "additional content" relevant to a story. I WANT TO READ A STORY. The only thing DESIGNED to give me such a blissfully limited experience is a book.
I suspect there will always be a decent market for such an old-fashioned (and relatively economical) way to be entertained.
Gar:
I think that's the most eloquent case made so far. My only qualification is to paraphrase one of my fave lines from CASABLANCA: The wants of readers like you and me don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Maybe I've been paying too much attention to politics, but my faith in human reason and basic common sense has pretty much flown out the window. Novelty for novelty's sake leads the parade, and if you don't like it, they'll ram it down your throat.
God I hope I'm wrong about that, and suspect I am. The holiday gloom descends, and I search for the red button.
As for radio shows on TV — did you hear that the NPR show Wait Wait, Don't Tell me is going to head for PBS in a TV format? The charm of the show is it's being on radio. Sigh …
I wish I could be eloquent like Gar and make a good case for the long-haul story where readers live by immersion in the space your mind created for them. I can't. So I made an ineloquent list instead.
Storytellers told stories.
Then someone wrote them down.
Then someone printed them.
Then someone sold them.
Then someone filmed them.
Then someone added sound.
Then someone put them in a box.
Storytellers still tell stories.
Reine:
My only disagreement is whether those of us who prefer the solitary immersion and imaginative engagement of the printed word — not to mention the sensual enjoyment of a physical book — will continue to provide enough of a market for the book as we know it. I think the eBook provides an opportunity to reach writers directly, and that will help maintain a market and an opportunity for writers, but it can also raise expectations of bells and whistles that "mere" prose doesn't bring to the table. I foresee that having an impact — how much, I have no clue.
Hi David,
I agree there will be a huge influence, just not one that will eliminate the novel. Yes, I think the holdable, feelable, wonderful book might go. That is certainly possible. But I think interactive fiction — something I first discovered with my children on a 128K Mac in 1984 when they voted to forgo a vacation in favor of having a computer in the house — will continue to develop in beautiful ways . . . more like a different experience altogether. More like TV beside films, not instead of. And films beside books, not instead of. And TV beside radio, not instead of. It will be a new thing beside books, not instead of.
Reine:
I hope you're right. But then I think of portraiture, or realism of any kind in painting. Photography pretty much wiped it out. Painting turned to the texture of the paint, its physical reality, not its representational abilities. If this happens in prose, we may return to oral storytelling — which wouldn't be all bad, if one has the voice for it.
All in all, I think there are more opportunities that not, and I only prophesied doom because I'm a stinker.
Well, we know you're a stinker, David. Isn't that why we love you? You are good for our universal soul?
Pari, thank you for the mucho way lots better Captcha!
I will not presume to know if I'm loved or not, Reine, or in either instance why. But if I'm loved because I'm a stinker, I guess I'm in luck. 🙂
David, thank you for that trailer. Apparently my shackles are more restricting than even I realized. I need to get out more. I'll put in a request.
It's late and my thoughts are scattered. Disjointed. I ramble when I'm tired. You've been warned.
We need stories. For entertainment and for understanding and for catharsis and for… everything. I don't see that changing. What I do see changing is the connection readers feel to storytellers. I think they want to be part of the process, to get a glimpse of what's going on behind the scenes while a book is being written. To make the whole thing seem somehow more personal and intimate. Like seeing the outtakes while they're happening, rather than as extra content after the story.
But once it's time to read the story itself… no distractions. I really don't believe that anything that interferes with a story in progress is going to survive more than novelty status. It's just fucking irritating.
It reminds me of cooking a big meal for the holidays. Everyone congregates in the kitchen while you're cooking. Some offer to help, but mostly everyone just wants to hang out and chat while you're making food magic. And then everyone sits down at the table to enjoy the feast and it somehow tastes better because you were there during the preparation. Totally different from if you pulled a pre-made pan of lasagna out of the fridge and popped it in the oven for an hour. That's… soulless. But no one wants to stop in mid-bite and hear a commercial for corn starch or listen to five different ways to steam asparagus. Being part of the process is different from having the process paraded in front of you while you're enjoying the result. Does that even make sense? It's late, probably I should go to bed.
One more tangent. But only because I'm tired. To me, the stubborn love for stories in print form seems rather Pavlovian. No one carries around a favourite tome of bound pages with nothing written on them. No one "loves" a book of blank pages. Seriously, would anyone love the smell and heft and texture of pages with no words written on them? Really? No. Readers love the stories and the words they associate with those pages. Erase the words, and what is left to love? We once loved stories in spoken form, because that's all we knew. That changed and then we loved paper. Now things are changing again to a digital form. What hasn't changed is the art of storytelling, the need some of us have to tell stories. What hasn't changed is the need to hear stories. If technology can enhance that connection between storyteller and listener, then it's all good. If it gets in the way, it's just a nuisance. And it won't survive.
Storytellers who connect with readers, in whatever format, will always survive. Always. It's part of the story.
KD:
Sorry I didn't get back to you until this morning. I've become an early to bed early to rise kinda guy with a deadline coming at me like a freight train.
I think your kitchen analogy is one of the most compelling of the day, especially because it captures well the distinct pleasures of two different parts of the process (or at least knowing about them). I'm frankly amazed how many people like knowing about how a book was put together. Christ, if I only knew. But I get that this may be an additional bell or whistle down the road, an embedded "interview with the author" concerning how he came up with his ideas for the book.
I agree, most people don't want embeds or marginalia or footnotes as they read fiction — though it worked well in THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO and I hear the new Josh Bazell novel has them as well. It's kind of a postmodern wink at the reader, and if used with humor can be a plus — but teh thread of the story gets broken, no doubt about it.
And as everyone has noted, and I don't dispute, people want stories. This is part of human nature, and I think it has both rewarding and troubling aspects to it. We subconsciously interpret the world in terms of story, and when we're told stories there is an intimate bond like no other.
But the dark side of this is real too. "Defining the narrative frame" for example has become the chief way politicians and advertisers figure out how best to manipulate, misinform and just plain lie to people, playing on their intrinsic love of story and in particular certain memes (oh, that word makes my skin crawl) the culture finds particularly compelling. The house on the hill, the free man pulling himself up form the bootstraps, the barbarians at the gate, the out-of-touch elite.
My main point in the post is merely that the intensity and immediacy of visual media especially, and particularly when combined with sound — voices, music, ambient noise — and the fact that digital books offer a way of providing those, means the book may change as we know it, or a type of new book may emerge which puts additional pressure on mere prose and the writers who provide it.
And yet, as you say, it's not the medium but the content that matters. People don't love the texture of empty books. But people love to be told stories, and as successful as audio books have become, I'm still a little intrigued by why they haven't been even bigger. We love being read to as children, but grow impatient with it as adults. or maybe something else is at play. But I think most people listen to audio books during long commutes, or other entrapments. (I too am rambling, and I can't blame fatigue.)
Thanks for the kitchen image. It warmed my heart, seriously. Have a great new year.
David,
Sorry to be late to the party. I've thought about this quite a bit. And I guess I fall into the group that thinks that reading books — the written word w/o the bells and whistles — will continue as well as the development of all of those bells and whistles.
The written word allows for us to imagine. The minute you put pictures in or embed interviews with the author into the text ("Here's what I was thinking when I wrote this section . . . ") or whatever, you steal the opportunity to make someone else's work ours. I don't think people who truly love to read will give that up easily.
A lot of what you're suggesting sounds very familiar. Some 25 year ago, I recall an enthusiastic article about "hypertexting". How having links in the text would allow side trips to photos and separate biographies and anything. The author was practically dribbling down his leg at how writing would become radical and more informative and less linear and…
Well, 25 years later, redirecting links are part and parcel of the web, but only in fact articles. The more the blogger or op-ed writer or author wants the reader's attention, the fewer links will be in the text.
Anyway, I think your fear is misplaced. I don't think books will become multimedia presentations because those niches are already filled. A book with all the visuals and sounds is a "movie" or a "comic book" or a "game". As a creative chap, I've worked on all of the above, to varying degrees. The fear for me is whether books (words in a row) will become extinct.
Murray: Thanks for chiming in. I happen to agree with you, and I was taking something of an extreme position to encourage a lively debate.
I do think as the technology gets better the embeds will get more interesting — and more mandatory. I'm actually intrigued by the whole mutually created story idea. But I fear writers being priced out of their markets, having always to compete against megabucks stars for the attention of not just audiences but editors.
But I too don't think books will disappear, for reasons I'm going to raise in my next post — and I might even use your concluding remark as a launching point.
Thanks again, and happy new year!