Where's it all going?

[Lifelongdagger]

At the moment I am reading 'Moby Dick'. It's great, I mean it really feels like I'm aboard that vessel with Ishmael and Queequog, and then BAM. I'm taken way out the story and given a twelve page lecture on the biology of whales. Considering each preceding chapter is about three pages long, this is quite a detour.

My point is this. Melville got away with it. As did Dickens spending eight pages describing a room, and Dan Brown . . . you get my point.

They all got away with it. The 'rules' at the time catered for their prose.

'The rules' change. Nowadays we are encouraged to 'show not tell', restrict adverbs, adjectives, etc. So where is it all leading?

And what about genre? Will there be more fantasy, more sci-fi? Less chick-lit and more macho war stuff?

In this computerised, televisual age, what will the future best-sellers look like?

[Renee Collins]

It's hard to say. I imagine that in this world of instant images and instant gratification, stories will have to be more and more fast paced. More like a movie, if that makes sense. However I think that change comes gradually, and there will still be room for long, pondering stories for years to come.

[Kitty Pryde]

At the moment I am reading 'Moby Dick'. It's great, I mean it really feels like I'm aboard that vessel with Ishmael and Queequog, and then BAM. I'm taken way out the story and given a twelve page lecture on the biology of whales. Considering each preceding chapter is about three pages long, this is quite a detour.

My point is this. Melville got away with it. As did Dickens spending eight pages describing a room, and Dan Brown . . . you get my point.

They all got away with it. The 'rules' at the time catered for their prose.

'The rules' change. Nowadays we are encouraged to 'show not tell', restrict adverbs, adjectives, etc. So where is it all leading?


There's a rule which supercedes 'show, don't tell'. And it's called, 'If it works, use it.' There are PLENTY of current bestselling authors who leave massive steaming infodumps all over their novel, and we love them anyway. The 'show, don't tell' rule is there, I think, to stop noobs (like me!) from one variety of lousy writing.

[RedScylla]

My point is this. Melville got away with it. As did Dickens spending eight pages describing a room, and Dan Brown . . . you get my point.


I would argue that Melville didn't really get away with it, then. His publisher may have been willing to let it ride, but if it yanked you out of the story, he didn't get away with anything. As a reader, you called him on it. The "rules" of writing are self-punishing laws, and they change because each reader makes them up. When large groups of readers develop the same rules, writers tend to follow them. That's how it happens. The readers who were perhaps enamored of twelve page excursus on whales, they're all dead.

[Phaeal]

I believe I am the only surviving human who likes the "Cetology" chapter in Moby Dick. I've even forgiven him for calling whales "fish."

Long and complex, short and sparse, I like it all. And I give readers more credit than to suppose they can no longer read anything that doesn't gallop along. Hell, even comic books are getting more complex and rich, evolving into graphic novels (V for Vendetta, Watchmen).

For that matter, the best in film is getting longer and more complex. The best TV series are not nonstop action. Rewatching Battlestar Galactica, I'm amazed at how often the camera slows down to follow the evolving emotions in the actors' faces, how often the focus is on what's being said, not what's exploding. The complex comic Watchmen has become a complex movie. Ditto V.

A book as long and complex (and intentionally 19th century in style) as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell hit both the NYT and Amazon lists big time, has been through many printings, has been optioned for film for a "seven figure" sum, and has won awards ranging from Time's Novel of the Year to the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, the British Book Award. It was even longlisted for the Man Booker. Critical and popular success. Tasty combo.

So, yeah, the long and complex will still be with us. I'm waiting for that Strange and Norrell sequel, for one thing. ;)

[Krintar]

It's hard to say. I imagine that in this world of instant images and instant gratification, stories will have to be more and more fast paced. More like a movie, if that makes sense. However I think that change comes gradually, and there will still be room for long, pondering stories for years to come.
I disagree. We can get a movie from watching a movie; books fill a completely different narrative void, and if they become too much like the films then "I'll just wait for the movie" will be not only valid, but also an increasingly common occurrence among those who used to find the books infinitely better. That would be terrible for the industry, so I can't imagine it happening.

[Exir]

Can't we argue that in such an age of instant-gratification and non-stop action, we would seek such rare moments of introspection and calmness even more? Can't we argue that, because we are immersed in a world of fast-paced action, when we have a chance to escape into a fictional world we would seek something different?


A book as long and complex (and intentionally 19th century in style) as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell hit both the NYT and Amazon lists big time, has been through many printings, has been optioned for film for a "seven figure" sum, and has won awards ranging from Time's Novel of the Year to the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, the British Book Award. It was even longlisted for the Man Booker. Critical and popular success. Tasty combo.

True. Stephanie Meyer and Dan Brown isn't the only thing people read, ya know...

[blacbird]

At the moment I am reading 'Moby Dick'. It's great, I mean it really feels like I'm aboard that vessel with Ishmael and Queequog, and then BAM. I'm taken way out the story and given a twelve page lecture on the biology of whales. Considering each preceding chapter is about three pages long, this is quite a detour.

My point is this. Melville got away with it.

Actually, he didn't. Moby Dick was a horrendous failure in terms of sales, and it had followed other failures by Melville (Mardi, for instance). Melville's first two novels, Typee and its sequel, Omoo were great successes, received as straightforward exotic adventure tales. His publication success after that plummeted, and never recovered during his lifetime. His reputation was revived only in the early 20th century, especially following the posthumous publication of Billy Budd.

But in terms of Moby, it seems that Melville's contemporary audience was as much put off by the lectures on whales as you are. I'm not a big fan of it, either.

caw

[Renee Collins]

I disagree. We can get a movie from watching a movie; books fill a completely different narrative void, and if they become too much like the films then "I'll just wait for the movie" will be not only valid, but also an increasingly common occurrence among those who used to find the books infinitely better. That would be terrible for the industry, so I can't imagine it happening.

I'm not saying that I think that's they way they should go, but a lot of popular fiction already is headed in that direction. In fact I came across a book on writing where the entire theme was how to write a book that was more like a movie.

IMO, it's heading in that direction, slowly, for better or for worse.

[Phaeal]

Sometimes the movie or show is better than the book. Even that seeming condemnation of the flickering screen, Fahrenheit 451, acknowledges that film can be as rich and complex, as full of life, as the printed page.

The advantage the writer has over the film maker is that the writer gets to be scriptwriter, director, producer, casting agent, set designer, costumer, editor, stunt man, dialogue coach, etc., etc., all in one person. Heh, that can also be a disadvantage.

[RG570]

I don't see any relation between book and film. Just because you can make one into the other doesn't mean one is more important or going to be the sole medium.

A lot of people still read difficult literature, or at least books that are more than just delivery systems for a fun story. They always will,until 100 percent privatization of every school system in the world happens, at which point education will become training centres for profit extraction and not really education. But I think that's a few years off.

People are way too quick to invoke the "language is evolving" card and assume that any change/fad is evolution and permanent. Like the cellphone thing--that won't have any affect on real language, just as every other type of slang/dialect has not fundamentally changed the official version.

I think we have to give readers a bit more credit than this. Just because once every two or three years Dan Brown puts out a junky cinematic thriller that sells billions doesn't mean every other book published has to follow suit, or that this is all anyone wants to read.