How would you like your story?
Posted on 09. Jun, 2009 by Chris Matney in Book Publishing, Front Page Posts
After three foggy days in Lyons, I can finally see blue sky peeking out – my windows are open and the anticipation of sunshine is palpable. Over the last few grey days, I have been immersed in what seems like two dichotomous tasks. First, I finished reading a couple of new manuscripts last night – one of which is promising and the other is good but not my cup of tea. Both, however, reminded me of the importance of good storytelling – how fundamental it is to the human psyche. I felt very satisfied to have shared in two tales well told.
On the other side, I have been actively working on the technology nuts and bolts of my social network website – fixing a problem with my Twitter feed and getting my Facebook blog to post to the right area of my profile. The potential for the social network is huge, but its construction must be done with some thought. I had, however, been considering this task as primarily a feed for the Trapdoor Book community – a way to get like-minded folks together and talking. Now, I am thinking that social networks might have a more intimate role in the long-term fate of books.
I’m not sure that I agree with Bruce Sterling in his recent Wired blog on the Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature who argues, “Algorithms and social media [are] replacing work of editors and publishing houses; network socially-generated texts [are] replacing individually-authored texts.” The distinction between professionally-edited work and the raw output of writers is pretty profound. Even in my own technical writing, I would never consider publishing an article without having my favorite editor polish it to a shine. And, I’m not sure that the craft of writing is really very collaborative – rather it seems to be much more introspective and solitary. There are a few exceptions, but I don’t think that the basic writing craft is going to change drastically after two thousand years.
What I do agree with is some of his challenges for the commercial publishing industry as it stands now. In fact, many of his points are really arguments against the way literature is marketed and sold. “Media conglomerates have poor business model; economically rationalized ‘culture industry’ is actively hostile to vital aspects of humane culture.” I agree. Books shouldn’t be “scrubbed” just to sell a few more copies – a good story is a good story – but small presses are going to force a change in traditional sales and marketing practices. Readers and the social network must control the distribution – in my mind – not the business model artifices of a few major publishers.
So, the social network then becomes the driver of the distribution of books – paper, electronic, audio, or otherwise. How would you like your story?
3 Responses to “How would you like your story?”
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Of course storytelling involves both a storyteller and an audience. A good storyteller engages the audience with much more than a simple linear text. The storyteller can tell when the audience is engaged, or when it is time to ratchet up the drama, or slow down the delivery, or even modify the story mid-stream.
On our long car trip on last Sunday and Monday, we listened to Ursula Le Guin’s “Gifts” on CD. It was a good tale, well told, and pretty well read. (We all hated the ending, which was too pat and happily-ever-after, but that is beside the point). It was, however, just a linear narrative and had Ms. Le Guin been there telling it to us, I suspect that parts would have been abbreviated, and others elaborated as our interests clearly waxed and waned.
A published novel sets a story into a “final” version which never changes, whereas storytelling, by its nature, allows for, or even demands, change. I suppose there have been attempts to incorporate this idea into print media with books having alternative endings depending upon choices that the reader makes mid-narrative, but this is a pretty pale reflection of real storytelling.
I guess the point here is that I don’t think we should conflate “social texts” as Mr. Sterling calls them with written narratives, not just because one is created through a commnal and one through a solitary process, but rather because they serve very different purposes.
I agree with you, in general, about scrubbed books. There will always be a market for generic thrillers, generic mysteries, generic romances, etc. as they provide a comfortable (and sometimes enjoyable) way of tuning out the world. But they don’t challenge the reader to do much thinking, and they don’t inspire one to recommend them to friends. These are the books that we leave in the pocket of the seat in front of us because we don’t see the value in hauling them home. What I hope Trapdoor can provide are books that we don’t want to leave on the airplane and that we would recommend to a friend. For this, I think you will need editors, and proof-readers, and all of those other niceties that are not part of socially-generated texts.
Interesting thoughts about storytelling. This might change once electronic readers can text-to-voice in a way that people want to listen to for hours at a time.
As to the torrent of information, yeah, in the consulting world, we call this drinking from the firehose.
Right now, the battle is being fought on one front by the search engines. There is a mad scramble to be on top, although there is no validation as to the value of the sites that come up on the first page of the search. It will be interesting to see if Next Gen search engines do any better job finding sites with valuable content.
On the publishing side, the value of a small press is that it attracts niche readers who can trust the books that get published will be interesting, etc. This is mostly driven by comments by like-minded readers which provide a better guage of value than the generic comments you might read on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com.
I tend to agree with you, Chris. It seems to me that algorithms and social media are more likely to replace face-to-face storytelling than they are to replace properly edited fiction. I would argue that the sitting-around-the-campfire or communal coffee house experiences are in greater danger of going extinct. When I visit coffee shops, more and more often I see one person per table checking email or doing Facebook (is “facebooking” a word yet?) and not talking to other humans. I see my kids and their friends sitting in groups, each kid staring at an individual screens. Much social media is simply reformulated gossip. There is a big difference between reading a blog, even a well-written one, and a crafted story that has undergone the editiorial process.
To my mind, the challenge belongs to the reader. With a torrent of information available through electronic and print media, how can you hope to find the small streams of worthwhile communication?