As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to write books. I grew up surrounded by books and always feel like I’m coming home when I enter a bookstore. I’m sad that I’ve come of age as the publishing industry is falling apart and reading as a past-time is plummeting.
This is part of the reason why I’ve chosen to focus on screenwriting. (The other part being that my brain is well-wired for the creative and structural challenges of screenwriting.) And yet, as I pursue that career, the film industry is struggling, too. Video games are booming, technology is leapfrogging and tastes are shifting. I imagine video games will eventually conquer the action/adventure, thriller/mystery, western and sci-fi/horror markets. What’s the point of watching AVATAR when you can experience it? Why watch a CSI team when you can join one?
People will still want stories filled with romance, comedy and drama. (My niche — family-friendly action comedies — should fare alright.) But these already play fine on the small screen. In some cases, maybe even better.
Of course, the TV and the computer and the Internet will soon merge. It will all become multimedia content, on demand, anywhere. Will this free content to take the form and length best suited for it, or will our entropic attention spans reduce everything to clips and soundbites?
Where does the lowly book fit into this?
Much of fine art has become decoration. Classical music, background music. But literature, being a time consuming and highly-involved experience, doesn’t have this type of fall back. Novels take time and attention and diligence, and these are disappearing commodities. Will the next generation, for whom email is too slow, take the time to enjoy the sublime magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or rich naturalism of Emile Zola?
Sure, reading (and thus writing) will always be a major part of the web. But this isn’t art. (One saving grace in this new media order is that talent will matter. Quality writing will even become more of a competitive advantage just as quality design, another tool for navigating this informational overload, is fast becoming essential.)
Perhaps a new type of literature will emerge. One loyal to the art of writing but attuned to the interconnected, interactive nature of the web. What would it look like? Will we see a resurgence in the serialized novel? Will flash fiction blossom? Some new form? I hope so. I have a lot of stories to tell, and it would be a shame if everyone was too distracted to listen.
And I hope that books live on, too. Niche products for aficionados with the necessary passion and devotion. Books can become the vinyl of the publishing industry. Just not the 8-tracks.
