On-screen Reading
Love the comments...Underland is positioning itself as an in print, online publisher. I'd like for the content Underland publishes in book form to be available in other forms as well: on-screen reading, online reading, podcasts, web serials, etc. On our web site now, we're doing a project called a wovel, or web novel. The idea is to combine the creativity of fiction with the pace of print journalism with the interactivity of web 2.0.Every week an author writes an installment. At the end of every installment is a binary plot branch point, with a vote button at the end: A or B. Is the box empty, or is it filled with bees? Readers vote, the author gets the results. Voting closes on Thursday, the author writes over the weekend, and a new installment is posted on Monday. Every Monday, rain or shine.Look at the wovel here. Listen to the NPR article about it here.I can tell you more about Underland's experience with the wovel--the types of stories (action based), the results (growing readership), how many readers we're getting (about 16,000 page views a month), and how we're making it work financially (online sales of print books). But, in response to some of the comments on my previous posts, I'd like to offer some thoughts about on-screen fiction, cause that's where the interesting creative frontier is, now.Some thoughts about online fiction:Books (lets just say stories) are made of words organized into units of meaning. Those units are displayed, traditionally, with ink on paper. This is a pleasing and elegant display, and it has worked for thousands of years.There are other ways to display the units, though. A computer screen is one of them. A Kindle screen or iphone screen are others. (Self evident, yes, but go with me a little more...)There's a compelling argument that holds that the way the story is told is dependent partly on the way the story is displayed. Ie: a novel is a different beast, formally, than a magazine serial, is different than a story made for podcast.This is where it starts to get cool, because this is where the interesting creative stuff lives. A story written online, to be read on-screen, must be different than a story written for paper and ink. The way we read is different, therefore the way we write must be different.I think this is an exciting challenge for authors and writers. The audience is there, the modes of delivery are being developed. Now an author has to come along who really, really understands how to tell a story for the screen, not for the page.Some thoughts: 1) The paragraphs have to be shorter. (Notice, for instance, that my last five paragraphs are no more than three sentences long. Why? It feels right, but it's also easier to read, I think.)2) The language can be (must be?) a bit more informal. This doesn't mean lazy language, but tight language. Fragments are okay. Pauses, too.3) There is room for pictures, as in a blog. Some print authors are doing this now, as in W.G. Seabald's The Rings of Saturn.4) There is room for back and forth commenting with the readers. (Thoughts, anyone? And please don't anybody comment on how horrible the word "wovel" is. I like it, it's silly, and I'm going to keep it...)More thoughts: Blogs have done a great job with text display: margin size, line length, point size, etc. The fiction world has to step up, figuring out what works for on-screen reading.To be clear, an on-screen story will be different than an on-page story. Not "novels" anymore, but something different. Something new.