Obsolescent Fiction
Forgot the thing that was on my mind!
Fiction is an art form. I'm speaking now of books and literary fiction. It began with story telling. People would amuse each other with stories. Simple. That became an astounding (mostly lost now) art form of the orator and story teller. From minstrels to heroic poetry, the spoken story became a form of art truly astonishing to behold. The audience needed to be experienced in listening as well as the teller in speaking for this magic to work.
Then they invented a way to write stories down. Now you didn't have to meet someone who'd met the author, or otherwise hear it first and memorize it. That alone was a pretty intense skills. Instead, you could write down your stories and share them far and wide without leaving home or developing a good memory.
Before long, everyone was literate, they were mass producing the written stories, and people were using text in place of memory skill. The speakers had learned to write and the audience had learned to read and you hardly ever hear a speaker that makes you want to listen anymore. Writing, however, reached a level of art and craft that left the audience astonished and amazed.
Then someone figured out the art of moving images for story telling. Yes, you know what I mean because you, current reader in the second decade of the 21st century, are bathed in it. Video. From pictures to film to today's proliferation of CGI and astonishing visual work. It has reached a stage where it leaves the audience astonished and amazed. The audience is quite sophisticated, they understand the art form almost as well as it's creators and as they did with story telling in the written and oral forms, they also practice at home with video.
These days the oral forms are relegated primarily to musical uses. The written forms are primarily scripts and practical uses of text, mostly I say because I recognize that we are still quite in the middle of the change. Many people still write, read fiction, and even paper fiction continues to sell. However, I am quite certain that the art of video story telling will send literary fiction to the quiet places where historians and luddites shelter from the hurried clang of human invention and excitement.
So that's my interesting thought of the morning.
Fiction is an art form. I'm speaking now of books and literary fiction. It began with story telling. People would amuse each other with stories. Simple. That became an astounding (mostly lost now) art form of the orator and story teller. From minstrels to heroic poetry, the spoken story became a form of art truly astonishing to behold. The audience needed to be experienced in listening as well as the teller in speaking for this magic to work.
Then they invented a way to write stories down. Now you didn't have to meet someone who'd met the author, or otherwise hear it first and memorize it. That alone was a pretty intense skills. Instead, you could write down your stories and share them far and wide without leaving home or developing a good memory.
Before long, everyone was literate, they were mass producing the written stories, and people were using text in place of memory skill. The speakers had learned to write and the audience had learned to read and you hardly ever hear a speaker that makes you want to listen anymore. Writing, however, reached a level of art and craft that left the audience astonished and amazed.
Then someone figured out the art of moving images for story telling. Yes, you know what I mean because you, current reader in the second decade of the 21st century, are bathed in it. Video. From pictures to film to today's proliferation of CGI and astonishing visual work. It has reached a stage where it leaves the audience astonished and amazed. The audience is quite sophisticated, they understand the art form almost as well as it's creators and as they did with story telling in the written and oral forms, they also practice at home with video.
These days the oral forms are relegated primarily to musical uses. The written forms are primarily scripts and practical uses of text, mostly I say because I recognize that we are still quite in the middle of the change. Many people still write, read fiction, and even paper fiction continues to sell. However, I am quite certain that the art of video story telling will send literary fiction to the quiet places where historians and luddites shelter from the hurried clang of human invention and excitement.
So that's my interesting thought of the morning.