The same week I see Sports Illustrated‘s plans for an e-reader friendly version of their magazine – virtually sealing the fate of print magazines – Nielsen decides to shut down Kirkus, the book review journal, and the whole world (at least the world that cares about such things) is declaring a Brave New World and the end of books as we know it.
Okay, first, if you haven’t seen it, go check out the SI demo here. Seen it? Good, let’s move on.
That’s a pretty dynamic display of what is possible with electronic print media, and for magazines I think it works. All the magazine features are there with the “value add” of personalization, videos, and the bonus of not deforesting the planet. The really interesting thing to me is that Time Inc chose Sports Illustrated for this demo, not their namesake magazine or any other holdings.
Why?
Because SI is aimed at sports fans who are primarily male readers. And male readers prefer non-fiction to fiction and respond well to non-linear narratives. All those boys who struggle reading novels for school but could spend hours with The Guinness Book of World Records do so because they like the puzzle of putting a narrative together in their heads. It’s why boys take things apart to figure out how they work. It’s how their brains understand the world.
So how do people read magazines anyway? Do they open with page one and read straight through, or do they scan the contents and go for what interests them? Do they flip through the pages and land on something that catches their eye and read outward from there? The fact is, no one considers a magazine’s narrative to be strictly linear, and so Time Inc. is wise to test this out on the market that would most appreciate the approach.
But what does this say for publishing, for books? It says “Wake up!”
Linear narratives are a way to tell stories but we tend to think they are the only way. It fits our natural sense of order, our understanding of time being forward-moving, our progression shuffling from point A to B. But movies have shown us there are ways to tell a story that bend time with flashbacks and fast-forwards that are accepted without jarring our sense of order. We watch as things flit around, follow different characters, shifting time and place in a split second, and in the end we can recombine the narrative in our head to make a complete story.
Even in our daily lives, when we recount an event that has happened to us, we backtrack and fill in details out of sequence as necessary in order to better fill in our audience. We teach children history in a linear this-happened-then-this-happened-causing-this-to-happen way, and yet we expect them to recall all that information out of sequence in tests and when articulating themselves in essays. Our constant need for linear order may be holding us back from lateral thinking.
Which is why I believe non-fiction is the new fiction.
Creative non-fiction and modern journalism have figured this out long ago. Scan any at-length Rolling Stone expose or New Yorker profile and you will see a narrative construct that is non-linear. There will be a telling snippet at the beginning that sets up the story and tantalizes, some background, the story-before-the-story, a side excursion, the story itself, and finally a bit that circles around and pulls it all together. Sure, there are traditional storytelling elements involved – conflict building tension toward a climax and a denouement – but it isn’t bound to the straight through-line.
But how does this change publishing, or books for that matter? Or children’s books?
I’m going personal for a moment. I just finished a middle grade story about two goofy boys who manage to find themselves in a publishing war with a pair of mean girls. The story is a traditional linear narrative. However, if I was approached by a publisher and told “how would you adapt this for an e-reader?” I could think of ways to structure it so it would work.
First, the boys are creating (thought they don’t realize it) old school mini comics. At the point in the story where they create the comics it would be too much to pull the reader out of a traditional narrative to show the boys entire creative process. But what if, at that juncture, the reader could touch the screen and jump to an animated display of what the boys are creating, hearing their dialog as they try things out, watching the images that the book describes come to life as they talk about them. When it’s over the “book” brings them back to the place in the text where the reader left off. There are four such places in my story, four small little jumps that would enrich the story and yet maintain the story’s structural integrity even with interruptions. I have other ideas, but I’ll save them for the future. Which might not be that far off.
Fiction revels in both rich language and visual details. Writers must still know and learn the craft of storytelling, but they will also need to consider ancillary content as well. For most this won’t be hard – many writers already do extensive backstories on characters and places that could easily be incorporated into a digital text. If a writer is telling a period story, there are places to insert historical documents and background. Imagine a fictional story set in war-torn Afghanistan that included images from photojournalists and military documentarians, giving readers with no real understanding of war or other parts of the world a deeper insight to the story. And the elements of non-fiction – the non-linear presentation, the ability to jump focus, the visual presentation of data – can all be combined in this new reading experience that will, no doubt, change our views of what we now call fiction.
Books used to be only for the rich, objects to be owned and coveted. And when paperback books were introduced they were thought of as disposable, like magazines, an object with limited use. People would buy a pocket paperback book for travel and toss it when finished. The only books worth owning, it was believed, were hardcover. Just as movies used to only be experienced in theatres. VHS and DVD didn’t kill the movie theatre (though they keep trying) because, in the end, there is an experience that cannot be replicated in the home. People still go out to hear music they could just as easily listen to at home.
The book will be with us always. But we’ll have to wait and see what shape it takes and how its content will evolve. The way things are going, it shouldn’t be long.
hey david —
two responses. i remember a lot of hoopla in the early nineties about “hypermedia” and basically, it was as you describe the possibilities for non-linearity. putting more responsibility and more control in the hands of the reader to create their own text out of the elements in front of them. choose your own adventure in 3-D and then some. i wonder why this all stalled so. though in different realms (open-source programming is one that jumps to mind) there have been some quiet revolutions.
also, i heard a remark on the radio the other day (THAT old-fashioned media!) about the save-the-trees argument in favor of e-publishing. wish i had a more direct reference for you, but there was a study cited that assessed responsible forestry/milling practices vs. power needs for ever-widening internet usage. turns out just producing the power stations that house the increasingly large node machines that make it all run really do use huge quantities of resources. whereupon i thought, “huh.”
Very well written and thought provoking. Consider my thoughts provoked.
abigail, the problem with the old thinking about non-linearity, at least with books, was that they were badly written. chose-your-own-adventure stories did have that element, but in studying them over half of the possible endings lead to death of “you” the narrator. no one wanted to die, so reading became more like a video game and less about storytelling. needless to say, as games these books couldn’t hold a candle to video, and with decreased sales came the assumption that the approach was wrong.
it’s going to take some “name brand” writers working in non-linear narratives – electronic or otherwise – to turn the tide, and i think we’re better positioned to see that now than we were a decade ago.
as for the save-a-tree, kill-a-watt argument, when the dust settles consumers are going to start demanding energy smart products – e.g. large screen led tv’s – and i can see a day within a decade where all our portable devises utilize their otherwise empty backsides for solar recharging.
Well thought out, David. But I must disagree.
Plenty of traditional books, like the Guinness Book of World Records you mention, are designed to be read non-linearly. They are also multimedia experiences in that they include photos and illustrations.
Which means that if traditional books are a fine vehicle for non-linear multimedia non-fiction, they should also work for non-linear multimedia fiction. So why don’t we see more of it, given that the traditional book has been around for many hundreds of years? And why hasn’t the traditional fictional narrative been more deeply affected by its non-linear contemporaries, the magazine and newspaper?
The answer is that readers and writers of fiction most often CHOOSE a linear, narrative form. They aren’t forced into it by a restrictive media. They seek it out because it is immersive in a way that is largely unique among art forms. The fancy eReader doesn’t change this.
Fiction in the eReader era will not finally abandon the linear narrative (though new forms within it may arise) because there is no reason to. And, after a period of experimentation, eReaders will finally try to find ways to deepen the immersion of the fictive dream rather than interrupt it. I have some more arguments to this effect in some recent posts on my blog.
the problem is that publishing has allowed the tail to wag the dog here.
publishing isn’t behind the creation or development of e-readers, nor have the effectively partnered with the companies who produce them to the extent that they are going to have any say in how they are used.
amazon’s kindle should have mobilized the publishing army and instead they opened the gates and gave over the store. now, as the people purchase these devices and can see the potential, they will demand more from their content. this is the difference between non-linear delivery in the past and now; the dynamic of the presentation – customization, multi-media and sensory additions – are going to put consumers in a position where they will insist content matches the delivery system.
over time, the traditional linear will balance out and coexist with other forms of narrative on these devices. but i suspect that by the end of the 21st century what we know as fiction today will seem quaint by future standards.
we’ve come a long way from the shaman using storytelling to create “magic.” i happen to think we’re at the cusp of an exponential shift in how stories are delivered, and that contemporary non-fiction and other print media are leading the way.