This morning I listened to "Books 2.0," an NPR interview with Bob Stein who is the director of the Institute for the Future of the Book. Basically Bob was explaining that there are two ways to look at the future of the writing process. One is where we are now; a writer gets an advance and goes into seclusion until he completes his next masterpiece. The alternative is a communal project. Books will be written by a particular author, but will be much more heavily influenced by the readers- throughout the writing process, readers will have input into the content and direction of the book.
I think this is a fascinating idea. It makes writing a much more communal effort than it typically has been in the past. It reminds me of days before print when stories were handed down from generation to generation, each storyteller adding their own twists and turns, so the same basic story could be told 100 different ways, each with a different flavor. I like the idea of creating books in the same way, so that the basic story contains aspects that will "speak" to each contributor in a different way. It makes the final product more personal to each reader and is a way to keep readers engaged with a work throughout the writing process.
In China the model of collaborative writing is much more popular. There are whole sites where non-professionals (at lease initially) create their own book series. In the series the social network of readers heavily influence the choices for the next book in the series.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of a lot of fan fiction sites where fans create new stories revolving around the characters written by other "established" authors. Fans have a chance to create their own worlds, plots, details about characters that they've become attached to, and become much more involved in the stories of their own makings. Case in point, 50 Shades of Grey apparently started out as Twilight fan fiction, but as we know, became so popular that it has spun off into a whole series with its own cult following.
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