Last of the page turners?

[kailhofer]

I've thought about this general topic a lot lately, but in a different way.<br><br>Apart from Harry Potter books, I haven't read any fiction that wasn't web-based for two years, even though I own over 2,000 books.<br><br>Like many out there, I've dreamt of seeing my name on the spine of a book for over 20 years. However, breaking into the pros now may be more difficult at this time than any other point in history. There are a lot more writers from around the whole world than there used to be in the golden age of fiction who are trying at the same time we are, and few print-publishing conglomerates willing to risk a newbie. It can be done, surely. The Holy Grail is within the grasp of anyone who can write well enough, but gathering the audience you need is no easy task.<br><br>However, instead of lamenting the often-suggested death of print media, maybe we should instead be embracing the possibilities of internet-based media with our stories.<br><br>The internet has disadvantages from paper, chiefly the ease of reading. However, web pages can do a lot more than just show the written word. They can carry audio, video, animations, changeable user-based content, etc. One of my beloved books can't do that.<br><br>Instead of just writing, should we instead try to create an experience that tells a story by marrying the written word, animations, and soundtracks? I don't know what that would be, or how to do it, but I have to wonder if something like that wouldn't be a good way to get noticed.<br><br>All of the funny Jib-Jab shorts that came out during the last Presidential election showed that being entertaining is a lot more important to being viewed than telling a gripping story is. If there was any way to combine written word with flash animations & sound bits for ambiance... maybe triggered as the text scrolled--that would make a big splash, wouldn't it?<br><br>I wish I knew more about "what and how" about pages, since I don't think it would be fair to ask editors to make such things for us. Being able to draw more than stick figures would help, too.<br><br>I'd love to take one of my short-shorts and try it, as an experiment. (But not "Another Sarah".)<br><br>Perhaps the great authors of the future will be ones who "author" for the web instead of paper (but I'm not giving up any of my books, not a single one).<br><br>Food for thought, anyway.<br><br>Nate

[kailhofer]

Nate,
The ins and outs of webpage design aren't that time consuming to explore. I haven't any formal training myself, and you saw what I was able to do with Fly By Wire. Imagine what Rob Wynne or some of the other folks who actually know what they're doing could acomplish. I was basically just exploring the options in the Mozilla web page editor. I could have added animated .GIF files and scrolling text VIA Java and so forth, but my Guru tells me such things belong to the Dark Side and must be avoided. Normal illustrations are easy to add, sound used to be easy to add but seems to have fallen somewhat out of fashion, even simple animation wouldn't be that difficult to add to a page. *Doing* the animation might be another matter, but adding it to a web page ought to be easier. Take a look at some of the older stories in the Archives with your browser's View/Page Source option and check out the simple, basic HTML code tags Aphelion used back then, and then look at some of the new stories the same way and compare how much the HTML code has evolved.
And other sorts of files have even more options than web pages. A lot of the Safety and OSHA training sessions I've had at the factory over the last few years have been Power Point thingies, with text, video, sound bites, illos, etc. all from a laptop plugged into a projector. The future is here, and there's more yet to come. Evolution isn't only for biology any more. ;)
Dan

<br>Yes, but you have some skill when it comes to drawing. I don't, at least so far.<br><br>A little while ago at work we picked up a few copies of the Adobe Creative Suite (Premium) and we don't use the GoLive that came with it at all. I could make the pages there, if the whatchamajiggers it produces--the CSS layouts, I think they're called--are a good way to show things. (I don't know what the preferred source for pages is these days.) I do have a Sound Studio program that came with my Mac, and there's always iMovie if I need it...<br><br>But, the limits of what is possible becomes important at this stage, and I don't know that. Can items be triggered by the scrolling of text??<br><br>Nate

[kailhofer]

If the publishing industry goes totally digital, I suspect there will always be a way to print up and even bind digitally delivered books. Cuz curling up in bed with a laptop is not quite the same thing as doing so with an old fashioned book.

Dan E.

<br><br>I quite agree. As I said, I'm not ditching any one of my bound books.<br><br>But I do wonder about creating a new form of fiction, a hybrid.<br><br>Nate

[Robert_Moriyama]

...The internet has disadvantages from paper, chiefly the ease of reading. However, web pages can do a lot more than just show the written word. They can carry audio, video, animations, changeable user-based content, etc. One of my beloved books can't do that.

Instead of just writing, should we instead try to create an experience that tells a story by marrying the written word, animations, and soundtracks? I don't know what that would be, or how to do it, but I have to wonder if something like that wouldn't be a good way to get noticed...

Nate

<br><br>Check out trACe (trace.ntu.ac.uk), a writers' organization that seems to spend a lot of time exploring 'new media' approaches to writing. (I'm on their e-mailing list, but haven't really done much in the way of exploring what they do.)<br><br>Robert M.<br>

[Jay_Raymer]

The internet has disadvantages from paper, chiefly the ease of reading. However, web pages can do a lot more than just show the written word. They can carry audio, video, animations, changeable user-based content, etc. One of my beloved books can't do that.

Instead of just writing, should we instead try to create an experience that tells a story by marrying the written word, animations, and soundtracks? I don't know what that would be, or how to do it, but I have to wonder if something like that wouldn't be a good way to get noticed.

<br><br>Didn't Dan experiment with this at some time in the past? I had to go find this, I thought it was interesting...<br><br>http://www2.aphelion-webzine.com/mystor ... <br>Jay<br>

[kailhofer]

Looks like a bit of a re-hash of The Last Command, the only Laumer Bolo story I've read. Is that the same Reever as in the Mare?<br><br>Seems a lot like many of the samples of stories from that site Robert mentioned, although for it to really be interactive, those command prompts would have needed user input to continue.<br><br>Rather than anything like that, I guess in my mind I pictured an uneven-split multi-panel screen, not unlike those cartoon transitions from the Wild, Wild, West TV show. Except, one larger one has the text of the story, and occasionally the other panes come to life to give extra info, animations, or accent touches.<br><br>And, as I said, I don't know how to do any of that, to even see if it would go over.<br><br>Nate

[Robert_Moriyama]

Then there are the newspapers and such that either remove materials after a week or two, or move them to pay-per-view or subscribe-for-a-fee-access servers ...<br><br>Alas, the best links Google and other search engines provide on a given topic frequently turn out to be dead links.<br><br>(Then of course, we have the 'Libertas Scriptor' scenario, where the public data banks are censored and bowdlerized so some classic materials are unavailable, or only available in corrupted form ...)<br><br>Robert M.

[kailhofer]

At least I can single-wingedly churn up this month's post count! (At least in Administrivia.)

--TaoPhoenix

<br>What, caught up on tax season already?<br><br>Nate