The novel is no longer an effective means of telling a story of modern-day life. They can but I’ll reproduce the experience of a tweet. Such a small thing is synecdoche of the much larger, inexpressible demolition technological progress has done to diminish the form of the novel to a literary footnote. Every day we text one another through various services: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, et cetera. How can mere quotation marks but feebly, but weakly, with knobbled knees, reproduce the quotidian means of communication in the 21st century? The illusory power of words fails. Is it fitting to format entire pages of a novel to take the form of an email? Little wonder fantasy and science fiction rules the bookshelves of the average reading public: there, in those make-believe worlds, there is no constraint by reality against the very letters of the illusion. So what? Shall we abandon storytelling altogether? Absolutely not. To preserve the illusions concomitant upon a rollicking good story, authors must lay down their pens and paper, their keyboards and word processors, and steal the format of a Snapchat text thread for their next narrative, or that of an iMessage conversation, because these, and not mere letters, are the daily means of communication. The next great novel is not forthcoming, but the first great text message story is on the horizon. Often it has been asked in this place: “who will write the great incel novel?” But I say to you that it does not apply. Much rather, who will write the great incel Discord general chat? It is by far the more suitable means of communicating such a story. Yet here we cling to a husk, a carcass picked at and torn by carrion consumers.
>>25465003Clearly, the future of literature lies within poetry. The futurists understood this.
>>25465003I didn't shy away from depicting digital communications in my novel, but I'm also pretty sure doing so isn't some groundbreaking new idea>>25465010Poetry is the past, present, and future
>>25465010I've been trying to bring back narrative verse in my current major work. Large swaths of the story are told in verse, though other parts are told in prose.
>>25465019>Poetry is always, and poetry always is.
>>25465028The verse novel is sorely missed in our current present. I wish you luck.
>>25465003Good ideas change the world while effective communication moves it.
Sooo you just want an epistolary novel told through text messages, like all these other books nobody reads because the idea appeals to practically no one
>>25465019This is exactly what my OP post set out to criticise. The traditional “he said, she said” of fictional dialogue does not adequately represent the digital interface of communication today. In other words, it looks silly. Somehow a profile picture, coloured text and regalia add weight to a user whose name may otherwise be “Chief Executive Retard.” The way it is represented there in your script, though, strips away any pretence of respectability that user might have had. It also loses the formatting of a forum thread. An epistolary novel, for example, suits the medium: the cliches and contrivances of that medium are well-represented in print because the only thing that has to change is the process of creating the letters, which goes from pen to press. Consider “Ted the Caver” on Angelfire hosted all those years ago. It very effectively leveraged the new medium of the web page to tell the story of a caver who never returned… If that story had been printed yet still asserted as a web page, it would have lost all credibility. We are not taking full advantage of the new media we have at our fingertips to tell stories for the 21st century. Do not get me started on the portrait-oriented film… since mostly we watch short-form content in portrait orientation, it is not silly to suggest a feature-length portrait-orientation movie could work.
not tryna read ur whole ai sloppy there but i agree with the first sentence it's so over for the novel nothing from here out will be relevant or important, the novel is now jazz adjacent in the museum of irrelevance.
>>25465142Better than the originals imo
The novel is still effective because this is a unique time in humanity, in every way but particularly socially. And what novel is the go-to depiction of these times?
>>25465153Your posts are extremely prolix but I think I'm getting your point now and it seems like a you problem. Words have always only been representations of reality. You're meant to take those representations and use your experience with the real thing and with other representations alongside a dash of imagination to shape a mental microcosm reality. I think you feel the need for the infinite context of real reality to stay engaged because you haven't adequately exercised this skill.
>>25465153>we watch short-form content in portrait orientation, it is not silly to suggest a feature-length portrait-orientation movie could workYes, it is. You said it yourself. We mostly watch *short-form* content in portrait orientation. Ie, not feature-length stuff.
>>25465003>The novel is no longer an effective means of telling a story of modern-day life.So start publishing staids.
>>25465019>a posted>b posted>c posted>a posted>d posted>e posted>d replied>a replied>JFC there's so much more of this shituse a formatting convention that isn't so ludicrously and off-puttingly repetitivefor example«Do it.»—ABRASIVE«Did someone call?»—ProductionBlues«And while I'm at it, how does Abrasive keep getting the first post in every thread? Are they a bot?»—Boudica
Now that it's clear the novel as a form is passé, let's just admit what we all always felt, but feared to express out of fear of backlash: novels were always a bad, clunky, inefficient literary form and were always a slog to get through.
>>25465003>t. spastic with zero attention span
>>25465003There's a world outside of your Discord chat and that world is still the domain of the novel. Typical zoomer narcissism.
>>25465003This is painful to read. Illiterate people always confuse verbosity with quality.
>>25465847Must be why they fawn over chatbot output.
>>25465593You seem to be anal retentive since those tags are invisible to most readers much like "X said." If I vary it up to much it won't land as well as only varying it when doing so has impact. Also your style would sound slightly awkward to me when read aloud.
>>25466119No one reads aloud forum posts. Mixing media like this is just not effective. If you want to write a forum thread, do it on a forum. That way it will actually look like and read like a forum.
>>25465597This might be true. >>25465366I could not have hoped to have so effectively pointed out your lack of imagination as you have just done yourself.
>>25467497I'm not saying a feature-length vertical can't be done or would never be successful. Just that it's a silly idea since we seem to consume shorter content the smaller our screen is.
>>25467492But it's not a forum. It's a novel containing depictions of a forum that will at some point be adapted into an audiobook.
>>25465003>They can but I’ll reproduce the experience of a tweetin Freudian slip veritas
>>25467967Typos aren’t Freudian slips.
>>25465597compared to tweets?
>>25465003I don't think I can get away with saying synecdoche to catlic synecdouches
>>25465003Dawg, there are plenty of novels that have already simulated things like Discord chats. Some of those books have come from fellow /lit/izens. You've gotta spend more time doing research on these things.
>>25467759nta butABRASIVEDo it.maybe satisfies both sides. Easier to read, can be adapted to audiobook or read out loud with the right pacing, and tells the reader who's voice to use before their lines. Reads a bit more true to a forum as well because usually the name/avatar is on the left side to be read first. I don't think your way is bad and surely you've thought of this way too but just my 2c
>>25468042>do researchgoo goo ga ga bitch I’m hungry feed me
>>25468045That has the exact same issue. What do you have against dialogue tags?
Quotations work just fine.
>>25468502>That has the exact same issue.if you want me to know which issue you could explain it. Thought I covered that>What do you have against dialogue tags?Nothing, I also said that
