🔗 Share this article

This is a bit awkward to admit, but let me explain. A handful of books rest beside my bed, each only partly consumed. On my mobile device, I'm midway through over three dozen audiobooks, which pales alongside the forty-six Kindle titles I've abandoned on my e-reader. That fails to include the growing pile of pre-release editions near my coffee table, striving for blurbs, now that I have become a professional novelist personally.

Beginning with Persistent Reading to Intentional Setting Aside

On the surface, these figures might seem to confirm contemporary comments about current attention spans. A writer commented recently how easy it is to lose a individual's attention when it is fragmented by social media and the 24-hour news. He suggested: “Maybe as individuals' focus periods evolve the literature will have to adapt with them.” But as a person who used to doggedly finish every novel I started, I now regard it a individual choice to set aside a novel that I'm not enjoying.

Life's Short Duration and the Glut of Options

I don't feel that this habit is due to a limited focus – instead it relates to the awareness of time slipping through my fingers. I've often been affected by the spiritual teaching: “Keep mortality daily in mind.” Another idea that we each have a just finite period on this world was as shocking to me as to anyone else. And yet at what previous point in history have we ever had such immediate access to so many mind-blowing works of art, at any moment we desire? A glut of riches meets me in each bookshop and on any digital platform, and I strive to be deliberate about where I direct my attention. Might “abandoning” a story (term in the literary community for Unfinished) be not just a indication of a poor focus, but a selective one?

Reading for Understanding and Self-awareness

Especially at a time when publishing (and therefore, acquisition) is still dominated by a certain social class and its issues. Even though exploring about characters different from us can help to strengthen the capacity for empathy, we additionally select stories to reflect on our own journeys and place in the world. Unless the books on the racks more accurately depict the identities, realities and interests of possible audiences, it might be extremely difficult to hold their attention.

Contemporary Writing and Consumer Engagement

Of course, some novelists are successfully crafting for the “today's attention span”: the concise prose of selected current novels, the focused fragments of others, and the brief sections of several contemporary books are all a impressive example for a shorter style and method. Furthermore there is plenty of craft advice aimed at securing a consumer: perfect that first sentence, polish that opening chapter, increase the tension (further! more!) and, if writing crime, place a victim on the opening. Such guidance is entirely sound – a potential publisher, editor or buyer will use only a several limited moments choosing whether or not to continue. There is no point in being contrary, like the person on a workshop I joined who, when questioned about the plot of their manuscript, declared that “everything makes sense about 75% of the way through”. No novelist should force their reader through a set of challenges in order to be comprehended.

Writing to Be Understood and Giving Patience

But I do write to be understood, as far as that is achievable. On occasion that needs leading the reader's interest, guiding them through the story point by succinct step. At other times, I've realised, comprehension demands perseverance – and I must give myself (as well as other creators) the permission of wandering, of adding depth, of digressing, until I hit upon something true. One author makes the case for the story developing new forms and that, rather than the conventional plot structure, “other patterns might help us conceive innovative approaches to make our narratives vital and authentic, continue making our novels fresh”.

Evolution of the Story and Current Formats

In that sense, the two viewpoints align – the fiction may have to evolve to accommodate the modern reader, as it has constantly accomplished since it began in the 1700s (as we know it currently). It could be, like previous novelists, tomorrow's writers will go back to publishing incrementally their novels in periodicals. The future such creators may currently be releasing their writing, part by part, on web-based platforms including those accessed by countless of frequent readers. Genres evolve with the times and we should allow them.

More Than Brief Focus

However we should not assert that all shifts are all because of limited concentration. If that was so, concise narrative collections and flash fiction would be viewed far more {commercial|profitable|marketable