STAY TUNED, Part II: Shya Scanlon on the future of web serialization
Shya Scanlon’s article about web serialization, first appeared in the Faster Times. On Tuesday, John Gorman over at Paper Cut published an interview with Mr. Scanlon. You ought to read that, too.
Make it short
To answer the first question, I don’t think we need to look much further than that scene in Thomas Hardy’s novel, that literal cliffhanger. When you’re not getting everything at once, what makes you come back? (Wait for it.) Not coincidentally, the notion of suspense points to a divide (though by no means a neat one) between literary fiction and many other genres. Put simply: literary fiction, at least contemporary examples thereof, doesn’t do suspense.
This is no secret, of course. Many writers of literary fiction have abandoned the idea that there should be something aside from the language or characters themselves that keeps a reader reading. Any kind of plot device meant to keep people reading is seen (rightly) as a trick, and hence (wrongly) an insult to the intelligence of both author and reader. The conversation here walks a fine line between, on one side, the continually raging debate about the border between genre and literary fiction, and on the other, the estrangement some readers feel from the seemingly hermetic work being done in certain corners of the academy.
But I won’t go there.
Suffice it to say, serialization belongs to genre writing for good reason: genre is where you get suspense, fast action, and other elements, pacing or otherwise, that create an itch in the reader to return to a prematurely ending text. It should come as no surprise that writers who avoid suspense also have little interest in exploring or adopting a mode of distribution that relies quite heavily on tactics such as the cliffhanger.
The answer to the second question is perhaps no less clear. After all, what is the Web good for? It’s an efficient, inexpensive, and easy way to disseminate and discover information (too easy, some say). That there is no reliable profit model for that information yet doesn’t phase those of us who doubt our work will ever be profitable anyway. And sure enough, the proliferation of online literature in the last decade has been profound: a testament to how intense the need is of people to share the written word, both others’ and their own.
This goes for all genres of literature, of course, and as a consequence it’s easy to find examples of all different types of writing on the Web, from love stories to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. But amid all this difference, one thing everyone seems to agree on is the need to limit length. And here we have another clue to the destiny of serialization.
Three quarters of a century after Ezra Pound uttered his now-famous edict “Make it new,” there’s a new imperative in e-town: Make it short. The Internet, we’ve apparently all agreed, is no place for long forms. Who has the patience? Whether or not this is actually true (meaning, whether or not people would read longer works), authors of literary fiction have responded to the online imperative by simply writing shorter and shorter fiction. In the last few years, flash fiction has quickly become an enormous force in the online literary world, with new FF venues—some of them quite excellent—sprouting up every week.
But with their inclination to operate on some permutation of suspense, genre writers have another option (though you can find genre flash fiction). These authors have been able to respond to the Web reader’s short attention span by dipping back into a proven publication model: serialization. The option has many merits, especially when Web traffic remains the only real pathway toward potential monetization of online content. But beyond economics, serialization keeps readers engaged. And in the event that, as did Dickens, the author writes as the work is being serialized, and listens to her readership during the process, there is an opportunity to make use of the Web’s other great utility: interaction.
Hey look, another Le Car!
The question remains, however: have “literary” authors announced their final verdict on the usefulness of serialization, Web or otherwise? I think another parallel trend in contemporary letters bears mentioning here, if not because we can draw concrete conclusions from it, and more because it seems to suggest that the border between literary genres and conventions is not so impermeable as our publishers and their marketing experts would have us believe. I’m referring of course to the kind of fiction called, among other things, slipstream, cross-genre, and new wave fabulist. This is fiction that defies easy genre categorization via sometimes quite liberal use of various historically distinct conventions, without forgoing an attention to language and characterization normally indicating “literary” ambition, and is represented by some of the most respected contemporary literary figures, including Michael Chabon, Jonathan Letham, and David Foster Wallace, to name just a few.
If writers are shedding conventions in this way, could it only be a matter of time before they start serializing their efforts? Or, to put it another way, might the results of their new forms lend themselves well to serialization? A quick online search after writing that question revealed one possible answer. Cory Doctorow, whose work is arguably squarely in the sci-fi genre, is far from a writer of pulp, and his non-fiction has earned him some acclaim as a futurist. Doctorow’s next novel, to be published by Tor this fall, is being serialized on Tor.com. It hasn’t been long, for that matter, since Playboy serialized Denis Johnson’s foray into noir.
But will other writers follow suit? Will readers remain open to such experiments? Will publishers catch on to this trend, and begin to exploit the promotional potential of serialization—especially serialization that reaches across venues? I guess we’ll have to stay tuned.
By Shya Scanlon
Shya Scanlon’s poetry collection, In This Alone Impulse, will be published by Noemi Press in December, 2009. His novel, Forecast, will be published by Flatmancrooked in spring, 2010. Shya received his MFA from Brown University, where he was awarded the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction.
