CREATIVE WRITING versus BLOGGING

CREATIVE WRITING versus BLOGGING

PRINT FICTION versus BLOG FICTION

Musings

By

VIKRAM KARVE

While defining the literary genre “short story” Edgar Allan Poe famously said:

“A short story is a piece of prose fiction which can be read at a single sitting”

Over the years – the duration of a “single sitting” has reduced drastically.

In the leisurely laid back “good old days” before the advent of modern technology – “one sitting” was probably a few hours – so a short story could be quite long – 5000 words – or even 10,000 words.

With modern living – and as we became “busier” – the duration of a “single sitting” reduced to maybe just 1 or 2 hours – so accordingly – the desired word-lengths of short stories reduced accordingly to around 1000 to 2000 words, depending on the magazine.

Now – with the Information Technology Boom – hardly anyone reads short fiction on the print (paper) medium – people read on digital screens – on laptops – even on hand-held devices like the smartphone – so a writer has to post his stories online on blogs and websites.

In today’s hectic times of “digital literature” – the “span of attention” of the reader is just a few minutes – so now – a “single sitting” means a few minutes.

So – in this era of “Blog Fiction” – the dictum “brevity is the soul of wit” is most relevant – and a writer (blogger) must write a story which can be read in a “single sitting“of a few minutes.

Yes – good “Blog Fiction” means a short story which can be read in a “single sitting” of a few minutes.

That’s what creative writers turned bloggers must try to achieve.

That is what I am trying to achieve – to write really short stories/blog posts which can be read in a single sitting of a few minutes.

Will I succeed?

Let us see.

But from now on my motto is: “BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT”

VIKRAM KARVE

Copyright © Vikram Karve 
1. If you share this post, please give due credit to the author Vikram Karve
2. Please DO NOT PLAGIARIZE. Please DO NOT Cut/Copy/Paste this post
© vikram karve., all rights reserved.