Friday, April 3, 2015

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
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