Blogger: Rachelle Gardner
Sometimes when I talk with writers about the guidelines and conventions that are expected in today’s fiction—for example, don’t go overboard with description, or… show, don’t tell—writers push back with the classic “classics” argument. They’ll say things like, “But what about Charlotte Bronte? What about F. Scott Fitzgerald? You’d probably reject THEM if they came across your desk, too.”
Well, I don’t know. But this is not 1925 nor is it 1847. This is 2020 and the trends today are different – readers want something different. Neither Bronte nor Fitzgerald were competing with television, video games, social media or podcasts to get readers’ attention.
How is a reader today different than a reader 100 years ago? Let us count the ways.
1. We are more worldly.
Typical educated people in the industrialized west have seen much of the world with their own eyes, whether through movies and television or by traveling. By contrast, the typical reader as little as 60 years ago may not have ventured far beyond their own corner of the world, and therefore when reading, enjoyed and even required long passages of description to understand the world in which a novel took place.
2. We’re more impatient and more easily bored.
Our lives seem to move at a much faster pace than generations past. People’s brains are wired differently now, and most of us need the stimulation of a faster moving story or we’ll lose interest. Quick-cut movies and TV shows, fast-paced computer games, the point-click-instant-gratification of the Internet, and our generally overly-busy and fragmented lives have all contributed.
3. We’re conditioned for “show, don’t tell.”
We’ve grown up on movies and TV; without even realizing it, we expect to be “shown” a story as on a movie screen, rather than “told” as in a book. Even when we’re reading a book.
4. Language itself changes over time.
Of course, this is normal. While it’s tempting to lament the decline of the English language and declare that nobody cares anymore, people have had this same complaint for hundreds of years. The novels of today aren’t going to read like the novels of 50, 100 or 500 years ago simply due to the evolution of language.
What do you think? What are some more reasons – cultural and psychological – that books and/or readers today are different from those 100+ years ago?
Let’s resist the urge to compare today’s books to old classics! It won’t get you anywhere… least of all published.
The best answer I’ve read. Well done and thank you.
The change is fundamental;
world veers from saner path.
All folk are tempermental
and I hear Satan laugh
for nuance has been swept away,
the fine-grained writing, gone,
and on this crude and coarser day
I feel that it is wrong
not to stand in cultur’d gap,
not to wield a subtle pen,
to be a cringing dog of lap,
and not a gentleman
who stands by Bard’s and Brote’s gate,
his service now to stand and wait.
What you say is so true, Rachelle. Seeing abridged versions of Little House book tie-ins or even chapter books that break the Little House books into smaller chunks seems so wrong to me, but we have to go with the times.
One other change is in the diversity of characters and the situations they find themselves in.
Excellent advice.
Thank you.
Excellent, Rachelle. Yes, our language and our literature will continue to change as life changes. I taught American lit and English lit in high school for many years. There was a dramatic change in the development of the American novel from The Scarlet Letter (1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne) to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884, Mark Twain)–just three decades apart.
Powerful pithy points.
Pinned this on to my pinterest for future reference.
Thanks, Rachel
Yes! I read a classic when I want a classic. When I pick up a modern book, I want something different.
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els of 50, 100 or 500 years ago simply due to the evolution of language.
What do you think? What are some more reasons – cultural and psychological – that https://www.booksandsuch.com/blog/write-like-its-2020/