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shalannaIn the spirit of "let's have everyone vote on everything such that nothing is ever an individual creation or decision, and then we can feel that we're secure and right because the GROUP decided this," a new promotional idea for writers has popped up. A published novelist with a website is holding a "You Tell Me the Story Event."
What the heck is that, you ask?
The novelist has written the first chapter of her book-to-be, and will post it on her website. At the end of the chapter, she is going to list three possibilities for what should happen next in the story. Visitors to her site will vote. She will then write whatever option gets the most votes and will post that chapter with three potential options for what happens next. And so on.
This book will, presumably, satisfy the most people. The promotional hook is, "You get to tell an author how to write her book!"
Now, as far as promotion, this is genius. I can't fault the author or her publicity people for thinking it up or for doing it. She'll have a blast, she won't have to invent the story entirely by herself, and she'll have people waiting on the dock to see whether Little Nell survives. I certainly give the author snaps for this. I can see how well this will work as a promotional tool to keep clickers coming back to click and to be exposed to "Buy Me" vibes via the site. Heck, if you do it, let me know how your sales go. It's pure gold as far as sales technique for bringing 'em back for repeat visits to the site and feeling a sense of ownership of the resulting book (even though they didn't write a word of it nor even suggest the twists and turns--but it's like the ownership sports fans feel for their teams, even though they don't play on the teams themselves.)
However, how well it works as a way to develop a creative work . . . I suppose that's what I'm wondering about right now. Okay, what I'm REALLY thinking is that if this catches on, every book will become a "Write Your Own Adventure." No author will be allowed to write his or her own stories. Stories will be reduced to a connect-the-dots game played by the readers who voted on them. Publishers won't want to print anything but these kinds of books, because they have a "proven audience" who made them what they are. It would mean the end (at least for a time) of writers making up their own stories and owning them.
Paranoid? Thanks, I'll take two.
But this all dovetails in with what I was musing about earlier. I was thinking about the new vibe of "voting on everything." For a few years now, all the cable channels have had viewers use their cell phones to call in and vote on this or that poll, and websites have had polls, and all sorts of things are run by focus group. Then we started having the whole reality show thing of voting people off the island or voting people off of the game show panel/stage. It's as though we're saying, "The majority is always right and always rules." Even though this is a self-selected majority--made up of people who have the means to vote, the time to spend watching the show and voting, and enough of a motivation to do it rather than just sit and watch--it's kind of assumed that the result of the voting represents EVERYONE, and if you don't fall into line with that, well, there's something wrong with you because you're not like us and don't agree with the group.
Doesn't this vanilla-ize the results, though? The bell curve comes into play. The artists on the "edges" will fall off as the votes tend toward the middle of the curve, and pretty soon you'll be rid of anything controversial or way-out or "too different" or whatnot and will have the answer that offended the smallest number of people. Supposedly, this will also please the greatest number.
I have my doubts, though. Has every great artist been recognized during his/her time? Van Gogh's brother stored his paintings in his attic until the world was ready to recognize their greatness. Bach was almost lost to the world until Mendelssohn rediscovered and republicized the St. Matthew Passion by conducting it. Many films that were considered flops when they first were released have become cult classics or have become just plain classics that are now seen as "the greats." I mean . . . as the wag (P. T. Barnum, in this case) said, "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the public," or something like that.
That's not what bugs me the most.
What bothers me is this "everyone votes, whether they know anything about the subject or not, and the most votes means the best" attitude. The rubric used by each voter can be different from the one used by every other voter, so there's really no consistency or reason as to why Dinglebug got kicked off "Singing Idol" and Bellytrot was kept. Mind you, maybe Bellytrot IS the best. But if he is, it's probably even odds that the voters could tell you WHY they recognized this or why they voted as they did.
The next step, I think, will be the "majority rules" attitude that the government and big business (including all the media) would love to adopt . . . in which there's no need for individual thought, because we will let EVERYONE decide everything together in the hive-mind. Anyone who does not conform must be wrong, and must be "corrected."
Maybe I'm extra-aware of this because the other evening, during the James Stewart Birthday Celebration on TCM, I watched "The Mortal Storm" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" in succession. In both films, it is demonstrated how easy it is for people to fall in line behind a powerful or charismatic leader who seems to promise them something good, and to completely lose sight of the truth about the mob scene that results. But anyway, this is the way that our society is moving. While I would not be one to step forward and say that we shouldn't decide some things via voting, I would also warn that sometimes if you don't have an informed voter, you have a problem voter.
And I'd also say that not everything is best done by committee. Some things are better done by one creative mind that has a vision and shepherds the creation towards fulfillment, or by two/three collaborators who are in tune and are all working towards the same goal with it. I'm thinking of songwriters and songwriting teams . . . of artists . . . of novelists. When *everything* goes before a committee for approval--as novels must now do, I hear, when an acquiring editor wants to buy them--then we get a compromise answer that isn't always the worst, but isn't always the best.
After all, a camel is a horse designed by committee.
I'm not thinking here of critique groups/circles or brainstorming sessions. There, the artist has the final word, and gets priceless assistance in seeing her/his work as someone else sees it. I'm thinking of the way that an artist or a collaborative team of artists (Lennon/McCartney, say, or Rogers/Hart, or whoever) might create a work, and how detrimental it might be if the process became one that had to be voted on at every logical branch. You might end up with a hodgepodge mess. "Norwegian Wood" set to a hip-hop beat and played by a brass band, lyrics shouted in Pig Latin. The greatness of the song *for what it is* might be forever missed because of the "votes" to make it this or make it that. It didn't become what it should've become. It missed its greatness, all because people thought they had to go with The Most Votes.
Certainly I believe that we can determine which of three somethings is the most popular by voting. But I am not so sure that we can determine what's the BEST by voting.
I've said in the past that there ARE objective measures--that we can name the 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century or the novels that should be in the Western Canon--and that these lists have to be made up by someone, usually someone who has studied this stuff, and therefore I have said (in effect) that we can "vote" on that kind of thing and have it work well.
So what if by now saying THIS, I am contradicting myself? "I am large . . . I contain multitudes."*
Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps individualism is overrated and out of date. Maybe we should form a hivemind and eliminate all individuality and nonconformism. It'd certainly be cheaper that way for big business. . . .
* ["Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."--Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"]
What the heck is that, you ask?
The novelist has written the first chapter of her book-to-be, and will post it on her website. At the end of the chapter, she is going to list three possibilities for what should happen next in the story. Visitors to her site will vote. She will then write whatever option gets the most votes and will post that chapter with three potential options for what happens next. And so on.
This book will, presumably, satisfy the most people. The promotional hook is, "You get to tell an author how to write her book!"
Now, as far as promotion, this is genius. I can't fault the author or her publicity people for thinking it up or for doing it. She'll have a blast, she won't have to invent the story entirely by herself, and she'll have people waiting on the dock to see whether Little Nell survives. I certainly give the author snaps for this. I can see how well this will work as a promotional tool to keep clickers coming back to click and to be exposed to "Buy Me" vibes via the site. Heck, if you do it, let me know how your sales go. It's pure gold as far as sales technique for bringing 'em back for repeat visits to the site and feeling a sense of ownership of the resulting book (even though they didn't write a word of it nor even suggest the twists and turns--but it's like the ownership sports fans feel for their teams, even though they don't play on the teams themselves.)
However, how well it works as a way to develop a creative work . . . I suppose that's what I'm wondering about right now. Okay, what I'm REALLY thinking is that if this catches on, every book will become a "Write Your Own Adventure." No author will be allowed to write his or her own stories. Stories will be reduced to a connect-the-dots game played by the readers who voted on them. Publishers won't want to print anything but these kinds of books, because they have a "proven audience" who made them what they are. It would mean the end (at least for a time) of writers making up their own stories and owning them.
Paranoid? Thanks, I'll take two.
But this all dovetails in with what I was musing about earlier. I was thinking about the new vibe of "voting on everything." For a few years now, all the cable channels have had viewers use their cell phones to call in and vote on this or that poll, and websites have had polls, and all sorts of things are run by focus group. Then we started having the whole reality show thing of voting people off the island or voting people off of the game show panel/stage. It's as though we're saying, "The majority is always right and always rules." Even though this is a self-selected majority--made up of people who have the means to vote, the time to spend watching the show and voting, and enough of a motivation to do it rather than just sit and watch--it's kind of assumed that the result of the voting represents EVERYONE, and if you don't fall into line with that, well, there's something wrong with you because you're not like us and don't agree with the group.
Doesn't this vanilla-ize the results, though? The bell curve comes into play. The artists on the "edges" will fall off as the votes tend toward the middle of the curve, and pretty soon you'll be rid of anything controversial or way-out or "too different" or whatnot and will have the answer that offended the smallest number of people. Supposedly, this will also please the greatest number.
I have my doubts, though. Has every great artist been recognized during his/her time? Van Gogh's brother stored his paintings in his attic until the world was ready to recognize their greatness. Bach was almost lost to the world until Mendelssohn rediscovered and republicized the St. Matthew Passion by conducting it. Many films that were considered flops when they first were released have become cult classics or have become just plain classics that are now seen as "the greats." I mean . . . as the wag (P. T. Barnum, in this case) said, "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the public," or something like that.
That's not what bugs me the most.
What bothers me is this "everyone votes, whether they know anything about the subject or not, and the most votes means the best" attitude. The rubric used by each voter can be different from the one used by every other voter, so there's really no consistency or reason as to why Dinglebug got kicked off "Singing Idol" and Bellytrot was kept. Mind you, maybe Bellytrot IS the best. But if he is, it's probably even odds that the voters could tell you WHY they recognized this or why they voted as they did.
The next step, I think, will be the "majority rules" attitude that the government and big business (including all the media) would love to adopt . . . in which there's no need for individual thought, because we will let EVERYONE decide everything together in the hive-mind. Anyone who does not conform must be wrong, and must be "corrected."
Maybe I'm extra-aware of this because the other evening, during the James Stewart Birthday Celebration on TCM, I watched "The Mortal Storm" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" in succession. In both films, it is demonstrated how easy it is for people to fall in line behind a powerful or charismatic leader who seems to promise them something good, and to completely lose sight of the truth about the mob scene that results. But anyway, this is the way that our society is moving. While I would not be one to step forward and say that we shouldn't decide some things via voting, I would also warn that sometimes if you don't have an informed voter, you have a problem voter.
And I'd also say that not everything is best done by committee. Some things are better done by one creative mind that has a vision and shepherds the creation towards fulfillment, or by two/three collaborators who are in tune and are all working towards the same goal with it. I'm thinking of songwriters and songwriting teams . . . of artists . . . of novelists. When *everything* goes before a committee for approval--as novels must now do, I hear, when an acquiring editor wants to buy them--then we get a compromise answer that isn't always the worst, but isn't always the best.
After all, a camel is a horse designed by committee.
I'm not thinking here of critique groups/circles or brainstorming sessions. There, the artist has the final word, and gets priceless assistance in seeing her/his work as someone else sees it. I'm thinking of the way that an artist or a collaborative team of artists (Lennon/McCartney, say, or Rogers/Hart, or whoever) might create a work, and how detrimental it might be if the process became one that had to be voted on at every logical branch. You might end up with a hodgepodge mess. "Norwegian Wood" set to a hip-hop beat and played by a brass band, lyrics shouted in Pig Latin. The greatness of the song *for what it is* might be forever missed because of the "votes" to make it this or make it that. It didn't become what it should've become. It missed its greatness, all because people thought they had to go with The Most Votes.
Certainly I believe that we can determine which of three somethings is the most popular by voting. But I am not so sure that we can determine what's the BEST by voting.
I've said in the past that there ARE objective measures--that we can name the 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century or the novels that should be in the Western Canon--and that these lists have to be made up by someone, usually someone who has studied this stuff, and therefore I have said (in effect) that we can "vote" on that kind of thing and have it work well.
So what if by now saying THIS, I am contradicting myself? "I am large . . . I contain multitudes."*
Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps individualism is overrated and out of date. Maybe we should form a hivemind and eliminate all individuality and nonconformism. It'd certainly be cheaper that way for big business. . . .
* ["Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."--Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"]
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-22 10:59 pm (UTC)In very small doses!
no subject
Date: 2007-05-23 01:34 am (UTC)Those books were fun.
The difference here being, though, that the author is only going to write the outcome of the option that the voting selected. So instead of the "Choose...." books and the "tree" structure that they had--wherein you could go back through the book, choose another path, and read the story the author had designed for that path--you only get one path out of the possible paths. And when they vote, it might not be the path you would've picked. So it's a different experience.
I suppose the reason I think this web-contest will result in a less-than-optimal story experience compared to a "Choose Your Own" book is that in the "Choose" books, the author has gone through and planned several reasonable story paths. The story only branches where the author (or whoever designed the outline and then farmed out the book as work-for-hire, in some cases) decides that there's a good alternative path. It doesn't branch at the end of every chapter, but at each plot point or turning point, if I remember the old D&D books accurately. So in those books, the author or the person who oversaw the outline has made a logical story with logical character arcs (to whatever extent possible) out of each possible path. In *this*, the author can't know what is going to happen, so the author can't necessarily set up events properly and may end up with a deus ex machina ending that isn't founded in what happened earlier in the story. The story goes forward using a flashlight rather than knowing the big picture and the ending. So I think it's going to end up being at least a little . . . um . . . not very artistic.
*But* if this kind of thing catches on and is a huge success, I'm afraid that publishing will decide that ANY author they take on will need to do books this way so as to gather a following and form a loyal audience who's invested in the books (theoretically). I envision authors having webpages on which readers or potential readers vote to say which book should be written next, and those votes might be done at whim rather than with any kind of analysis as to which storylines or characters have the potential to carry a new book. I can see things going downhill from there.
But anyhow, I'm an alarmist. It's possible that they'll be wiser . . . but it's possible they won't. Marketing gets more powerful all the time, after all.
I was thinking about the original Adventure game (Colossal Cave) that was first played on mainframes/minis by sneaky students and which later came out for PCs and Macs. And about the original "Zork" or "House" that came out first on the PDP-11 and then became a franchise for Infocom. Those were both designed so that players could take any of several paths and still arrive at the "win" stage of the game. That's like the "Choose Your Own" books, sort of, with puzzles. Again, those are pre-designed and pre-planned, not randomly voted on by the players. I used to really love all the text adventures. I never was big on graphics games. But hubby loves those. Different strokes.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-23 01:39 am (UTC)I can see your concern. At the moment it looks like she's just writing Web novellas that will be posted freely on her Website--she has two or three up already. So maybe she's trying to cleverly create a community of readers who feel invested in her because they played this game together.
Or possibly I am just telling myself that because the alternative is frankly rather awful!
I think you're talking about me
Date: 2007-07-01 03:55 pm (UTC)I think you're talking about me in this post and my "Tell Me the Story" event that is going on now. I don't think your fears are founded. This is the third time I've actually done this event and I think I'm still the only one doing it that I've seen. It in no way is replacing writing my real stories. It's really just a fun interactive event with my readers. In fact, while my publisher thinks it's great, they don't have any participation in it at all. So, never fear. I don't think it's going to sweep the nation or anything.
But if anyone wants to check it out, it's at my website:
http://www.jennapetersen.com
JennaP
Re: I think you're talking about me
Date: 2007-07-01 08:46 pm (UTC)Actually, I didn't pay any attention to who was running the event--I just read about it on one of the mailing lists and the idea struck me as (1) something that publishers would LOVE if it worked to get readers buying books, and (2) very scary if the publishing houses DID decide it worked better for developing books, or at least scary as far as the individual creative artist/craftsperson. I didn't want to mention a name on my post anyhow, because that might have seemed like a personal comment, even *though* I did say that the idea was genius as far as promotion and attracting traffic--and I still think it is. It's going to help readers remember you and bond with the website, which is great publicity.
If y'all are having fun with it, that's fine. What I did was to take the idea and extend it logically out to what MIGHT happen (which is my tendency, and also is how I come up with storylines sometimes) and look at what could result if publishers said, "Hey! Finally a way we can have books that WILL sell the way we want--have readers invested in it because they've voted on the outcome!" This would make the book all marketing-driven, which is what they want because they are concerned with income, not with art, in general--and that's their function. I just don't want to give them more ammo. ("YOUR books don't sell, but the ones that readers have helped to write DO!" Heaven forfend, because I suspect those plots would go all Mary Sue very quickly.)
But as a person who just re-watched Ayn Rand's THE FOUNTAINHEAD yesterday (and that film captivated hubby, a man who adamantly refuses to view black-and-white shows/movies and who usually doesn't care for films made in that era), it comes home to me even more that there's a LOT of pressure on novelists to produce "product that sells and appeals to the widest audience," and if you've read Rand you'll know what she thinks about the risks to the integrity of the work when that principle becomes dominant in a market. She uses architecture as a metaphor there, but it could be any of the arts or in fact any of the sciences. (In a way, the way that corporations and governments want science to "say" that global warming is not happening is sort of the same kind of pressure to "make it say what we want," and scientists have to remain neutral against all of this but still need corporate funding for studies. It's tough for the scientist to control how his/her results are used by eco-pro and eco-con people.)
I need to post about THE FOUNTAINHEAD anyhow, because although I railed for years against granting Rand the woo-hoo for that screenplay, I have finally conceded. She is a master and did a masterful job. Not that the film could be made today, and not that she doesn't have stilted and contrived dialogue here and there, but that the ideas aren't just told to us but shown through action from the very beginning. The novel is more tell-y and talky, but the screenplay (by Rand) is great. Talk about complex characters. I felt sorry for the poor ol' villains, as well, because they were so messed up.
And that's what it's all about. Still, I definitely believe Ayn Rand would simply fall apart if she heard that someone was allowing readers to guide the plot of the story, so be sure nobody tells her. *grin* (She's on the Other Side. But she'd think less of us.)
I wouldn't want The Bean Counters to decide that this was a great new way to make all authors function. I don't think it would work for all authors. That's what I was concerned about. In my original post, I wished you and your enterprise well and grudgingly admitted I admired the promotional potential. So y'all go forth, having thought!
Thanks for writing! Feel free to stick around. I'm going to do some more musing now that I can spend a bit of time on the computer again.