Whether its books, movies, TV shows or web series, there is a proliferating demand of fast-paced stories these days leaving little or no space for unrushed content. I have grasped the actual reason for this major shift in perspective and of course its because of the busy lifestyles of people, increasing social media usage and shrinking attention spans.
Due to extreme social media exposure its obvious to get distracted from reading a chapter of a book and start scrolling on phone. Can the opposite happen? While paying attention to social media notifications our eyes suddenly catch hold of a book long kept on our shelf and we quickly start reading. Sounds strange, isn’t it? That’s very rare. That is the reason why authors have to come up with page-turners so that we can actually make someone read a story in one go. As a book author, to come up with brisk plots, sub-plots and intriguing characters is the need of the hour for us and we constantly have to remind ourselves of the same every time we gather a piece of paper and pen in hand. The whole narrative must be captivating enough to gather everyone’s attention and to earn a tag of being a worthy piece.
Another reason I mentioned before is tighter work schedules which is causing people to crave for instant and short content. Everyone requires rapid form of entertainment which will finish quickly and not take much of the brain power to contemplate and expend intellectual energy in thinking. No doubt, authors are coming up with short story books, tighter movie or show screenplays. If the length of a book is around six hundred pages, the plot has to be vastly complex, layered and bound by a hundred twists with plenty of emotional depth and meaningful narrative. That means more challenges and difficulties to bring up quality storylines.
All this suggests that there is no scope for slowly churning dialogues and plots. I don’t think its ever going to change as its becoming the reality now and it will keep moving in that direction. Sometimes I feel, its a good headache to have because we authors need to be persistent enough to be more innovative and creative in storytelling. That makes us more productive to keep evolving with latest trends…
Amazing blog ! Opinions are aptly expressed 👍