Why Hasn’t Story Itself Changed with the Web?
The structure and nature of short stories haven’t really changed in the digital age, as far as I can tell. They’re still told the same way mostly, same perspectives, in roughly the same amount of time ( around 3-7000 words). E-zines are for the most part straight forward adaptations of the print magazine format, to varying degrees. PDF magazines are identical to print magazines, except they’re read on a screen instead of on paper, or even printed off by some. E-zines like Strange Horizons make use of basic hypertext features, but the stories themselves do not take advantage of of any of those features except in rare occasions.
Flash fiction, or stories under 500 words, has seen a boom online, with electronic magazines such as Brain Harvest specializing in them exclusively. Personally, I don’t find such short stories very satisfying very often, despite my involvement with the Daily Cabal, (which you should check out if you do like flash fiction). I don’t think I’ve ever written a really successful flash fiction story. I would argue that flash fiction is even less popular than regular short fiction, which is pretty unpopular in the first place.
May 19th, 2009 | Tags: Dr.Roundbottom, ezines, story, structure, twitter, Web, Writing
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