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Since Christmas I’ve been watching episodes of the old 1960s-70s Mission Impossible series on dvd.  I’ve worked through the first two seasons already, about 50 episodes, and there are five more seasons remaining.

Each episode is roughly the same : team leader gets a briefing via tape recorder or cleverly hidden speaker, he chooses a handful of repeating team members, they discuss the plan in quaintly decorated apartment, the plan is then set in motion to be completed with clockwork precision.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  It’s a simple, repeating pattern, and it’s the big difference between writing now and writing fifty years ago.  Mission Impossible, like Perry Mason and Flash Gordon and a thousand other shows, comic books, and serial novels was episodic, but not at all organic.

That isn’t to say I’ve not enjoyed watching my show.  The plots are occasionally quaint ingeneous and it’s entertaining to see how 1960s american solved problems that would take a few minutes on the computer, a rocket engine, or a SWAT team these days.   Still, each episode the characters have a new plot, but the same haircut, same nonexistant backstory, same changeless, ageless history and future.  There is no grand story arc, no characterization, and no link in time between one mission and the next.  Each episode is exactly what modern episodic fiction cannot be.

In my opinion, the last great non-dyanamic television series was Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Since then each new show seems to have a larger, more dynamic story arc culminating with shows like 24 and Lost.  The mini-series format has become the minimum expectation.

It’s no different with writing.  The lone novel remains a venerable and successful format, but within genre fiction (fantasy and science fiction) the trilogy and shared world are by far more popular.  Just as with television the expectation is on changing characters and a plot of ever-expanding scope.  In fact, given that the written word can carry so much more detail than a television show, these demands are exponentially greater.

I say this in relation to my constant pet-project: micro-fiction.  Short writing pieces can’t just tell entertaining vignettes.  There must be a greater story being propogated (I think X-files) and also characters that change and grow (and die) in relation to the demands placed upon them.  The expectations upon a story have just flat changed.  Pure escapism has given way to intellectual exploration.  Readers and watchers who run into brick walls stop paying attention;  the age of Dick Tracy is dead.  Even Batman is no longer the ever-vigilent Dark Knight returning night after night to foil the Joker.  Stories today are more complex, more vibrant…and for all the neat gadgetry and clever plotlines, have the potentially to be a thousand times more exciting.

As you can tell, I’ve made a couple of changes to Servusamanu.  Nothing too major, just some artistic modifications.  Tell me what you think!

Another Word of the Day Story: Bivouac

noun:
1. An encampment for the night, usually under little or no shelter.

intransitive verb:
1. To encamp for the night, usually under little or no shelter.

Van Morrison is crooning another round of “Moondance”. It’s been playing on repeat for hours. The damn CD player is broke. What can you expect from a second-rate beater purchased from a chop shop in Tucson. It was damn lucky the car has even made it this far.
I’m turning out of the parking lot. Another day of work done, some freelance ‘jack-of-all-tradesing’ that has kept the car full of gas, my landlord off my ass, and enough change to buy Saltines and tequila. Bad habits both of them.
I’m not much used to the forest. Taller than builders, but none of the glass. Don’t really care for it. I always speed until I get to the lights of the town. During the day it’s small and not worth caring about, barely more than a gas station and a Home Depot, but at night it almost looks like Phoenix. No Carl’s Jr., though. It’s a damn shame, but I guess it doesn’t matter. That shit’s too expensive anyway.
Highway is always crowded. I’m not a fan. Can’t speed, can’t lag about, can’t even flash my brights when the signs are too small to read. It’s better past Newburgh. Not that many people go past that. It’s usually just me and a few 18-wheelers with Quebec plates. What the hell are the Canucks transporting all the time, anyway?
My exit. Last one before a long drive north. I’ll head that way one of these days. Me and my car will bivouac in Quebec for a bit, pretend we got the Oregon trail backwards. Probably wait till summer first. Car already grumbles about the cold. Landlord thinks he’s got me in a lease too. Whatever.
Not sure where I’d go after that. Keep going farther, one bridge at a time. We’ll see how that goes. Right now I’m just gonna enjoy the last few city lights. Might as well. Never know when you might not make it outta the forest.

Recently I’ve taken to exploring micro-fiction, defined by me, as complete stories less than 1000 words. I was initially skeptical about either writing or reading anything of that length. Writing fiction that short has certainly been very difficult. You really have to narrow down your focus on exactly what you want to say, exactly what character you want to portrait, and exactly what story you want to tell.

Entirely separate, I created a twitter account. Twitter is a social news and messaging sites. You can update it (create twits) over email or text message. People who subscribe to your twitter get these messages instantly. It’s been used in the past for on-the-spot reporting, especially of tech conferences and political events.

It wasn’t long before I considering combining this ‘new’ type of fiction with this new technology.

However, the average twitter message is less than twenty words. Even with a succession of twits, fiction would be limited to maybe 100 words. I initially wrote off twitter as a new and novel means of delivering stories, but the idea remains intriguing. It would certainly be a good way of enticing readers with a first paragraph or summary, but I feel there may still be a use for it as the means of delivering complete stories, it just remains to be seen what enterprising author can manage to write entertaining vignettes of that length.

I currently have a twitter name, but no stories to release. I’m trying to drum up some discussion of the idea though. I may write something soon. I’ll make sure to post the relevant information whenever that project (one of ever so many) comes to fruition. In the mean time, what are everyone’s thoughts on this?

http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=twitter&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Word of the Day is a little writing exercise I occasionally task myself with. I log into dictionary.com, go to the word of the day, and then write something using or about that word. Sometimes it’s a poem, sometimes a short story, sometimes just a little vignette. It’s been a useful exercise and tends to be a lot of fun. I wrote this particular article long before it got onto Wordpress, but the word of the day for this post is:

Limn: –verb (used with object)

1. to represent in drawing or painting.
2. to portray in words; describe.
3. Obsolete. to illuminate (manuscripts).

An interesting word.

The student sat beside the man-made pond and watched the geese sail aimlessly around the green algae that covered the surface. A stack of well-worn books sat precariously beside him, threatening with each gelid breeze to crumble onto the ground and crush the frosted grass. The student ignored them with frigid indifference.
He cautiously grabbed a drawing pad from the top and conjured a pencil out of his curly hair. His fingers limned the ducks and their irreverence, crafting beaks from parchment and sketching ruffled feathers with the side of the pencil. He moved onto the algae.
Flickers of crystal began to strike the page, leaving moist stains and faded charcoal. The student looked up. His cheek fizzled and he was retreat from the blizzard. Slowly and with a heavy sigh, the student closed his tablet, bowed to the ducks, and walked to class.

Hopefully this will be the first of many examples. Enjoy!

I do not own a Kindle. I also don’t have an Iphone, Touch, Blackberry, Sony PRS-505, or any E-books on my Ipod. All in all I’ve completely neglected the electronic book market. Old stick-in-the-mud that I am, I’ve largely refrained even from books on tape. For me there is nothing better than the feel of paper as I curl up in a nice lounge chair or against a creatively arranged cushion of blankets.

During the height of the dotcom years the e-book market was predicted to be huge. This article from 2000 quotes an estimated market of 2.3 billion dollars in e-book sales by 2005. However, this article from last year estimates the market to be around 230 million this year…but within five years to get to between 3 and 5 billion.

While it’s true that e-book sales are slowly going up (and the number of books available digitally has increased significantly), it seems to be a running trend to predict billion dollar revenues and see far more modest returns in reality.

This could be somewhat discouraging, but I think that is a niche to be exploited. Text messaging, instant messages, blogs, the iphone/ipod/touch proof that people are comfortable using small portable devices to read and receive entertainment. The failure of this market has been a combination of a market that has not exactly fostered adventurous purchasing. (Especially not right now. The dotcom boom seems a hundred years ago). Also, only now are e-books really available easily. Amazon’s push with the Kindle is definitely a step in the right direction.

Sadly, in my mind, three things really stand in the way. First, these devices are too specialized. The kindle is an e-book reader and not much else. No one really wants to carry around an extra device and if they’re going to, it needs to do more than just e-books. The phone, music player, radio, video player, test messenger, camera, web browser, email is on the way. If it has e-book capability as well, it’ll get used.

Second, these solo devices are too expensive. If they are going to be e-book readers they need be priced realistically. When faced with buying an ipod or a touch or a Blackberry vs. an ebook reader for the same price, the multi-use (and flashier) tool is going to win every time. Considering that buying books will likely outstrip the cost of most data/phone plans, the Kindle turns into a money pit.

Those are both technological concerns. For writers though, there is one thing they have control over. The works themselves. The few people I know who do a lot of reading on portable devices enjoy reading newspapers and blogs. They prefer short works that they can finish in 15 minutes. Right, wrong, or otherwise the market is changing. Micro-fiction and episodic fiction, like the old serial novels, have an exciting future in the world of electronic books. In a way it’s sad that the epic novel is such a niche pleasure, but there’s a great deal of creative potential in shorter, digital fiction that I, personally, look forward to exploring.