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This is a bit awkward to reveal, but let me explain. Five titles rest beside my bed, each partially consumed. Inside my phone, I'm some distance through thirty-six audio novels, which pales compared to the nearly fifty ebooks I've abandoned on my Kindle. The situation doesn't count the increasing stack of pre-release editions next to my coffee table, competing for praises, now that I have become a established writer personally.

Beginning with Determined Completion to Purposeful Setting Aside

Initially, these stats might seem to corroborate contemporary thoughts about today's attention spans. An author observed not long back how simple it is to break a reader's concentration when it is fragmented by social media and the 24-hour news. He stated: “Maybe as individuals' attention spans change the fiction will have to adapt with them.” However as someone who once would doggedly complete whatever book I started, I now view it a human right to set aside a story that I'm not in the mood for.

The Limited Time and the Abundance of Options

I wouldn't feel that this habit is due to a brief focus – rather more it comes from the sense of time passing quickly. I've always been impressed by the Benedictine principle: “Place the end every day in view.” Another idea that we each have a just limited time on this Earth was as horrifying to me as to others. And yet at what previous moment in our past have we ever had such instant access to so many amazing masterpieces, anytime we desire? A surplus of options awaits me in any library and on any device, and I aim to be purposeful about where I direct my time. Could “abandoning” a story (shorthand in the book world for Did Not Finish) be not a indication of a weak intellect, but a selective one?

Selecting for Empathy and Reflection

Especially at a period when the industry (and thus, selection) is still controlled by a certain demographic and its issues. While engaging with about characters different from ourselves can help to build the muscle for empathy, we furthermore select stories to think about our individual journeys and place in the world. Before the works on the racks more fully reflect the experiences, lives and concerns of possible individuals, it might be very difficult to hold their attention.

Contemporary Authorship and Reader Engagement

Certainly, some authors are actually successfully crafting for the “today's attention span”: the concise writing of certain current works, the compact pieces of others, and the short chapters of numerous modern titles are all a wonderful showcase for a more concise approach and technique. Furthermore there is an abundance of craft tips geared toward capturing a reader: refine that initial phrase, improve that opening chapter, elevate the tension (more! further!) and, if creating thriller, put a dead body on the beginning. That advice is completely solid – a possible agent, publisher or audience will spend only a few valuable minutes deciding whether or not to continue. It is no benefit in being difficult, like the person on a workshop I joined who, when challenged about the plot of their manuscript, declared that “it all becomes clear about 75% of the into the story”. No author should subject their reader through a series of difficult tasks in order to be understood.

Creating to Be Understood and Allowing Time

But I absolutely compose to be understood, as to the extent as that is achievable. At times that demands guiding the reader's interest, steering them through the narrative point by efficient beat. At other times, I've understood, insight demands perseverance – and I must give my own self (as well as other creators) the freedom of wandering, of building, of digressing, until I hit upon something meaningful. A particular thinker makes the case for the novel finding fresh structures and that, instead of the standard plot structure, “alternative forms might help us imagine new methods to craft our stories dynamic and true, persist in creating our novels fresh”.

Transformation of the Novel and Current Mediums

In that sense, each viewpoints converge – the novel may have to evolve to accommodate the today's reader, as it has repeatedly accomplished since it first emerged in the 1700s (in the form currently). It could be, like past authors, tomorrow's authors will return to publishing incrementally their books in newspapers. The future these writers may already be releasing their content, section by section, on digital platforms such as those accessed by millions of regular visitors. Art forms shift with the period and we should permit them.

Not Just Short Concentration

Yet let us not claim that every shifts are all because of limited attention spans. Were that true, concise narrative collections and flash fiction would be regarded much more {commercial|profitable|marketable