Comments on: Modest Proposal #37: A Novel Kind of Trailer

By: DemonGithara

DemonGithara — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 07:45:40 +0000

Scribes are important, but the medium of print, itself, is dying and it may be going along with ancient Arabian invention of writing as well. My hand writing is atrocious, indubitably so. lol

It distracts the person from creativity, though, and imagination after too much reading. Reading is great, and I enjoy it, but I can only read so much before I want to live the adventure.

I am a slow linear reader if I’m in the constraints of a fiction novel. This makes me get really focused on the text and then I don’t see text anymore, but the metaphysical constructs. This can be great, and is for everyone, but it has many limitations.

I often get involved in a sensational instant in the narrative, but start to reflect on some aspect of it, and then I actually forget where I was in the story itself. So movies are more enjoyable to me. More versatile, I suppose, and the associations with the ideals they represent are have more vividly expressed.

You write good stuff, the little I have actually read….. Freeman and has got to be the coolest hero a nerd, like myself, I could hope for in a wet dream. The other characters, while also fleshed out and mutated by other people’s economic whip crackings or slave drivings, are also quite lovable and worthy of affection. They all resonate well in me from here to eternity…..

By: marc

marc — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 05:45:54 +0000

I remember those, Scott–very cool. But they’re still movie based. I think there’s a happy medium somewhere. A friend said to me yesterday, “I would never go looking for a book on YouTube.” People are definitely going the trailer route in hopes of getting things in front of YouTube viewers. But I don’t think it works very well…it’s not native to that environment for one thing.

By: Scott Edelman

Scott Edelman — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:05:01 +0000

Is this the sort of thing you’re talking about?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HePWBNcugf8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH9zmC2RJjw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIujke_cLxc&feature=related

By: DemonGithara

DemonGithara — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:10:05 +0000

Never heard of it, Mark. I was thinking it was a movie. Movies and video games are nice, but TV is like 24 hour breen cast to me…..

By: marc

marc — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:23:14 +0000

The book was my novel Kalifornia.

By: DemonGithara

DemonGithara — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:50:14 +0000

You wrote a book about TV? What was the context? If it was con, then I’m all for it. lol. TV is lame…………

By: marc

marc — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:08:20 +0000

I’m interested in the experiment. Reading books aloud is also very different from encountering them as written text–it’s not meant to replace that, but to fill a different vacuum. A good performance can make some absolutely crappy writing fun to listen to, and an awful reading can wreck good writing.

By: Dileep

Dileep — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:29:44 +0000

This is why someone came up with “Book Reading” sessions.
Neal Stephenson has an interesting take on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnq-2BJwatE

Also, much like trailers, textual teasers might create false expectations amongst readers. I for one avoid movie trailers for the same reason. Long have I tried to imagine what Jacob’s Shadow would read like if someone would write it (http://www.7crows.com/archives/2000/01/entry_39.html).