Comments on: Will the Novel Die?

By: Will the Novel Die? – I.econo.me

Will the Novel Die? – I.econo.me — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 04:27:43 +0000

[...] Q: Will the Novel Die? (David Louis Edelman) [...]

By: Icecycle

Icecycle — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:29:04 +0000

Twas HTML that killed the beast, the bi-planes did a damn nice job with the bullets though.

I just found this and thought it was pretty perceptive (coming in so late to the party hurts; the ashtrays are full and the glasses are empty.)

We will chip.
(My wife hates this; number of the beast and all that; but.)
When it becomes available; a chip in the head will be real time, broad band internet.
(And in the year 9999 on December 31, somebody’s head will explode; we never learn.)

I still read books; I sit out in the car late at night and light up (hey! we are PC here, nobody smokes in our world) sip some vodka and coffee, and read the newest nurse novel.

Damn, I just realized, no one has wrote a nurse novel for years.

OK, you are right, you are right. The novel is dying as we speak; first they came for the nurse novels, then (I hope) they will come for the sparkly vampire novels. . .
Oh that thought went south in a hurry.

I guess I will just have to go off and buy one or more of your books.

By: Haiden Goodman

Haiden Goodman — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:43:31 +0000

I may be a minority here, but if I can’t have a hardcopy of something (be it a novel for my stories, a CD for my music, Blu-Ray Disc for my movies) I won’t pay for it.
I can’t stand just downloading an album on-line.
I truly hate it.
That being said, I have very little idea why that is.
I love mp3 players, and hardly ever use CDs except for ripping the music onto my computer, but I still can’t bring myself to just download an album.

By: Lyn Hawks

Lyn Hawks — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 01:44:57 +0000

David, thanks for these thoughts. Your historical perspective of influences on the novel’s structure gives me some relief. I was told long ago that a novel should be less than 300-400 pages and like the neophyte I was, I never bothered to clarify number of words (I assumed, double-spaced pages, but there are other variables, as you know, in MS Word). Sometimes I find myself defining my novel-in-progress too much by word/page count rather than by the characters, arc, and spirit. Here’s how I set myself up: my writing process is such that I generate a ton of words on the first draft, so I’m now stuck wading through them and figuring out what it is I’m really trying to say. With daily tenacity I’m excavating for the essence. It’s already a hybrid of two genres, a lyger, so why should numbers serve as my absolutes? They best serve me for my writing calisthenics (as in, I’ll cut 825 by the next blog post, etc.).

Now I’m off to tell my musician husband to create the bluegrass equivalent of “Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” or a Grateful Dead song.

Best,

Lyn

By: 2008 Hugo Awards Countdown: Best New Science Fiction Writer : Spontaneous Derivation

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:50:48 +0000

[...] Excerpt from entry Will the Novel Die?: I can’t find any current piece of journalism to use as a springboard for asking whether the [...]

By: Promoting and sharing | Once upon a mellow noon

Promoting and sharing | Once upon a mellow noon — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:32:52 +0000

[...] Share This icons on their posts. I just played with it, taking Edelman’s fascinating post “Will the novel die?” and sharing it. Stumbling, deliciousing, tankrailing – I couldn’t digg it, because I [...]

By: Dave Edelman predicts the death of the novel ⋅ WritingNews.org

Dave Edelman predicts the death of the novel ⋅ WritingNews.org — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:24:06 +0000

[...] Link (via Futurismic) Posted in Articles | [...]

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Sat, 10 May 2008 18:03:09 +0000

Lee: I don’t mind in the least that you disagree with me… but do you have to call me an asshole in the process? (And “a paint by #’s sci-fi cat”… what the heck does that even mean?)

Anyway, I think you’re confusing my prediction of the death of the novel with a prediction of the death of storytelling. The novel is simply a format — roughly 60,000 to 150,000 words of linear story, generally with an Aristotelian structure. You can have a book that’s not a novel. You can have written stories that are not novels.

The first novels as we know them were written in the 1500s. Doesn’t matter if there were others who also thought up the idea earlier — the concept didn’t kick off until the invention of printing. The Romans invented the steam engine, after all, but nobody picked up on the concept for another 1500 years.

My prediction is a simple one: as we move away from printed reading material to electronic reading material, the vast majority of people are going to move on to a number of other formats not limited by size and thus marginalize the 60k-to-150k-linear-prose-narrative novel. Am I wrong? Could be. Probably neither of us will be around long enough to know.

By: lee

lee — Sat, 10 May 2008 10:13:09 +0000

Oh-my. It does not surprise me in the least that you would confuse your topic and the advancement of culture. Yes, people will continue to read novels, forever. You are wrong about that. Be it in hand or on a computer screen, and I hate to bust your ass about this, but decent computers fit in your hand these days, novels will continue. Leave it to a paint by #’s sci-fi cat to boil down a novel to its physical form. People don’t read novels for their ease, it is not television that requires attention, people read novels for insight, for style, for composition, to stimulate their own imaginations.
Check your facts about novels as well man, hundreds of years, try thousands, pal. Get into Easter culture, they invented the passable novel, not us. All in all, you write well, but I think you are ultimately constricted by your own mind, man. So thanks for the opinion, but youre just another one of those assholes that paints a picture the way they want to see it, not the way it is, or will be. Thanks for the article.
lee

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:05:21 +0000

Yeah, I hear ya, Mads. I don't believe that Pyr has ventured into e-publishing yet for any of its titles. The most they'd let me do is post the first seven chapters and the appendices. That's something like 35,000 words, which is nothing to sneeze at. But, you're right, still not the whole book in e-format.