#I'll take that into consideration and maybe think about posting on a biweekly basis

[inkovert]

Spilled Ink Session 1 discussion -continued

So I just read @freedominique's response to the session 1 prompt and I think you made a ton of good points that I want to discuss further. The post was getting long already so I figured I'd make a fresh post to discuss and reblog to our hearts content.

I'm just going to copy paste some points you put in bold and address them one by one to make this a bit more organized.

The film industry's promise of revenue and attention potentially encourages writers to undermine and neglect exploring the strengths of their own medium to try to better fit the demands of the silver screen.

Nothing to add to this; this was my exact point about the harm of the pipeline. Not necessarily that it exists, but that it could inevitably have negative consequences for the future of literature. My friend just told me something interesting the other day about how Reese Witherspoon gets the future rights to turn your book into a movie or TV show if it ends up as one of her Book Club picks (ofc with the author's agreement). Now, as you've alluded to, it's unlikely that the books she chooses aren't at least of decent quality (though that can be its own separate debate). It seems, as far as I can tell, that Reese is interested in putting forward strong, well-written stories told by female authors and wouldn't choose a book that wasn't (to her) well crafted and could stand on it's own. But I'm more so pointing out this paradigm of the fact that authors may cater to this business model to the detriment of their own medium. Because Reese is making billions off doing this. So what happens when that faceless greedy capitalist figure sees how profitable this pipeline is and doesn't necessarily have the same care or consideration for selecting strong, well-crafted stories? The film industry is simply concerned with whatever sells.

I'm not concerned that novels which resort to stage-direction style writing (to win over the movie industry) will take over the market because I'm sceptical of their appeal

This is where I have to disagree a bit. And I will link this post as sort of a thesis statement of my point (that post also touches on something that will be discussed in a future session so I will try not to get too off the rails). Books of, arguably, not great quality are already being published at high frequency, gaining a ton of traction among readers and in turn being turned into tv shows/movies. Where I will strongly agree with you is that Hollywood isn't entirely to blame and I wasn't trying to imply that. As the post I linked above stated, and as you also stated, the problem starts in the publishing industry and with us. The types of books that are being pushed to the forefront in social media circles fuels what publishing industries choose to pump out to the masses for maximum profit and creates this vicious cycle. Add in another large capitalist corporation such as the film industry to that mix? It only worsens the issue. So my disagreement is simply that the appeal for these low quality stories is already live and present. And that's my worry. That more of these low quality books will be produced and pushed to the forefront for the benefit of these corporations (and the author - Witherspoon Book Club picks are said to sell 700% better than other fiction books and all of them have at least sold 10k copies), thereby diluting the nuanced, introspective craft that is literature.

At the end of the day, we, too, as writers/authors want to make money (I'm talking specifically about writers who want to pursue publishing, which I know isn't every writer's goal). And as much as we love writing and storytelling and bringing worlds and characters to life, when you decide to make writing your full-time job and enter the query trenches where you're being faced with rejection after rejection or poorly selling books, and you see books of objectively not good quality selling better and being embraced by the masses, with those authors getting tv/movie deals and being better compensated*...wouldn't it be tempting to just...pivot and shift your standards a bit to cater to what's working/will help you survive?

Now, I will say that my views on the issue are not all negative (as this whole discourse series is meant to point out - nothing is black and white!). I think @that-chibi-writer brought in a very interesting/refreshing perspective with their response that I really liked and I also alluded to it at the end of my first response. When done well (with a strong story to begin with by an author who cares about the process of storytelling, an author who is heavily involved in the tv show/film making process etc), a book-to-screen adaptation can be magnificent, not only enhancing the way readers experience the story but also "deepen[ing] the actual content of the film industry by making the content richer and more diverse in a lot of different ways." (@that-chibi-writer). Dominique, I think it makes total sense for you to pursue making your book a film/tv show. You don't even have to justify doing that because I'm not making a case that doing so is inherently bad. I know you'd prioritize honoring the medium of literature first over catering to a business, and as you said you want to deepen the reader's experience of your story by not limiting it to just a print format/medium. If that were the motive of every author, I wouldn't have an issue. My issue just stems from the industry (publishing, film, whatever) exploiting the vulnerability of authors (especially debut authors) and making them think they have to write their story a certain way to survive as an author. I just hate that mindset being pumped into the literary scene, and given the current dumpster fire that is the gateway to publishing at the moment (book banning, the booktokification of books etc), I just worry about the effects that may manifest years from now.

*I don't pretend to know what the actual numbers on all of this are. It could very well be that authors who have their shows made into some form of screen adaptation aren't well compensated for that. But they do receive something from it that, in my mind, is priceless - exposure. Gaining an audience, selling book copies, is becoming more and more about exposure and how you market yourself, and a tv show/film is helping you do that on a much larger scale than your own personal social media account.