Formatted to fit your computer

As I write this, I’m listening to the The Very Best of Badfinger on my I-pod. Well, actually, on my laptop, on which I’ve downloaded I-tunes. Had you asked me if I thought this sort of stuff was a possibility when I started writing, I would have probably thought it was a great concept. Beyond that I would have given it very little consideration.

I would have never given serious consideration to digital novels, either, and yet, here they are and I like a good number of other authors, am actively dabbling in the format. I’ll be getting more serious about it soon enough, I suppose, but for now it’s just dabbling.

There are a lot of people who have spent an amazing amount of money to work out the finer details of digital books and I couldn’t be happier about that. They’ve been the ones taking the risks, you see, and by waiting on the sidelines I get to learn from their mistakes. I’m all for new technology, but I’m seldom going to be the one on the cutting edge. It’s not my style. I’m not quite a luddite, but I could easily lean in that direction.

Technology is a wonderful tool. It will, I firmly believe, never replace talent. It might make it easier for us to appreciate talent in the various mediums we can enjoy, but it will never be anything but a means to an end in my eyes. A digital download of a crappy novel is still just a crappy novel is my point here. Of course the same is true of the occasional masterpiece, too. I mean, yes, I can now download a song from I-Tunes for under a dollar, and a full CD worth of music for a very reasonable price, but I still find myself heading over to the local CD Warehouse and checking out the music every Saturday to avoid staring at the walls for too long. Also, there are a couple of guys working there that I enjoy chatting with. While it’s true that Amazon.com can show me a great deal about a book, a movie or a CD, it can’t quite replace the interaction for me. Sure, there are some great reviews on the site, but I would still rather debate the differences between the best of Badfinger and the finest that the Moody Blues had to offer in their heyday.

The same is true of characters in books, by the way. I would rather explore them, learn about them and decide for myself if there’s anything likeable about them. Well written characters are a treat to me. I’ve said before and likely will many more times, that one of the things I’ve always admired about Stephen King is his ability to make me love or hate a character inside of a paragraph. It’s a rare thing, and a delight to run across. Not every writer can manage it, but you know what? Most of the writers I read more than once can at least come close.

The format means nothing in the long run, at least when it comes to the story and the characters that populate the tale. Movies deliver character development in their own unique methods, and television shows can often come close to delivering in the same way, though they have the advantage of working with a slower development of the characters. Comic books work along similar lines, with a storyboard and a script, but with a budget that is virtually unlimited. In the long run, they all serve the same purpose, to tell a tale.

The successful stories all deliver what they need to regardless of the medium. Yes, they all have certain limitations; they all have methods of delivery that they have to rely on. All of the aforementioned require heavy doses of visuals to succeed. You can call your movie Pitch Black, but if the entire thing is filmed in impenetrable darkness, I can almost guarantee it isn’t going to be a smashing success.

Novels and short stories aren’t limited in the same ways. They can employ all five senses. True, the senses aren’t really engaged, but if the writer is any good at the craft they can carry off the proper tricks to make the reader’s imagination take care of the difference. And again, it doesn’t much matter if the words are on paper, on a computer screen or being read by a talented voice over actor, the end result is the same: Good stories will succeed and the ones that can’t carry their own weight will probably not sell as well. That’s subjective, however and to quote Brian Keene, your mileage may vary.

All of this to make a point, of course, because I’m just not nearly as happy if I’m not making a point somewhere along the way. Medium doesn’t matter. It’s the tale being told, regardless of the format. The Lord of the Rings is an amazing trilogy, both as a collection of novels and as a collection of novels, because in both mediums the people handling the work handled it with love and care and held first and foremost that the story was worthy of being told. In both cases there was a good deal of haggling before the story was finished and probably a million or so compromises, but the end result was worth it.

When it comes to telling your stories, the same is very likely true. The format doesn’t matter. I don’t care if you get published in an online magazine or in a limited edition book, or a magazine or convert the entire thing over to a comic book script.

Listen, writing is like any other creative endeavor, it’s supposed to be an endless series of experiments and challenges, the better to discover your limitations and your strengths. How can you improve if you don’t take risks? There’s nothing wrong with getting experimental on the medium, either.

If no one had ever decided to take paint off of the walls of a cave and try working with pictures on animal hides and the occasional clay pot we’d never have moved on to comics and canvases. If no one had ever decided to try working with celluloid and telling a few stories with new fangled motion pictures, Hollywood would be a very different town. And if someone hadn’t decided to see how well music could be translated into electronic storage mediums, joggers would be stuck trying to tune in their transistor radios instead of using the shuffle option on the MP3 players.

Of course I have to throw my usual proviso onto this: I don’t care which medium, you should still be getting paid if you want to be a professional writer.

And on an unrelated note, Baby Blue by Badfinger still kicks ass.

James A. Moore