Short Form Content & Literature in Digital Cultures are Here to Stay
Short Form Content & Literature
Rooted in similar short forms, from 1800's fables to Hemingway's 1920's 6 word story
(Fuchs, 2023), digital composition has enabled multimodality experimentation,
as digital circulation and delivery turn amateurs into best-selling authors in genres of
short fiction, poetry, and video storytelling (on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and other
platforms) that continues to grow in the 21st century with no slowing in sight.
Styles:
Cellphone novels & visual novels/games
Twitterature
Instapoetry
Tiktok short-form videos
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Cellphone novels (aka Keitai shosetsu) & Visual novel aka digital fictions
Cellphone novels began in 2003 with "Deep Love", that was delivered via text messaging, and went on to be a tv series, manga, then movie, and has expanded even into 2018. "The story “Love Sky” became the number-one selling novel in Japan in 2007. Its author, Mika, wrote it one sentence at a time—not at a computer or at a desk, but on her cell phone, sending it to her readers one line at a time. In a country where commuters read a few screens’ worth of narrative between subway stops, novels are not simply being written on cellular telephones, they are being devoured on them. In 2007, ninety-eight cell phone novels were published as books, five of which became best-sellers. A few, like Mika’s “Love Sky,” were even adopted into movies. Today, [in 2010] the Japanese cell phone novel market is valued at $36 million." (Rudin, 2011).
Otome Games (aka Maiden's Game)
= Romance visual novels aimed at female readers. Began in Japan in the mid-1990's, then spread.
"The pandemic is also the main reason why the mobile game market has increased very rapidly" (Nouvanty, et al, 2023, 120). "video games developed and marketed specifically for female players where the game provides the concept of romance simulation between the player as heroine with the male characters as the main attraction of the game. Otome games themselves have a wide variety of specific genres, such as role-playing, dating simulations, to visual novels. A visual novel is a subgenre of adventure games featuring narrative text-based stories supported by two-dimensional static visuals" (121).
Example: Ikémen Sengoku: Romances Across Time (Otome Game)
Intro/trailer
Sample of game play and story reading
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Twitterature (aka ‘byte-sized’ fiction)
Precursor - Very short stories aka "flash fictions"
Example: Online mag Flash Fiction Online – Bold. Brief. Beautiful. Fiction in Fewer Words.
"There is no fixity in terms of how short they must be or which style or form they deal with – ranging from myths and fables to serialized novels. However, works that are strictly 140 characters or less come under the subset of short-short stories and are popularly known as ‘140 stories,’ ‘short-shorts,’ and ‘very short stories.’ These are mostly published on social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and personal blogs to allow immediacy in writing, self-publishing, and reaching out to an audience" (Singh, 2017)
Twitter began in 2006 and novels in 2008, but had a 140 character limit until 2022, when it doubled to 280. "However, recent research shows that writing medium-length Tweets between 71 and 100 characters is much better for user engagement" (Schultz, 2022).
Although established long-form authors were experimenting with putting stories on Twitter, it still felt foreign to some or more like poetry or actual tweets (sharing a personal experience and one's feelings about it) rather than a literature narrative. Rick Moody said that "it felt more like writing haiku" (Koehler, 59) and Jennifer Egan's tweets from a character out of one of her novels are compared to "observations", a narrative poem or actual tweets (Koehler, 59).
Example: @veryshortstory on Twitter - https://twitter.com/veryshortstory 2009-2021- 159k followers
Example: 2015's The Story by Zola King in 148 tweets: Check Out The Full 'Zola' Twitter Thread Ahead Of New Movie | DDW (dontdiewondering.com)
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Instapoetry (aka micro poetry)
"The extremely visual short-form genre of Instapoetry boasts 14.2 million posts to #poetsofinstagram alone, yet this so-called fidget-spinner literature has received little scholarly attention" .... "the sheer volume and rapidity of content production in turn encourages posts that are not only visually appealing but also immediately recognizable as Instapoems. Conforming to generic trends while simultaneously claiming genuineness and autonomy is a crucial method of increasing followers in a culture in which rapid swiping instantly consumes and buries masses of content." (Knox 2022)
"In fact, books by “Instapoets” constituted nearly half of all poetry book sales in 2017, which, according to NPD BookScan, nearly doubled since 2016. Leading the sales roster was Rupi Kaur, whose debut collection, Milk and Honey (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2015), sold more than a million copies in print last year and who boasts in excess of 2.6 million followers on Instagram" (Millner, 2018).
"Instapoetry’s lack of metrical control or linguistic complexity can be attributed to consumer preferences for short-form commercial aphorisms that can appeal to a wide audience. We suggest that broader consideration should be given to previous iterations of commercial short-form aphorisms, such as those found in postcards, greetings cards and novelty items like motivational posters, to better understand the cultural significance of Instapoetry." (MacKay, 2023)
Hashtags: #instapoet 4,641,792 posts #instapoet on Instagram |
#poetsofinstagram 19,285,230 posts #poetsofinstagram on Instagram |
Example - #instapoet on Instagram | Hashtags sabinalaurapoetry
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TikTok Videos (Or Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts)
= narrated audio/video stories, short-form video content from 30 seconds to 3 minutes in length, mostly non-fiction and reality-based.
But most often, "short-term content" is a term used by business marketers, in relation to how to promote their products or
services using the social media sites and formats. But many TikTok and YouTube "influencers" are selling their stories and
real life situations, marketing themselves for money from advertisers if they have enough followers, called monetizing.
It may not qualify as literature, but this verbal and video-image-oriented storytelling is still an input of composed and expressed
words and narratives that are recorded and captured for eternity, able to be consumed at any time, digitally, circulated or even
remixed. TikTok especially makes it easy to circulate and remix with "stitches", which use a replay of another user's "prompt"
(like a writing exercise would) then we can add our video reply to it, usually relaying a story.
"Short-form video has become increasingly popular in recent years due to several factors, including the rise of social media
platforms that prioritize short-form video content and increased consumption of video content on mobile devices" (Flixier).
This article claims its popular due to: waning attention spans and because it take less time to consume, gets to the point/concise,
and is cost effective, using the forms of story telling, educational content, and business marketing.
According to a marketing advice website, Influencer Marketing Hub, "A few key statistics that help prove the importance of short-form video content include:
- TikTok, the pioneer of the short-form video content movement, has been the fastest-growing social media platform thus far, generating 1.53 billion users in just seven years
- 96% of consumers prefer to watch short-form video to learn about a product or service
- Short-form video has the highest ROI as well as being the best format for lead generation and engagement
- Nearly a third (30%) of all short-form videos are watched 81% of the way through
- 47% of marketers agree that short-form videos are more likely to go viral
- On average, adults residing in the United States devoted 46 minutes daily to using TikTok. It is projected that by 2024, the average daily usage time of the social short-video platform by U.S. adults will increase to 48 minutes." (Geyser)
Conclusion:
These stats and reasons above show the trend towards short content storytelling
(for literature/leisure or for marketing/information/education) is increasing every year.
And as both continue to intersect, the line between business and pleasure will continue to blur.
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Works Cited:
Flixier staff. (2023). "Why Will Short-Form Video Dominate in 2023?" https://flixier.com/blog/why-will-short-form-video-dominate-in-2023
Fuchs, F. (2023). Civic Storytelling: The Rise of Short Forms and the Agency of Literature. Zone Books. From "Overview" section of Civic Storytelling | Princeton University Press.
Huan, Y. (2021). Female Representation in Chinese Otome Games: Comparative Research on Three Famous Games from 2017 to 2021. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 637, pp. 964-969.
Knox, J. (2022). United We 'Gram: Scrolling through the Assimilated Aesthetics of Instapoetry. Poetics Today, 43 (3), pp. 479-532.
Koehler, A. (2017). Composition, Creative Writing Studies, and the Digital Humanities, 1st ed. Bloomsbury Academic.
Millner, M. (2018). "Instapoets Prove Powerful in Print." Poets & Writers Magazine. Instapoets Prove Powerful in Print | Poets & Writers (pw.org)
Nouvanty, V., Suryanto, T.L.M., and Faroqi, A. (2023). Evaluation of Uses and Gratifications on Online Otome Game. TEKNIKA, 12(2), pp. 120-128. DOI: 10.34148/teknika.v12i2.613.
Rudin, M. (2011). From Hemingway to Twitterature: The Short and Shorter of It. Journal of Electronic Publishing, 14(2), pp. 1-8. https://doi-org.nsula.idm.oclc.org/10.3998/3336451.0014.213
Schultz, M. (2022). "Twitter Character Limit: How Many Characters In A Tweet?" Twenvy. https://www.twenvy.com/the-ideal-length-for-twitter-posts/
Singh, R. (2017). Based on Brevity: Fiction in 140 Characters or Less. [Sic] - a Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, 7 (1).
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