Not since the heyday of Dickens, Dumas and Henry James has serialized fiction been this big.
In 1841, excited readers swarmed the New York docks to ask travelers from England whether Little Nell in “The Old Curiosity Shop” was dead.
In 2014, they are turning to their phones to keep up with the latest adventures of sweet Tessa and outrageous Harry, who meet on their first day of college and have a heartbreaking and inspiring relationship.
Every few days, Anna Todd uses Wattpad, a storytelling app, to post a new episode of this couple’s torrid tale.Chapter 278 of “After” came out last week, moments after Ms. Todd, a 25-year-old former college student in Austin, Tex., finished writing it.
The first comment appeared 13 seconds after the chapter was uploaded. By the next day, there were 10,000 comments: always brief, overwhelmingly positive, sometimes coherent. “After” has more than a million readers, Wattpad says.
The Internet long ago revamped publishing and bookselling. Now technology is transforming the writing of fiction, previously the most solitary and exacting of arts, into something nearly the opposite. It is social, informal and intimate, with the results not only consumed but often composed on the fly.
Wattpad is a leader in this new storytelling environment, with more than two million writers producing 100,000 pieces of material a day for 20 million readers on an intricate international social network.
When Jeff Bezos wonders if Amazon’s dominance of e-books might be outflanked, or Mark Zuckerberg ponders whether Facebook will be deserted by young people in search of something cooler, Wattpad is likely to come to mind.
“Now that everyone’s been given permission to be creative, new ways of telling stories, of being entertained, are being invented,” said Charles Melcher, a publishing consultant who hosts the annual Future of StoryTelling conference. “A lot of people are lamenting the end of the novel, but I think it’s simply evolving.”
Wattpad is not the sort of site where writers talk about suffering for their art or spend hours searching for the mot juste. Much of the most popular work is geared to young women and draws its energy from fan fiction. (Harry in “After” is inspired by Harry Styles, the teen heartthrob from the band One Direction.) Other popular categories are vampire fiction and mysteries.
The writers — who are not paid for their work, as on any social network — put up stories, recast them, abandon them and delete them on whims, in the process making more traditional e-books look as eternal as a Knopf hardcover.
This is writing reimagined for a mobile world, where attention is fragmentary.
The Latest on: Wattpad
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Wattpad” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Wattpad
- OPINION: Leave the dark romance to Wattpadon April 26, 2024 at 9:17 am
Many of us on TikTok have had the displeasure of the algorithm showing us to a certain corner of “BookTok,” the so-called community of readers on the app. There, you’ll find a group of readers, mostly ...
- Evil Dead’s Sam Raimi and 10 Cloverfield Lane writers team up to adapt popular horror web serieson April 26, 2024 at 8:44 am
Spider-Man director Sam Rami has joined forces with 10 Cloverfield Lane writers Josh Campbell & Matt Stuecken to adapt the popular illustrated web series I’m the Grim Reaper into a TV show. As ...
- Sam Raimi Teams With ’10 Cloverfield Lane’ Scribes Campbell & Stuecken On ‘I’m The Grim Reaper’ Serieson April 24, 2024 at 3:25 pm
EXCLUSIVE: Wattpad/Webtoons has hired Josh Campbell & Matt Stuecken (10 Cloverfield Lane, Horizon Line) to adapt I’m The Grim Reaper from the Webtoon created by Grave Weaver. Sam Raimi and Zainab ...
- Wattpad has a community problem, so it’s killing DMson April 23, 2024 at 4:07 pm
Wattpad is instead encouraging its users to communicate via the public commenting feature on stories or the conversation section of profile pages. There is currently no means for users to download ...
- Fanning the Flames: How Wattpad Webtoon Studios Is Reinventing the Film Adaptation Pipelineon April 18, 2024 at 2:00 pm
When Wattpad Webtoon Studios was preparing to release the drama “Float” this year, author Kate Marchant asked for a little help from her fans. The Lionsgate film was based on her story ...
- Fanning the Flames: How Wattpad Webtoon Studios Is Reinventing the Film Adaptation Pipelineon April 18, 2024 at 1:00 pm
Wattpad Webtoon Studios leverages its massive online fanbase for user-uploaded webnovels and manga to create a built-in audience for adaptations.
- ‘Freaking Romance’ Movie in the Works From Wattpad Webtoon, Skybound (Exclusive)on April 16, 2024 at 7:51 pm
Matthew Kic and Mike Sorce, rising scribes who have twice had scripts on the Black List, have been tapped to pen the screenplay adapting the popular webcomic.
- How Major Players Are Adapting To The Changing Television Landscapeon April 16, 2024 at 12:35 am
Television has changed and redefined itself over the years, and companies now must navigate audience retention and marketing in the world of streaming.
- Why Beth Reekles Is The Wattpad Success Story Behind Netflix Hit 'The Kissing Booth'on June 26, 2018 at 4:46 am
The Kissing Booth, based on a novel first published by then-15-year-old author Beth Reekles in a free, serialized format on the social publishing site Wattpad, is a perfect example. Community and ...
- Wattpad on Cosmoon June 24, 2018 at 10:46 am
We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.
via Bing News