With so many forms of entertainment and education competing for our attention, I’m not surprised that literary and media stalwarts are once again questioning the novel’s relevance in our digital landscape:

Literary fiction used to be central to the culture. No more: in the digital age, not only is the physical book in decline, but the very idea of ‘difficult’ reading is being challenged.

We’ve been through this before — when silent films became talkies, after televisions popped up in every living room, and as Sonic the Hedgehog zoomed across our screens. Oh, my! No one will ever read a book again!

This time, virtual reality (VR) technology, immersive video game experiences like ROBLOX, and an ever-growing social media ecosystem would seem to represent a larger threat to the novel than Rhett Butler or Happy Days ever did.

The 80s and 90s era trend toward imagery over story couldn’t marginalize the novel and I don’t believe today’s personal and gaming technologies will either. If anything, long form literature is an even more vital cog in the culture and media landscape.

The Big Journey

Not every great novel is sprawling and immersive, but the works of Tolkien and others like him are shaping today’s media, not fading from relevance.

Think about how much film and television content relies on literature as source material. Harry Potter, Jack Reacher, Jason Bourne, and Christian Grey were all born from novels. In 2016, major studios released movies based on the works of Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling.

Television — a place where consumers increasingly seek complex storylines that play out over weeks or years, rather than just in 42-minute blocks (plus commercials, of course) — produces more and more entertainment based on novels. Recent examples include Big Little Lies on HBO, Stephen King’s 11/22/63 on Hulu, and Shooter on USA.

These shows are novels that you watch.

Unlike a 120-page movie script, with hard breaks for acts two and three at page thirty and ninety, longer-form TV scripts total four hundred pages or more across a season. The individual episode scripts are chapters in what effectively becomes a sprawling novel.

The novel influences much of what we consume.

I would argue that video games and the worlds they represent are akin to those of Frodo and Harry Potter. Let’s face it. Warcraft smells an awful lot like Lord of the Rings. Creating something like Halo requires the same complex, intellectual process for creating the story and characters. It’s likely very similar to to what Rowling and Tolkien undertook.

Epic sagas, rich complex worlds, a large cast of characters, innumerable relationships. Immersive video games like Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, and Destiny require the creator to build the worlds, imagine the characters, and develop the story before the game can go into production.

Many of the same skills required for writing a novel are critical to the creation of a video game.

And let’s not forget that gaming envelopes the player much the same way a novel will engross a reader. It’s the long journey, the memorable experience, the attachment to the people, places, and things presented by the creative minds.

Rise of the Storytellers

Not only are novels still relevant, storytelling is an ascending art. Consider how many more ways a writer can get his or her work published. Amazon digital bookstores expose readers to artists inaccessible just a few years ago. If a person yearns to read a novel, there have never been more to choose from.

Gaming and filmed entertainment only strengthen this trend. Episodic TV didn’t kill literature and neither will Assassin’s Creed. For the foreseeable future, stories and storytelling are here to stay.

In many cases, a novel is just the launching point for a whole literary universe. Stories that originate on the printed page can ultimately come to life in cinematic and interactive forms, on the big screen or the small screen.

So get busy writing! The novel you start today might become tomorrow’s immersive VR experience.

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