Over the course of three thousand years of western civilization, storytelling has transformed from an oral tradition of poet\/rhapsodes reciting mythological epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey at religious festivals to information age books read on an electronic page or listened to from an audio-file.\u00a0 I find it interesting that the Greek epic poems are approximately the same length as a typical modern novel, something between one and two hundred thousand words.\u00a0 Reciting the whole poem at a festival would take up week\u2019s-worth of listening.\u00a0 That\u2019s comparable to the time it takes to read a book.<\/p>\n
Now for shorter subjects, the Greeks had the drama.\u00a0 A play by Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides was just an hour or two of the viewer\u2019s time.\u00a0 Pretty similar to a Shakespearean play and interestingly enough, the amount of time that a motion picture usually takes to watch.<\/p>\n
Does this mean that human beings inherently absorb story telling in these lengths of time?\u00a0 I can\u2019t prove that assertion but you know, a three-hour movie starts to get to be a bit much for one viewing.\u00a0 And a four-hundred-page book better be damn interesting or it also begins to wear out its welcome.<\/p>\n
So maybe our entertainment has been standardized to suit our mental, emotional and physiological parameters.\u00a0 Humans have a limited attention span.\u00a0 We also tire after a certain amount of time sitting or standing watching something.\u00a0 Also, hunger, thirst and the realities of hydraulic pressure eventually force us to interrupt even the most fascinating entertainment.\u00a0 To ameliorate these considerations, movie theaters are equipped with a snack bar and restrooms.\u00a0 But dramatic interest will begin to flag by the third hour.<\/p>\n
So, I\u2019d say we\u2019re programmed for these lengths of entertainment products.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or The Lord of the Rings at some point you either come up for air or you fall asleep.\u00a0 And similarly with a book.\u00a0 There have to be chapters or groups of chapters that allow for the reader to put the book down and come back to it later.\u00a0 It needs a punctuated progression.\u00a0 The action must go through a series of starts and stops.\u00a0 It needs a rhythm to the action, a flow.\u00a0 And if the rhythm isn\u2019t right, the story doesn\u2019t work because the reader is jarred out of the spell of the story.<\/p>\n
You may be wondering what this post is about.\u00a0 It\u2019s a transcription of an internal dialog I\u2019m having with myself.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been rereading my story and some sections seem choppy to me.\u00a0 Some of the transitions from one chapter to another just don\u2019t flow.\u00a0 So, to make myself feel better I\u2019m imagining Homer sitting in his office in downtown Mycenae and wrestling with the transition between the story of the cyclops Polyphemus and the Island of Aiolos.\u00a0 He\u2019s plucking the strings of his lyre and thinking, \u201cThis Aiolos story is really boring compared to all the excitement of the cyclops.\u00a0 It needs something to punch it up a little.\u00a0 Maybe I can include some more man-eating giants again.\u00a0 No, wait, that\u2019s stupid.\u00a0 There can\u2019t be man-eating giants on every island.\u00a0 That\u2019s just lazy.\u201d\u00a0 I totally feel for him.\u00a0 The epic poetry-listening public is easily jaded.\u00a0 They demand good writing (or singing).\u00a0 Ah, the vicissitudes of the epic Muse Calliope.\u00a0 Like all females, she is fickle.\u00a0 Well back to the grindstone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the course of three thousand years of western civilization, storytelling has transformed from an oral tradition of poet\/rhapsodes reciting mythological epics like the Iliad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,2510,1289,1263,237,4,242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n