WordSmith

The shifting sands of reading and writing

I ended last week's column with the sentence, "Nowadays, I don't bother with horror." However, I've since revised that sentiment and will get back to it at the end of this one.

Before that, I want to talk about erosion; a quality being lost over time. I'm not talking of geological erosion. No, I'm referring to Lexical erosion – the way we're reading and writing is shifting with the sands of time. Back in 2012 the Book Store WATERSTONE'S dropped its apostrophe to became WATERSTONES. It caused consternation within the ranks of the grammar police. But, the book-brand argued that the apostrophe was becoming less relevant, "Waterstones without an apostrophe is, in a digital world of URLS a more versatile and practical spelling," said a spokesperson.

Now, the full-stop is under siege. Young(er) texters in their world of quick fire thumb-textualizing, consider the full-stop aggressive; a digital punch that puts a blunt end to further dialogue, period! Of course, the full stop is all important in the art of storytelling; how else are we to know when a sentence has completed its thought and thus move on to the next part of the narrative?

I take this teenage shift in punctuation usage and wordsmithery to head and heart. Why? Well, I consider myself a writing raconteur, a memoirist, a storyteller. And, if I have to take such writing successfully into the future, then I must seriously consider changes in the writing and reading habits of the younger populace in our digital world.

That's not to say I'll ditch punctuation in favour of emojis. On the contrary, I'm mindful of my grammar. However, the online space and how young people read does inform the shape and style of my writing beyond this column.

Last year, I was selected as one of three authors for the 'Better together Cross Border Peace Project.' Charlie McGettigan, the Symposium Facilitator, noted the layout of my memoir and asked, "Why did you write it with such short paragraphs and gaps?" And the answer is, I wrote it like a series of tweets and short posts, so potential younger readers wouldn't be put off by walls of words; enabling them to dip in and out of the narrative as they do on their socials.

I posted sample chapters of my memoir online; a young woman currently studying for her Leaving Cert discovered it. She messaged me, "I found your book online, I'm loving it..."

Which brings me on to how young people read today. The student came across my memoir on a reader/writer app called Wattpad. This app was founded in 2011 and to date it has 94 Million, mostly young-adult readers worldwide. Young writers upload their stories in serial form in order to find and build their audience; there's a social element wherein writers engage directly with readers. Wattpad consumers read from their phones/devices, hence older readers are slower or reluctant to adapt to these digital reading technologies; beyond Kindle. (A quick aside, a recent survey of young-adult Wattpad readers found 92% would rather read writing by humans, than AI – encouraging).

Last week I spoke of my teenage love of Horror and the bother it caused me. Some time ago I decided to re-ignite that passion by writing the horror story I would like to have read when I was sixteen – a story laced in horror but with love and heart at its core. I chose Wattpad as the platform to seed my serial story. Aware it would be read on phones, I wrote in short sentences, with brief but pacy episodical chapters. Yet, within those confines I ensured character development, story, and full-stops were all present and correct. It worked, my heart-filled-horror-story found a considerable digital audience. Now, I liken myself to the 80s bands Alphaville and the Nolan Sisters; whilst they were 'Big in Japan' I'm 'Big in the Philippines' where the bulk of my story's 6.3 Million readers reside. I gave away that story, unaware it would become so popular (I may pitch it to Netflix as a potential pension plan, we'll see).

Given my heartily-horrific popularity in the Philippines, I've decided to create a new genre: Horror with Heart. Time will tell if it gets me into any further horror bother.