Texties »Blog »Feb 1, 2019

Why chat fiction will change how we consume literature

When was the last time you read a book for fun? Do you remember what it was? Was it a classic tale of adventure brimming with the trials of human experience? Was it a suspenseful thriller full of twists and turns, villains and intrigue? Was it a steamy romance holding your undivided attention with playful innuendo and sexual tension?

I know. Books are awesome.

It can take days to finish stories like these though. A dark, freakout of a backwoods horror story might be fourteen hours of investment or more. Who even has the time?

And where are you storing all of these books that you read? Marie Kondo's gonna jump into your life and tell you to throw every last bound paperback into the donation bin anyway, so why bother with buying physical books anymore?

Thank goodness for audiobooks and ebooks. No need to tidy your stockpile of those.

But what about the time issue? You still want to read to experience other worlds - to crack open some narrative fiction for the pure pleasure of diving into another life as a moment's respite from the current timeline we all exist in. But maybe you've recognized your shortening attention span and your constant attachment to your smartphone. Your beautiful, precious angel of a device.

Also, no time. There's no time for anything anymore.

Enter the amazing and weirdly entertaining world of chat fiction. In chat stories, you are like a voyeuristic hacker who can read other peoples' text messages and live their fictional drama. But make it literature.

There are three main awesome features about chat fiction that make it better than anything else for reading:

• Time: Chat stories are short. Even the long ones are pretty short compared to books and novels. A typical story on Texties is a 15-20 minute read. And they can be just as entertaining and thrilling as a long novel. Sound crazy? Consider the difference in entertainment value between a YouTube video and a feature film. Yes, it turns out they can both be fun. Which brings me to point number two:


• Fun: Like an RPG one-shot. Like a mini-game. Like a TikTok video. Sometimes short and sweet can be exciting and different. And reading chat fiction is like momentarily digging into the dirt of someone else's life. Imagine reading texts between a person chatting with their therapist about their secret lover. Or a woman hiding under the bed as someone or something searches the house for her. Chat fiction puts the reader - you - right in the thick of the action like you're watching it as it happens. What's not fun about experiencing that on the dreary bus ride home? Which brings me to the last awesome thing:


• Accessibility: You can read it anywhere, anytime. Do you have your phone with you? Dumb question. Of course you do. Well, that means you can read chat fiction. No need for headphones, no need for big screens. The text message format was built for small screens. It's easy to carry and it's easy to read. And now we're all addicted to it.

As we all hurtle unstoppably into a future filled with more convenience and more thrilling thrills, chat fiction is changing how we read and how we tell stories. It very well may change the entire future of portable narrative fiction as we know it. And if it does nothing else, we know it will be fun.

Stay tuned, kiddos.

From the future,
Amy Kamin