6 ms·
Just a prediction here, so take it for what it's worth, but my hunch is that the profession of writing is going to fragment into more and more subsets in the co
by jonnathanson 15y ago
Just a prediction here, so take it for what it's worth, but my hunch is that the profession of writing is going to fragment into more and more subsets in the coming years. At the low end of the totem pole -- what we'll call "low-value" writing -- will be the sorts of articles that software can eventually automate. Things like news updates, information dumps, how-to pieces, lists, summaries, and so forth. Much of what traditional journalism would call "news" stories, and what magazine journalism would call "informational" pieces, fall into this bucket. In these sorts of articles, substance is more important than style. These pieces are all about the facts, or summations of the facts. Or, in the case of content farms, they're about relaying and recombining information in endless mixes, using provocative headlines. You don't need a Pulitzer-caliber author to crank these out. Hell, pretty soon you won't even need a human to crank them out. It's no surprise that this type of writing doesn't pay well, because frankly, it's the fast food of journalism. It's cheap, it's disposable to the consumer, and so it pays cheaply.
On the other hand, higher-value writing will be that which isn't easily automated, and for which style is every bit as important as substance. Fiction (good fiction, at least), features, human-interest stories, editorials (especially those relying on expertise), and so forth. This will be the kind of writing that either pays crap, or pays big, depending on the writer's skill level -- and his or her ability to build a market or following for it. There will always be a need for this kind of writing, and until such time as software AI becomes genuinely creative, it'll be very hard to automate the highest-quality, most interesting, and most innovative stuff.
Low-value writing will, if anything, see its value decline even further. It is the equivalent of the man on the assembly line who can be replaced by a tireless, hyper-efficient machine. High-value writing will not, on average, find itself paying more handsomely than it used to. It will still be a high-variance profession. But it will be what remains for professional writers in the age of content farms, automated news, social networking, and so forth.
Essentially, the way to earn a decent living in the future will be: 1) be damned good, 2) build and maintain a following, 3) differentiate yourself, and 4) produce at high volume.
- Periodic 15y agoI think this is going to be a case of every writer needing a brand and following. People aren't going to be hired as much for their ability to churn out automatable articles, but by the audience they can bring with them due to their style and skills. An example would be if Jason Fried's or Joel Spolskey's column in Inc. I will go to the Inc site just to read their articles because I respect their opinion, they have expertise and write about subjects that I care about. If their columns moved somewhere else, I'd read them there and maybe read other stories that catch my eye. They are valuable because of their audience.
- savramescu 15y agoTo be honest I believe this was true in the past as well. People will read one specific newspaper because of one journalist. Somewhere along the way people stopped doing this and it's become more easy to observe this with the advent of the Internet where anyone can become a writer. I do really hope we'll get back to quality focused writing because at the moment there's not a newspaper that figured this out. They're all stuck in the past.
- lupatus 15y agoFiction, at least, has been well-studied and broken into defined components. All stories follow a predictable arc: exposition, conflict, climax, conclusion, and denouement [1]. Use well-tested plot devices to move through the story arc [2]. Define a skeleton framework of what kind of plot devices go where in the story. Have a database of scene location descriptions. Have a database of character stereotypes. Make your algorithm mix-and-match them to fill-in the story skeleton. Seen this way, A New Hope and Raiders of the Lost Ark are kind of similar. Plot: Rescue the princess/my father Hero: young/grizzled adventurer Plucky sidekick: loyal robots/Professor Ally: Semi-sleazy smuggler Scene: Fascist Empire spaceship/Nazi North Africa Bad guys: Stormtroopers/Nazis Main villain: black-clothed mystical bad Jedi/Archeologist Heck, using this format, you could make your own OWS drama: Plot: Rescue my bankrupt mother Hero: idealistic hippy Plucky sidekick: loyal golden retreiver Ally: Semi-sleazy drug dealer Scene: Urban city streets Bad guys: city police Main villain: black-suited bad finance executive I would call it "Wall Street Raiders" or "Wall Street: A New Hope". Yes, FWIW, I've been contemplating coding just such a story-generating engine. Like Mad Libs on steroids. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_device http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_device
- aperrien 15y agoThis sounds really interesting. If you do this, can you post your progress and results?
- lupatus 15y agoSure. I've been thinking of taking a stab at Romance novels first because they tend to be very formulaic and are a surprisingly profitable fiction niche.
- IsaacL 15y agoI think Mills and Boons titles are probably generated by a very simple grammar: The [Nationality] [High-powered Profession]'s [Asdjective for Sexy] [Synonym for Lover]. Eg The Turkish Millionaire's Sultry Mistress, The North Korean Cadre's Sleazy Hooker, etc. But I think your project could be AI-hard - to write a compelling story you'd need to have a virtual world with virtual characters with virtual psychologies. You'd need to be able to model complicated stuff like "Romeo knows Juliet thinks he is already dead", and simple stuff like "If Romeo is under Juliet's balcony, he can't see her until he climbs up". Interesting project though.
- paratiar 15y agoIf you cinsider the current state of the art in natural language processing and the current trends, basically the contrary jonnathanson prediction will happen, machines have truble automating contect BUT are good at orginizing that content, therefore low-value writing will feed automated high-value writing, the future probably be: produce in hi volume, that might come from social media, and editors to refine and limit what get frontpage.