Subtextual
Now there's this app,Subtext,
that lets you read books and share your comments about them
in real-time with other people reading the same book. Little speech bubbles
in the margins pop up: you tap them, you get to read what other people are
saying about a particular plot twist, or character death, or whatever.
In some cases, the author has gone through and made a bunch of those
comments him or herself, and these read a little like a DVD commentary track.
I mention this because I'm one of those authors: Machine Man
is one of their launch titles. So, if, you know, you feel I've been
too secretive about the creative process behind
Machine Man so far, now is your chance for some insight.
At first I thought you would have to turn those comments off when
reading a Subtext book, at least the first time through, because otherwise
that would be really distracting. But I have found that this is impossible. You know
the comments are lurking there, and it's too much to resist turning them
back on when you're wondering, "Does anyone else think
this story just completely went off the rails?"
So that's pretty cool. Not from an author's perspective. From an author's
perspective, it's horrible. I want you to sit there and read what I've
damn well written for you. But as another example of
users seizing control over their own entertainment experiences, it seems
significant.
Movie news! I just changed the subject. That's what happened there.
Mark Heyman,
the scriptwriter of Black Swan, who's been busy working on
what I have to say is a freaking fantastic Machine Man script,
I know I'm not allowed to tell anyone, Mandalay, BUT IT IS AWESOME,
has sold
his
"Facebook thriller" script XOXO, with Darren Aronofsky producing.
So it's all going pretty nicely in Heyman-land. Syrup is deep
in post-production and I still haven't seen it, not that I'm thinking about
it every ten minutes or anything. And the leads are busy:
Amber
Heard is doing interviews for The Rum Diary, and
Shiloh Fernandez is becoming
an eco-terrorist.
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I have mixed feelings on this. I don't own anything Apple, so I guess I have to sit this one out, but having just recently read Machine Man, I got more out of it by explaining my thoughts to friends and watching them pick up the book and start reading it themselves. I started getting phone calls and text messages, wasting away minutes at work conversing with people. We discussed everything from whether or not you also had your character's sociopath tendencies to how the story would end, to how freaky it is think about the enterprise of 'enhancing' the quality of life and what it really means when it all boils down to the financial outcomes. As a kid, I always enjoyed Pop-Up video, but I'm not sure that I'd like it applied to the books I read. I feel that storytelling is like performing a magic trick. Catch it from the wrong angle and it loses it's allure. Overall, my feeling on this: aside from the base story, less is more.
This sounds like a potentially good thing, except that it's only available on the iStore. Too many of us have Androids now for new software developers to be so exclusive.
